Non-negotiable

What’s the important stuff?

This time of year I always warn people about the impending craziness and busyness. Ever since I have moved about in the working and living world of society I see people struggling with this.

It’s the beginning of the school year.  It is the budget cycle in business.  It is the beginning of fall sport season.  Winter is coming.

It manifests as overwhelm.

The symptoms are when you have more things to do than you have time to do them.  Where work wants 100%, even demands 100%+ of your time and intensity.  Maybe you feel like, or it’s subtly implied that without the focus and time at work your livelihood is in jeopardy.

You can’t keep up.

Your family life is piling on with school work, and sports and everyone in that realm wants 100% of your attention as well.  They have the same pressures and look to you for support.  You’re busy trying to stay afloat and it’s hard to tread water with them clinging on as well.

Just barely hanging on, exhausted and not getting anything worthwhile accomplished.

Next, external commitments rain down on you from church and community and all different angles until you are just drowning in to-dos.  You can’t take one more bake-sale or charity car wash.

In an effort to keep up you start throwing things out of your boat.  Health and sanity become victims discarded willy-nilly by the roadside as you push on.

Then the car breaks down, or someone gets sick, or some surprise ambushes you.  The water heater blows up in the basement.  Little Jimmy gets sent home from school for bad-behavior.  This may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

What happens when you reach this critical mass? Maybe you snap and yell at someone you love in anger and frustration.  Maybe you start giving up the things that are personally important to you, like your workouts and your health. Maybe you just go numb, brain dead, and flail listlessly against the tide, executing poorly and providing a universal mediocrity.

We’ve all been there.  Is there a solution?

You could wrap yourself in Zen intentions and smile your way through the adversity, but getting run over by daily life, whether in a blissful state or not isn’t really going to help.

You could become an efficiency expert and try to hack your way around the to-do list, but getting more stuff done in less time is only half the battle.

What you really want to do is work on the important things.

“But Chris” you say “All of these things are important!”

They may be important to someone, but are they really important to you? How do you know what’s important to you anyhow?

Here’s how.

The first thing you need to do is to decide what your “non-negotiables” are.

As you look at your to-do list what are the things that are non-negotiable?  This is very basic.  Working out is one of my non-negotiables.  Spending daily quality time with your family may be one of yours.

For each part of your life, your health, your family and community, your spirituality, and your work there will be non-negotiables.  What are they?  What should they be?  Everything can’t be non-negotiable, but I bet if you look at what you’re doing certain things will stand out as “must haves” for you.

You’ll find that these things are non-negotiable because they align with your personal values as a human and as a citizen of this world.  You may also find that they are non-negotiable because they align with your important goals.

Too many goals?  Or, not the right goals?

Maybe you have too many goals, too many projects and this is causing you a problem of what is important and what isn’t.

In this case you need to search for the ‘one thing’.  The one thing is that thing, above all the other tasks and projects and goals that you are working on that will change your life for the better in the greatest way.

What does “for the better” mean to you? That comes back around to values and purpose.

Now we’ve talked ourselves into a corner. You have your non-negotiables.  You have your goals. You have your ‘one thing’.  All of these are tied to, and aligned with, your purpose.

Guess what?  Studies have shown that for most people “thing” goals; those goals that are tied to money or cars or jewelry are not very compelling.  Most of us are compelled to get to a place where we have enough money, but more than that is not a motivator.

The goals that really turn us on are the goals that are tied to purpose.  We will actually work on purpose projects harder than those things that pay us.

What that means, and why you care, is that when you look at all the things you have on your plate you need some measuring stick to decide which ones you are going to pour your golden energy into.

It won’t be the ones that are based on the traditional carrot and stick approach.  When you make those decisions, when you sort the stack, your purpose and values should come to the top.

The one’s that fall to the bottom may actually have some dire consequences tied to them. You can tell a non-purpose, non-values project because it will have an if/then result.  “If I work these extra hours, then I’ll be in line for a raise.”

Purpose driven activities will be different.  Those will be the ones that you want to work on because the work and the output provide intrinsic value for you.

So my friends, as you come into the busy season and overwhelm starts to creep up behind you with its foul breath, take the time to figure out what’s important.  Once you do that the rest is easy.

Does this mean you don’t have to work hard? Or that you don’t have to do unpleasant, intensive, mid-numbing tasks?

Of course not.

What it means is that you will know when you are doing these things that they align with your purpose.  You’ll do them because you want to do them. Internally motivated people working with purpose go deeper and do these tasks with more ferocity.

You’ll begin to demonstrate that all important ‘grit’ required to get things done that support the cause or goal that you care about.

You’ll work through the drudgery to get to the mastery of your chosen path.

Finding your path and working down it requires just as much work but it is focused towards something that you intrinsically care about.  It is wrapped around your “why”.

What you’ll find as you get older and become more interested in pursuits that align with your purpose is that many of the purposeful things involve giving back and helping others.

This then becomes another great way to sort out the meaningful tasks and goals from the pile.

Does it positively impact someone else? Or is it only for your benefit?  You’ll find that the purposeful things tend to fall into more altruistic categories.  When you figure out and work on those tasks that are non-negotiable it ends up helping us all.

This in itself becomes a way to find and share purpose.  This skill of deciding what is intrinsically important is a gift you can pass on to others. Your co-workers, your peers and the next generation.

My friends, don’t let the tidal forces of overwhelm pull you under.  We need you to be a healthy and productive member of our world.  Look at your to-do list and sort out the non-negotiable items.  Look at your goals and seek purpose.  Work with grit towards mastery of your craft.

Reach out and lift up others who are stumbling along this path.

Do these things and we will all be better off.