i change my priorities essay brainly

• Personal Growth

Why You Need To Define Your Top Priorities In Life

• By Catherine Beard
• April 29, 2018
• 23 Comments

Do you struggle to get things done because everything feels important? There’s not enough time in the day to do it all, right?

If you silently said yes in your head, you might not have a clear idea of your top priorities in life.

Without clear priorities, it’s difficult to manage your time and make progress on your goals. You might even be overwhelming yourself by trying to take on too many responsibilities.

The truth is that our ability to move forward and accomplish our goals often depends on what we decide to prioritize. Once you’re clear on your priorities, you’ll be able to make better and quicker decisions that guide your life choices.

If you’re struggling to define your top priorities in life, I’ve created a simple exercise to help you get clear on what’s important. Plus, I’ll show you the quick and easy diagram I use to define my priorities so you can do it too!

What Are Priorities?

“A priority is the concern, interest or desire that comes before all others.” vocabulary.com

Priorities are the areas of our lives that are meaningful and important to us. They’re usually activities, practices, or relationships that we want to put genuine effort and time into.

When you think of priorities, you might picture the day-to-day tasks you have to accomplish. You may have seen the Eisenhower priority matrix that helps you to decide what needs to be done first.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to talk about high-level life priorities. Knowing your life priorities will ultimately help you decide how you prioritize your day-to-day tasks. You can’t do that effectively unless you know your life priorities.

Rather than feeling like everything is important, priorities help you choose what to focus on first. 

The difference between priorities and goals

A reader contacted me and asked about the difference between priorities and goals. She was trying to stay focused in school while reaching certain goals, but she wasn’t sure what her goals and priorities should be.

In my opinion, goals are the bigger picture, tangible milestones that you’re trying to achieve (e.g. get a certain GPA). Priorities are the things that you need to say yes or no to in order to reach that goal. 

For example, in order to get a certain GPA, your priorities might be studying and staying focused in class. You’d need to say no to anything that distracts you from doing that (like socializing), at least until you’ve finished your studying.

Why You Need Clearly Defined Priorities

My goal every single day is to have mental clarity . When I let shiny object syndrome take over and try to prioritize all the things, I get stuck in my head and find it hard to make decisions. 

When I figured out my top priorities, it helped me realize that I don’t have to do everything . Now when I want to tell someone no, it’s much easier to say, “That isn’t one of my priorities right now.” I don’t feel guilty for saying no, and it doesn’t feel like I’m making excuses to get out of something.

Priorities help to:

• Reduce indecision about where to dedicate my time
• Structure my day in a meaningful way
• Easily say yes or no when I get requests from others

Ultimately, priorities help you set and stick to boundaries . As you’ve probably experienced, trying to do everything on your to-do list can spread you thin and lead to burnout .

Maybe you’re thinking, “But what if my priorities change? Won’t life get boring if I stick to the same ones all the time?” 

Priorities can obviously shift, and they should shift over time. But I’ve learned that in order to make progress and not get burned out, it’s important to focus on a few things at a time until they no longer serve you.

Examples of Priorities

Before I explain how to set priorities, I want to share a few examples in case you’re unsure of what they look like. 

Here are examples of priorities you might have:

• Relationships
• Friendships
• Recreation/Fun
• Spirituality
• Volunteering

The list is endless, so it’s up to you to figure out what is most important to you.

My Priorities

I have both life and blog priorities. Since I work for myself, I need discipline and priorities to make sure I’m not spreading myself too thin.

My blog priorities:

1. Income generators

• contract work
• product creation
• sponsored posts

2. Connection

• weekly newsletters
• responding to emails and comments
• social media following
• blog page views

My life priorities (as of April 2020):

1. Be financially free

• make choices that help me pay off debt and build a future

2. Health/wellness

• home-cooked meals

3. Family/friends

• weekly coffee dates with my mom and sister
• staying in touch with friends

Of course, my priorities will look different to yours depending on what’s going on in your life. When trying this exercise for yourself, remember to ask yourself what you’d like to focus on based on your personal needs and interests.

How to Choose Your Priorities

What if you’re not sure what your priorities are? First things first, you need a clear idea of a vision for your life . If you don’t have one yet, read this post first.

Visualizing what you want your future to look like will help you figure out what you need to prioritize in order to achieve your goals. Trust me, it’s not as woo-woo as you might think.

