How are you prioritizing your life?

How are you prioritizing your life, or are you letting someone else prioritize it for you?  

Let's assume, for arguments sake, that you know exactly what you want out of your life for your health, finances, professional success, relationships, etc.  How are you prioritizing the activities and projects?

Most people don't prioritize effectively, or at all, and ultimately wind up working someone else's priorities.  Yes you may work for someone other than yourself, but you can't let them control your ultimate destiny.  How, what and when you spend your time on says everything about where you are going in life.

There are many "prioritization methods" out there, and they all work if you use them.  By far the simplest and easiest to implement is, the Pareto Principle, a.k.a., the 80/20 rule.

This rule states that you will receive 80% of your success from 20% of your efforts.  So you must focus your attention on the highest value items that give you the biggest return on your time, financial and effort investment.  For example, if you have a project that has a 100 tasks required to achieve an outcome; odds are you really only need to focus on the roughly 20 items that give you the biggest return on your effort investment and you'll achieve your outcome without doing the remaining tasks.  

Those 20 items are worth more than all the rest combined, so put your focus and effort there.  Usually, though, the highest value priorities tend to require the most effort and you end up procrastinating them because of the pain associated with taking action.  To break free of this procrastination, success expert, Brian Tracy, says to "Eat Your Frog" first thing in the morning.  

If you eat your frog, your highest value priority, first thing in the morning, the rest of your day will be easy because you will have achieved your desired outcome.  So get your priorities accomplished early, get your results early and then the balance of your days will fly by.

One of the greatest keys to your success, is investing your time on the highest value priorities.  So what and how are you prioritizing your life?  Use the Pareto Principle to your advantage and then Eat Your Frog first thing in the morning.