Know Where You Need to Be: Aligning Your Time with Personal and Professional Priorities
Have you ever felt like you're constantly juggling a dozen tasks, never quite sure if you're focusing on the right ones? As retail leaders, the demands on our time can be overwhelming. But what if you could confidently know where you need to be, all day, each day, because your actions are aligned with your most important personal and professional priorities? This isn't just a lofty ideal—it's an achievable strategy that can transform your leadership and your life.
"It is not enough to be busy… The question is: what are we busy about?" — Henry David Thoreau
Knowing what to do should come from what you value most, your priorities. When determining how to spend your time, use your priorities as a guiding light. This ensures you are productive and effective while also feeling good and right about your choices. I am sure we have all completed tasks, visited stores, attended meetings that we felt we “had” to be there. We were “checking a box” and going through the motions. Marking something as complete is a small portion of the equation; we all felt less than satisfied when we marked that as complete. We intuitively knew there was more we could be doing if it aligned to what we believed in. I am not going to say that we will (or should) never complete things that are not fully aligned to our individual priorities, as that is likely not realistic. However, we can ensure that we are spending the majority of our time working on things that do matter most.
Disney has built a concept of this into their culture and way of operating. It can be used as the foundation for thinking about your time as well. Disney refers to these as their Four Keys. They are Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency. These are in priority order, and they make that clear. For any decisions that need to be made, by any cast member, these four keys will guide that process. Nothing beats safety. If safety is at question, the decision is drive to prioritize that above all else, even if that means disappointing a guest. Want to see that in action? Watch a child who is too small to ride Space Mountain and a disappointed parent trying to cajole the cast member to make an exception. Nope. It won’t happen because even though Courtesy and Show are also part of the Four Keys, Safety overrides all else. It works in successive order for all the Four Keys.
You can use a similar mindset for how you manage your time. It can become your guiding light of where you should spend time, energy, and effort in anything you do.
What are your personal priorities?
Define your personal priorities first. What is most important to you, the person? This could be driven by personal goals you have, your faith, your dreams. What do you above all else what to be known for, stand for, accomplish? These can be a combination of what you may think of as personal values (see below) as well as how you wish to spend your time. These can, and probably should, change as the seasons of your life change. If you are younger, just getting started in your career, your advancement, or experience opportunities might be among your most important priorities. As you get older, have a family, your personal priorities may shift to elevate family time above other items.
Once you have established your personal priorities, ensure you have them in importance order, to help guide how you make decisions in the future. It may also be a good opportunity to create a set of ideas for how you would address conflicts when they arise. At Disney, the Cast Member won’t just say, “it’s the policy, the Four Keys said Safety above all else.” Instead, they will know how to address that situation aligning to Courtesy and Show while maintaining no compromises on Safety. Have your plan as well.
What are your professional priorities?
Take the same exercise as above and apply it to your professional priorities. There likely will be crossover; even in the example above, career growth could be as much a professional priority. However, I would encourage you to think about your role as a leader and how you prioritize that. This could be prioritizing that you deliver results (then define which results), or you may want to prioritize other’s development. You get the idea.
Keep your responses as short and concise as possible. Using the Disney example, they are a single word each. Very easy to understand. Of course, they build the definitions, explanations, and examples into the supporting materials, but the keys themselves are simple to remember. Yours should be too. And feel free to build your own set of definitions, explanations, and examples. That is an excellent way to both refine your thinking and begin to build the responses to conflicts.
What are your core values?
The final, yet perhaps most important, is the core values you set for yourself. These likely are your Four Keys, the things you never compromise on, including the other priorities you list above. These are character-driven and moral driven. They will be the most difficult to narrow down, as there are so many choices and options that seem like ‘must haves’. Defining each of these will be critical to help you build your order in which you use these and balance between everything else. If honesty sits above all else, how does that fit into how you prioritize everything else? Does a small lie in the name of someone’s feelings or the timing of information sharing break your value of honesty? It will be small dilemmas like that which can create the most challenging conversations you’ll have with yourself.
Using this process to clearly establish your core values, personal and professional priorities can assist in defining how you spend your time. Imagine as you are planning your week, or even your day, and using these sets of priorities to help guide where you spend your time. How much easier could that help make determining where you should be?
How are you using your values and priorities to set support your time management?
Summary and Key Points
Identify Personal Priorities: Reflect on what is most important to you personally, such as family, health, or personal growth, and arrange these priorities in order of importance to guide future decisions.
Set Professional Priorities: Determine your key professional goals, such as achieving results or developing your team, and ensure they align with your personal values.
Define Core Values: Establish core values that will guide all your decisions, similar to Disney's Four Keys (Safety, Courtesy, Show, Efficiency), and ensure they are simple and clear.
Align Actions with Priorities: Regularly evaluate how your time is spent to ensure it aligns with your established priorities, and be ready to adjust as needed.
Use a Structured Approach: Apply a methodical approach like Disney’s Four Keys to prioritize tasks and make decisions, ensuring that your actions reflect your personal and professional values.
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