From there, you can begin defining your priorities with the following exercise:

The Life Priorities Exercise

1. Make A List

Write a list of all of the things you do on a regular basis. At the end of the list, write down the things you wish you had time for on a regular basis. Go back through the example list of priorities if you’re stuck.

2. Categorize Your List

Whatever you do or want to do on a regular basis, try to group these tasks or events into categories. For example, if you exercise and meditate daily, you could put that into an overarching ‘Wellness’ category.

3. Choose Your Life Categories

From there, choose only three categories of your life to focus on over the next 3-6 months. Ask yourself,  ‘If I only focused on improving three areas of my life, which ones would I choose?’

Rather than trying to prioritize five things, the rule of three helps you narrow it down to the most important things.

4. Write Them Down

I’ve included a free printable for you to write down your top priorities so you can keep them somewhere you’ll be reminded of them often.

You can also take this method one step further and draw separate Venn diagrams for each of your priorities. That way, you can clearly see what those priorities look like.

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What are your top three priorities in life?

I hope this post has shown you the importance of setting priorities and how you can define yours today. Now that you know your top priorities, you’ll know exactly how you should be spending your time. As Scott Caan said, “ Good things happen when you get your priorities straight. ”

Don’t forget to grab a copy of priorities worksheet here !

23 Responses

I love this exercise. Such a simple idea with great results. Doing mine now.

I think my priorities are….

Attention to Family Attention to self Attention Students (I’m a teacher)

Next I will do my how? Thanks so much! Love some inspiration at the end of a weekend!

My Three Top Priorities Are: 1) Spiritual 2) Self 3) Family

I really appreciate you for this marvelous exercise.

This is very helpful, thank you! I’m having trouble with a creative project I’m involved in. I really want the project to succeed and I want to be involved, but I am not the leader on this project. The person who is the lead is a procrastinator but also a control freak. Despite me offering to take on tasks, he won’t let me because he feels the need to control every part of the project, even the small tasks. I’m starting to ask myself why I don’t just do my own project – I need to get my priorities in order. If creativity is the most important thing to me, then this project does not serve me.

Thanks so much for this exercise! I’m good at prioritising when it comes to my business, not so much on my personal life. Relationships is definitely an area I want to prioritise. Going to do the exercise now…

i will love to know more about prioritizing when it comes to business

This is simple yet powerful. My priorities are Family Work Self Care ❤

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Great! Thanks for sharing.

Your free download isn’t showing up for me.

Hi Crystal. Does this link work for you? https://theblissfulmind.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Priorities-Worksheet-theblissfulmind.pdf

Great post! Reading this inspires me to re-evaluate my to-do lists and goals.

Thank you, Cam!

this is very inspirational, thanks

Thank you for reading, Khelifa!

Love this too! I actually can’t get enough of your blog and always end up opening about 4 new tabs to read later when I read one post!

Thanks for the inspo as always x

such a beautiful points, it was extremely inspirational. most thank you.

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This helps me a lot. Great article !

Thanks a lot, this has really opened my eyes to what setting priorities right means. Thanks a lot.

Thanks lot, i am in awe of you and your Blogs. Everything is so relatable. I would love to connect with you.

Great read, thankyou! Can I ask, are your top 3 priorities in order of importance? It’s tricky…as they may change in order depending on timing and where you’re at in life.

This is true , I have learnt that PERIORITIES ARE MIXED UP WITH Goals In life its important to set up the first Periority Second and third as your guide

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• Relationships

How to Figure Out Your Priorities

Here are some tips and guidance to help you clarify your top priorities..

Posted June 28, 2021 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

• It can be helpful to make a list of your top priorities in each life domain, including work, family, and relationships.
• It may be easiest to focus on a few high-priority items at a time.
• Taking action on your priorities may require you to first identify the challenges in your way.

Do you know what is high-priority for you? Or do you feel like everything is high-priority and don’t know what to do first? Or, are you just too plain busy to ever get to the high-priority stuff? If you're reading this, then you're likely looking for more help figuring out your priorities. Don’t worry, we can help.

What, Exactly, Is High-Priority?

Well, the answer depends on who you ask and which aspect of life we're looking at. Are we talking about work priorities, relationship priorities, family priorities, or figuring out which is the highest priority of these high-priority items?

To start, let’s take a look at each of these life domains to better understand different types of priorities, how they fit together, and how they may compete with each other.

