Setting priorities

Setting priorities

If everything is a priority then nothing is a priority is one old time expression.

It is often better for a boss to make known his or her priorities, or a parent clearly demonstrating a priority, than for those affected trying to derive your priorities. Sometimes we get it wrong.

While in the local hospital, the medical workers would often ask me about the pain I was experiencing on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most painful.  While all I know is what I said, I think I helped these people out in their own decisions in interpreting what I reported.  Now I had already derived my own pain rules, like no pain, annoyance, aggravation, pain, and severe pain, and so would do that first, and then translate that to the 1 to 10 scale for their system.

Right now I have a leak in a stainless steel water tank buried in the ground. My guess is that the leak is about 4 feet up, and so the tank only holds maybe 3,000 gallons vice the full tank volume of 4,500 gallons. So what is my priority of repair, around low to medium, since I already have plenty of reserve water, though less than ideal.  And if need be, I can always get water from the local ponds, clean and filter that, and survive just fine.  Now is that a pain in the tail to do, of course it is, but that knowledge still affects the priority for the repair I set. Now I will only work in fair weather (and not having to work in foul weather), for example.

So everything is not a crisis that most Americans and many others like to use for their own purposes.   

And assigning and communicating your priorities is usually to your advantage to do so.