by Steve Grosbois under the Creative Commons License

It’s a very simple truth: how you spend your minutes, hours, days, and weeks is how you spend your life.

As I was avoiding writing today, I decided to get lost in the internet, then eat something even though I wasn’t hungry, and finally ask myself, what am I doing?

How much time do we lose not really knowing what we are doing?

Time spent without intention seems to get away from us rapidly and with little joy or satisfaction. At least it does for me.

I caught myself, eventually, and remembered something important: time is a resource with which I can accomplish things that are central to my life priorities.

Your life priorities are not things you say to look good. They are how you actually live. If, for example, your health is important, that will be reflected in how you spend your time.

If you don’t spend time attending to something, it’s not important.

Time. Intention. Attention.

These are the three ingredients that make a priority a reality.

I encourage you to write down your top three or four priorities. Look at your week: does what you actually DO with your time reflect these priorities? When you do spend time doing important things is your attention on what you are doing?

A fulfilling life comes from spending our time and attention on what is actually important to us.

It’s an easy concept, but one that is very hard to achieve. It requires remembering to think about what we are doing, what’s actually important, (and perhaps most notably) letting go of what’s not.

How do you remember to pay attention? How do you decide what’s actually important and worthy of your time?