Work Priorities

To set priorities for work, make a list of the major tasks that you need to accomplish. Then list these tasks in order of importance. Be sure to also note whether one task needs to come before another or is dependent on another task being completed first. For example, maybe you need a website before you can start selling things in your online business.

Relationship Priorities

Maybe there are some people we want to see more than others. Or, maybe there are certain activities that we feel are more important to ensure the success of our romantic relationships and friendships. Some examples of relationship priorities could include: being honest, making time for fun, practicing random acts of kindness , or talking about fears and difficulties.

Family Priorities

What are the highest priority actions you need to take to insure your family is taken care of? This might depend a lot on whether you have kids, aging parents, or a small family. So take a moment to think about high-priority actions within your family. Remember, your priorities don't necessarily have to be engagement-related. For example, your priority may be to set boundaries or take time away from your family rather than spending a lot of time with family. Everyone is different.

​Life Priorities

Do you have other priorities related to your mental or physical health, finances, purpose, or personal growth? Think about what these priorities are.

What Are Your Top Priorities?

Now that you’ve thought about your priorities in each of the life domains, you're probably now wondering, how do I prioritize my priorities?

Well, pause here to look over or think about your top priorities in each life domain. Combine these into one long list. Put the most important things at the top to hopefully get a sense of which things are most important to you. This can be a bit tricky, so try not to be too hard on yourself—just do the best you can. Your priorities might also change over time, and that's OK too.

Managing Competing Priorities

There are only so many hours in the day. If we spend all day doing our top priority, then we'll have no time for our second priority. But if we spend an equal amount of time on each priority, we'll move forward so slowly on all of them that we may get frustrated and give up. So knowing our priorities isn't always the solution to sticking to our priorities.

Sometimes it can be easiest to focus on a few high-priority items at a time. For example, maybe you spend one month really focusing on your family but the next month, you need to prioritize more work. It’s OK to try to find a balance that works for you and your goals and experiment as you go.

Taking Action on Your Priorities

Another thing to consider is what things make it easier or harder for us to stick to our priorities. For example, are there people who make it difficult to stick to your priorities? Are there situations that make it hard to stick to your priorities? Or, are there things about you that make it hard to stick to your priorities? What boosts your self-motivation ? By taking the time to better understand your own unique challenges, you’ll also better understand what solution might best work for you.

Adapted from an article published by The Berkeley Well-Being Institute .

Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans. American psychologist, 54(7), 493.

Tchiki Davis, Ph.D. , is a consultant, writer, and expert on well-being technology.

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What is Prioritization, and Why is it Important?

Prioritization. We’ve all heard the term. But what does it really mean, and why is it so crucial to our success in both personal and professional life? 

This article will take you on a deep dive into prioritization, unveiling its significance, shedding light on its fundamentals, and providing real-life examples. 

We will explore various effective prioritization strategies and techniques, give you tips on mastering it, and illustrate the role of prioritization in project management. 

What is Prioritization?

Think of all the tasks that line up in your daily life, each competing for your attention. But does every task deserve equal attention? The answer is a resounding “No!” Here’s where   prioritization comes into play. 

Prioritization is a decision-making process that determines the order and focus of your tasks and activities based on their relevance and urgency.

Prioritization can be just as beneficial in our personal lives as it is in professional settings. Let’s look at a few examples:

• Time Management: We all have the same 24 hours in a day, but how we use those hours can greatly impact our personal life. Prioritizing tasks can help you focus on what really matters to you, whether that’s spending time with family, pursuing a hobby, or working on personal projects.
• Health and Wellness: Prioritization plays a crucial role in maintaining physical and mental health. By prioritizing activities like exercise, healthy eating, and self-care, we can improve our overall well-being.
• Financial Management: Prioritizing can help you manage your personal finances more effectively. This might involve prioritizing savings for future goals, paying off debts, or investing in personal growth opportunities.
• Education and Personal Development: Prioritizing can help you focus on areas for personal growth and lifelong learning. Whether that’s choosing to pursue further education, learning a new skill, or dedicating time to reading and self-study.
• Relationships: Relationships require time and effort. Prioritizing allows you to ensure that your most important relationships are getting the attention they need.

Just like in a professional setting, prioritization in your personal life involves determining what’s most important to you and allocating your time and energy accordingly. In doing so, you can create a more balanced, fulfilling life.

Why is Prioritization Important?

