Activities Can Serve Priorities – See. Perceive. Act.

What’s the relationship, former procrastinators, between activities and priorities?  Is an activity a priority?  Maybe, maybe not.  Don’t they conflict?  How do we or others benefit from our activities? There’s lots we want to do!

Years ago I mistakenly thought if we scheduled tightly and worked harder, we could manage to do everything we wanted.  Not well.  With overload you don’t gain the benefits available through your chosen activities, you don’t make as good a contribution, and you negatively affect home life – all while overstressed.

Stress comes with life.  In a family, there are lots of lives to coordinate with a variety of needs, interests, activities.  Being intentional about activities helps simplify things.  We’re careful to protect things essential to personal and family life.  Dinner together four times a week?  Homework? We stay alert to make sure activities don’t run over priorities or take over direction of the family.

These approaches help us take advantage of activities as instruments for accomplishing priorities:

Determine priorities for ourselves, younger children, and together with teens – not activities, but the major areas in which you believe God is directing you to learn and/or contribute.  We set up routines around those.  If we view activities as channels available for learning and contribution, we can more clearly discern where we should participate.  Baseball or debate could develop respect, loyalty, perseverance.  Lawn mowing or babysitting could earn money, teach business skills and serve others.

Define what knowledge or skills you want to develop or impart through the activity.  Be a team player, learn to think on your feet, cut five seconds off last year’s time.

Specify character traits you’d like to develop in yourself or encourage in your child.  Patience, kindness, becoming a better listener, being cheerful win or lose, supporting the ideas of others.

Set limitations or conditions.  Look at time and performance demands, work, school, transportation, family needs, rest.

Leave margin.  Breathing room between activities and responsibilities enables enjoyment and learning.  Rushing stifles them.

Be alert to lesser-known opportunities.  The well-known coach, the most popular team may not be the best place for you.  A lesser-known director or club might provide more opportunity for learning and service.  Maybe a different activity altogether is the better place to pursue your priority.

Streamline transportation.  Drive Emily’s son to soccer and she can drive your daughter to choir.

Talk with family and friends about what you’re learning.  Toss around ideas.  Make the priority focus (the skill, knowledge, character trait) a frequent topic of conversation and encouragement.

Enjoy.  Having fun is a valid reason for participation whether we become experts or not.

We can lessen tension between priorities and activities.  Clarifying priorities before getting involved helps us focus and utilize our activity-effort for better results. Less stress, more effective learning and contribution.  See. Perceive. Act.

What considerations help you determine what activities to participate in?