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Prioritizing what we should do
“The obsession with instant gratification blinds us from our long-term potential.”
- Michael Dooley
In any given moment we have the option of choosing what we should do, what we want to do, and what we need to do. What we need to do is our biggest priority. This includes taking care of our responsibilities and commitments in our personal and professional lives. What we should do may relate to those ambitions and desires we have, whether it involves working toward a long-term goal or sharpening a skill we would like to master. It also relates to making smarter choices for ourselves that benefit our mental and physical health.
What we want to do hopefully lines up with what we need to do or what we should do, but a lot of the time it involves avoiding those very things in favor of instant gratification. This would include skipping exercise in favor of a scrolling session on our favorite social media app or binging content on your streaming service of choice instead of making progress on that side project at home. Once our obligations and commitments are taken care of, we choose how to spend whatever time it is we have left in our day.
We can fall into a trap if what we should do does not line up with what we want to do. If we keep putting off what we should do because it is not as appealing as what we want to do, we…