In our daily lives, prioritization allows us to manage our time effectively, distinguishing between what’s urgent and what’s important. It helps in reducing stress, increasing productivity, and creating a balance between work and personal life.

At work, effective prioritization becomes even more crucial. Let’s have a look at the significance of prioritization in various professional settings.

Project Management

In project management, prioritizing tasks with deadlines ensures the smooth running of operations. By adhering to a prioritization framework, teams can work together more efficiently, ensuring important tasks are completed on time and resources are appropriately allocated.

Corporate Strategy and Decision Making

At the corporate level, prioritization is pivotal in strategy formation and decision-making. Executives must decide which strategic initiatives to fund, which markets to target, and where to allocate resources. 

This could involve choosing between new product development or market expansion, with the aim of focusing on the most impactful initiatives.

These decisions are often complex and involve multiple factors, so prioritization is key. 

Team Management and Leadership

Leaders must prioritize tasks within their teams to manage workloads effectively and prevent burnout. Prioritization in this context can reduce unnecessary stress and enhance productivity by ensuring team members focus on critical tasks.

Customer Support and Service

Customer support representatives face multiple simultaneous requests. Prioritizing based on factors like issue severity and customer value ensures urgent and important issues are addressed first, promoting customer satisfaction.

Sales and Marketing

In sales and marketing, prioritization helps focus efforts on promising opportunities and effective campaigns. Sales reps can prioritize high-potential prospects, while marketers focus on high-return initiatives.

Software Development

For software developers, prioritizing various projects and features ensures that critical and high-value tasks are addressed first. This can involve prioritizing features that offer significant user value or fixing critical bugs.

In all these settings, prioritization leads to better decision-making, effective time management, and improved results. It’s about working smarter, not harder, encapsulated by the adage, “Do not prioritize your schedule; schedule your priorities.”

The Fundamentals of Effective Prioritization

So, how can we achieve effective prioritization? Here are some steps to guide you:

• Identify all the tasks you need to complete. Make a comprehensive list.
• Evaluate the importance and urgency of each task. Not all tasks are created equal.
• Rank the tasks based on their importance and urgency. Use a prioritization matrix if needed.
• Develop a plan and timeline to accomplish these tasks. A visual representation can be very helpful.
• Regularly review and adjust your priorities. Change is constant.

Related: Master the Skill of Prioritization to Boost Your Efficiency

Examples of Prioritization in Real-Life Scenarios

If you’re still finding it hard to visualize, let’s take a look at some real-life examples:

Personal Life:  Jenny has a long list of things to do over the weekend – grocery shopping, cleaning the house, visiting her parents, finishing a book, and catching up with friends.

By prioritizing these tasks, she chooses to first visit her parents (as she hasn’t seen them in a while), go grocery shopping on her way back (to maximize her time), and then clean her house. Catching up with friends can be done in the evening, and finishing her book can be postponed to the next day if time runs short.

Professional Life:  In a software development project, the team has a backlog of features to implement. However, instead of randomly picking tasks, they use a prioritization matrix to identify which features are critical to the project’s success and should be worked on first.

What are the 3 Most Known Prioritization Techniques?

Now that we’ve understood the importance of prioritization let’s delve into the three most popular techniques that can streamline your decision-making process and boost productivity.

The Eisenhower Box

This method separates your tasks into four categories: 

• Urgent and important
• Important but not urgent
• Urgent but not important
• Neither urgent nor important

It helps to focus on what truly matters and avoid time-wasting activities.

The Ivy Lee Method

This century-old strategy involves listing six tasks to accomplish the following day and ranking them in order of importance. 

It allows you to concentrate on one task at a time and encourages you to complete all tasks within the day.

The ABCDE Method

This technique involves categorizing tasks from A (most important) to E (least important) and then numbering them within each category to decide the sequence of doing them. 

It’s a precise method that provides clarity and improves efficiency.

Improving your prioritization skills is like strengthening a muscle – it needs regular practice and consistent effort. 

Start by consciously applying these techniques in your daily life. Over time, you’ll notice improvements in your productivity and time management.

If you’re looking for more advanced methods designed toward more specific scenarios, please refer to our guide on 10 Proven Techniques to Prioritize Like a Pro .

Developing a Prioritization Mindset

Mastering prioritization is more than just adopting a technique or strategy; it’s about developing a mindset. 

This mindset should encourage you to ask yourself regularly: “What is the best use of my time right now?” This simple yet powerful question can guide you in making better decisions and prioritizing effectively. 

