About a week ago I saw the following post from author/entrepreneur Tim Ferriss:
After contracting Lyme disease and operating at ~10% capacity for 9 months in 2014, I made health #1. Prior to Lyme, I’d worked out and eaten well, but when push came to shove, “health #1” was negotiable. Now, it’s literally #1. What does this mean?
If I sleep poorly and have an early morning meeting, I’ll cancel the meeting last-minute if needed and catch up on sleep. If I’ve missed a workout and have a conference call coming up in 30 minutes? Same. Late-night birthday party with a close friend? Not unless I can sleep in the next morning.
In practice, strictly making health #1 has real social and business ramifications. That’s a price I’ve realized I MUST be fine with paying, or I will lose weeks or months to sickness and fatigue.
And it reminded me of another much briefer comment that I read in my early coaching days: “You can’t prioritize without deprioritizing.” (Rob Lawrence)
It should probably seem obvious that prioritizing something can’t happen without deprioritizing something else. But applying the concept is often more challenging in reality because of the natural human tendency to pay attention to what’s immediately in front of us.
That tendency may have been helpful in prehistoric times when we needed to regularly find food or escape pillaging tribal neighbors—because what was immediately in front of us often overlapped with what was important. And it’s still helpful today when we want to intentionally focus on meaningful work or spend time with family and friends.
However, it becomes a liability during the remainder of our free time when the items vying for our attention more commonly fall into the categories of social media and news feeds, email and phone notifications, or busywork and other time sinks. In other words, things that most of us would probably agree aren’t really that important.
As illustrated in Tim’s post, health and fitness often get the short end of the stick at such times. But the problem isn’t that we’re unwilling to prioritize health. It’s that we’re unwilling to deprioritize anything else.
Of course, if everything is a priority, then nothing is actually a priority. And what ends up consuming our time and energy is what’s immediately in front of us, which often isn’t exercising, preparing healthy meals, or going to bed on time.
One solution to the problem?
Get better at deprioritizing the stuff that isn’t truly important. And, preferably, don’t wait until some type of disease makes you do it.
Putting it into practice
Consider spending an evening sometime this week contemplating the things that regularly, often, or sometimes get in the way of important health practices which you at least occasionally neglect. (We all have some type of kryptonite, myself included!)
Then actively deprioritize one thing. Maybe that looks like removing a certain app from your phone. Or turning off electronics at a certain time prior to bed. Or establishing a workday shutdown ritual. (See Cal Newport’s Deep Work for more on that last idea.)
Whatever you decide to do, expect to be a little uncomfortable at first. But your status quo will eventually shift if you stick with your decision/practice, and soon enough you’ll find that you have more time to do the things you think are truly important.