02 Priorities

Ever notice how the loudest tasks steal your day while the work that truly matters barely whispers? We unpack a practical way to regain control: a simple three-question filter that cuts through noise, surfaces real priorities, and helps you protect your best hours for meaningful progress.

We start by reframing the problem. Time isn’t expandable, but focus is. By separating urgency from importance, we reveal why constant firefighting leaves your calendar full and your goals untouched. You’ll learn how to identify the few actions that actually move the needle—work that creates results, revenue, impact, or stability—so you can stop juggling and start advancing.

Then we get tactical. We walk through “What actually moves the needle?”, “What can only I do?”, and “What happens if it doesn’t get done?” to build instant clarity for your day and week. We talk about the 80 percent rule for delegation, protecting peak-energy blocks for deep work, and setting a clear done state before you start. Instead of reacting to emails and requests, you’ll anchor your day with a single top one priority—said out loud, written down, and executed early—so even a chaotic day still earns a win.

By the end, you’ll have a lightweight system to align your calendar with your values. Expect fewer distractions, more momentum, and the confidence that your effort is compounding in the right direction. If clarity is your lever and time is your constraint, this conversation gives you the grip to move both. Enjoy the episode, share it with someone who needs a reset, and subscribe so you never miss these focused, practical tools.

Blinn Bates - BlinnBates.com

Woods & Bates, P.C. - Woodsandbates.com

Chapters

• 1:00 Why Time Isn’t The Problem
• 2:15 Urgent Versus Important
• 3:30 Three Questions For Clarity
• 4:56 Pick Your One Priority

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

Hello, welcome back to maximize your time, elevate your life. Today's episode, episode number two, is on priorities. Our problem typically isn't time, it's clarity. And the business guru Peter Drucker famously said, Show me your calendar and your bank statement, and I'll show you what you really value. So most people don't struggle with time, they struggle with their priorities and living in line with those priorities. When everything feels urgent in this world that we live in, nothing important typically gets done. So today I'm going to bring you a simple framework for bringing clarity back to your day. And as we've discussed, time is finite. So our priorities give that time meaning. Our time is one priority that we can't expand, we can't get more of it. We get what we get. And you can't control how many hours are in the day, but we can control what gets our best hours, what gets our best work. And our priorities are what should get our energy. That's not always the case, but that's what should happen. So typically, as busy professionals, we have competing urgencies. You know, we drown in demands, we drown in client requests, we drown in staff requests, emails, firefighting, uh, family needs, things like that. And our time often doesn't reflect our highest and best stated priorities. These urgent tasks scream at us, our very important tasks typically whisper. So by that I mean something that's important. There may not be a lot of consequences if we don't accomplish that. Whereas if we don't get that client request done, they're going to be yelling at us. You know, those things typically scream at us. So urgent does not always mean important. And without having an intention of how we're going to spend our day, we're going to spend that whole day reacting instead of leading and winning our day. We want to know what's important, and then we want to prioritize what we're going to do to move that priority forward. Otherwise, before we know it, the way we're living our lives is going to be extremely out of line with what we've stated our priorities to be. So here's three questions that I've come up with that we can filter what we're going to do and live in line with our priorities. So the first question: we can use these at the beginning of the day, at the beginning of the week. What actually moves the needle? So if we focus on a task that's going to create results, revenue, impact, stability, something along those lines, it's not everything that we could do, but it's something that we should do. And those are things that move the needle. Then question number two is what can only I do? There are things that only I can do. There are other people that can run the copy machine. There are other people that can do a lot of the work around the office. Only I or one of the other attorneys in the office can do legal work. So that's something that only I can do. If someone else can do it, and if they can do it 80% as well as I can, that task should be delegated. And then the last question, question three, is what happens if it doesn't get done? And if it doesn't get done, and the answer is not much happens, shouldn't be a priority. If the answer is chaos, missed opportunity, long-term harm, it is a priority. And then once we've worked through those three questions, we can have some clarity on what we should do with our day. So my challenge to you today is pick your one priority for the day. Not top 10, not top five, top one. Say it out loud, write it down. Ask yourself is this the thing that I'm going to do today that I'm going to feel good about my day and feel like I win? That's going to be your true priority. When your priorities are clear, your time becomes powerful. Clarity drives confidence and reduces overwhelm.