Remember, time is our most valuable resource, and prioritizing helps us to use it wisely.

Common Challenges in Prioritization and How to Overcome Them

Prioritization may seem straightforward, but it does come with its fair share of challenges. Here are a few:

• Overwhelm due to too many tasks:  Simplify prioritization by breaking down large tasks into manageable chunks and prioritizing each chunk individually.
• Unclear objectives:  Define clear and measurable objectives. Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve can help you prioritize effectively.
• Constant changes:  Learn to adapt. Priorities can change rapidly, especially in a fast-paced work environment. Regularly review and adjust your priorities to stay on track.

Tools and Techniques for Prioritization

In our modern world, numerous tools can assist in prioritization, whether for personal or professional use. 

From basic to-do list apps like Google Keep to advanced project management tools like Jira, these tools can help you organize, track, and prioritize tasks effectively. 

You can also use a prioritization matrix, which provides a visual representation of your tasks based on their urgency and importance.

In addition to tools, various techniques can aid in effective prioritization. For instance, the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 rule suggests that 80% of results come from 20% of the effort. By identifying these high-impact tasks, you can focus your efforts where they’ll make the most difference.

The Bottom Line

Prioritization is a powerful tool that can help us maximize productivity, manage time effectively, and reduce stress. By understanding its importance, mastering its techniques, and overcoming its challenges, we can become more effective in our personal and professional lives. 

Remember, it’s not about being busy; it’s about being productive. And that’s where prioritization comes in! 

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.”   – Stephen Covey .

Related: 17 Prioritization Hacks to Make Every Minute Count

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Article • 9 min read

What Are Your Values?

Deciding what's important in life.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

Key Takeaways

• Your personal values are a central part of who you are – and who you want to be.
• By becoming more aware of these vital factors in your life, you can use them as a guide to make the best choice in any situation.
• Some of life's decisions are really about determining what you value most. When many options seem reasonable, you can rely on your values to point you in the right direction.
• When how you live matches your values, life is usually good. When your existence doesn't align with your personal values, that's when things feel... wrong and you can feel unhappy.

How would you define your values?

Before you answer this question, you need to know what, in general, values are.

Your values are the things that you believe are important in the way you live and work.

They (should) determine your priorities, and, deep down, they're probably the measures you use to tell if your life is turning out the way you want it to.

When the things that you do and the way you behave match your values, life is usually good – you're satisfied and content. But when these don't align with your personal values, that's when things feel... wrong. This can be a real source of unhappiness.

This is why making a conscious effort to identify your values is so important. So in this article and in the video, below, we're going to take a look at how you can identify your personal values.

How Values Help You

Values exist, whether you recognize them or not. Life can be much easier when you acknowledge your values – and when you make plans and decisions that honor them.

If you value family, but you have to work 70-hour weeks in your job, will you feel internal stress and conflict? And if you don't value competition, and you work in a highly competitive sales environment, are you likely to be satisfied with your job?

In these types of situations, understanding your values can really help. When you know your own values, you can use them to make decisions about how to live your life, and you can answer questions like these:

• What job should I pursue?
• Should I accept this promotion?
• Should I start my own business?
• Should I compromise, or be firm with my position?
• Should I follow tradition, or travel down a new path?

So, take the time to understand the real priorities in your life, and you'll be able to determine the best direction for you and your life goals !

Values are usually fairly stable, yet they don't have strict limits or boundaries. Also, as you move through life, your values may change.

For example, when you start your career, success – measured by money and status – might be a top priority.

But after you have a family, work-life balance may be what you value more.

As your definition of success changes, so do your personal values. This is why keeping in touch with your values is a lifelong exercise. You should continuously revisit this, especially if you start to feel unbalanced... and you can't quite figure out why.

As you go through the exercise below, bear in mind that values that were important in the past may not be relevant now.

Defining Your Values

When you define your personal values, you discover what's truly important to you. A good way of starting to do this is to look back on your life – to identify when you felt really good, and really confident that you were making good choices.

Step 1: Identify the times when you were happiest

Find examples from both your career and personal life. This will ensure some balance in your answers.

• What were you doing?
• Were you with other people? Who?
• What other factors contributed to your happiness?

Step 2: Identify the times when you were most proud

Use examples from your career and personal life.

• Why were you proud?
• Did other people share your pride? Who?
• What other factors contributed to your feelings of pride?

Step 3: Identify the times when you were most fulfilled and satisfied

Again, use both work and personal examples.

• What need or desire was fulfilled?
• How and why did the experience give your life meaning?
• What other factors contributed to your feelings of fulfillment?

Step 4: Determine your top values, based on your experiences of happiness, pride, and fulfillment

Why is each experience truly important and memorable? Use the following list of common personal values to help you get started – and aim for about 10 top values. (As you work through, you may find that some of these naturally combine. For instance, if you value philanthropy, community, and generosity, you might say that service to others is one of your top values.)

Common Personal Core Values

Step 5: prioritize your top values.

This step is probably the most difficult, because you'll have to look deep inside yourself. It's also the most important step, because, when making a decision, you'll have to choose between solutions that may satisfy different values. This is when you must know which value is more important to you.

• Write down your top values, not in any particular order.
• Look at the first two values and ask yourself, "If I could satisfy only one of these, which would I choose?" It might help to visualize a situation in which you would have to make that choice. For example, if you compare the values of service and stability, imagine that you must decide whether to sell your house and move to another country to do valuable foreign aid work, or keep your house and volunteer to do charity work closer to home.
• Keep working through the list, by comparing each value with each other value, until your list is in the correct order.

If you have a tough time doing this, consider using Paired Comparison Analysis to help you. With this method, you decide which of two options is most important, and then assign a score to show how much more important it is. Since it's so important to identify and prioritize your values, investing your time in this step is definitely worth it.

Step 6: Reaffirm your values

Check your top-priority values, and make sure that they fit with your life and your vision for yourself.

• Do these values make you feel good about yourself?
• Are you proud of your top three values?
• Would you be comfortable and proud to tell your values to people you respect and admire?
• Do these values represent things you would support, even if your choice isn't popular, and it puts you in the minority?

When you consider your values in decision making, you can be sure to keep your sense of integrity and what you know is right, and approach decisions with confidence and clarity. You'll also know that what you're doing is best for your current and future happiness and satisfaction.

Making value-based choices may not always be easy. However, making a choice that you know is right is a lot less difficult in the long run.

Top Tip for Defining Your Own Core Values

You can breathe life into your values by defining briefly, in writing, what they represent to you. Crystalizing what they stand for and why they matter to you will help embed their importance.

Keep the definitions short and write them in your own words, so you are really connected to them. These definitions will be handy reminders of who you are and what matters most to you – when and if you need reminding when there are decisions to be made.

For example, if one of your core values is “creativity” you might say, “I value it because the ability to solve problems and to come up with fresh, new ideas brings me joy and a deep sense of fulfillment.”

Frequently Asked Questions About Values

What does it mean to have values.

Your values are the beliefs and principles that you believe are important in the way that you live and work.

They (should) determine your priorities, and guide your decisions and the way you act towards others. When the things that you do, and the way that you behave, match your values, life is usually good.

Why Are Personal Values Important?

Understanding your values can really help make life easier and make you happier.

This happens because when you acknowledge your values – and make plans and decisions that honor them – you can use your values to make truly informed decisions about how to live your life.

By understanding the real priorities in your life, you'll be able to determine the best direction for you and meaningful life goals.

Identifying and understanding your values is a challenging and important exercise. Your personal values are a central part of who you are – and who you want to be. By becoming more aware of these important factors in your life, you can use them as a guide to make the best choice in any situation.

Some of life's decisions are really about determining what you value most. When many options seem reasonable, it's helpful and comforting to rely on your values – and use them as a strong guiding force to point you in the right direction.

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Terri Sjodinn

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Comments (6)

tom like lachie

i think i might be pregnant and i am a boy so i am pooing bricks

Naazish Mohsin

Interesting write up where are the references?

I would highly recommend people to try a scientific core values finder assessment instead of informal quizes.

has a good balance.

Donagh Kenny

excellenet resource

over 1 year

Latrece Thomas

I feel that everyone should set high values for themself. Integrity is a value I think 🥰 everyone should honor.

i think i might be pregnant

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How to Define Your Priorities in Life + Why It Matters

Whether it’s work, family, or self-care, every day is a juggle to balance my priorities in life . Yes, it’s a challenge (and I’m sure you can relate) but do you know what’s even harder? 

Not knowing what your priorities are at all. 

I should know. It took me a long time to stop, take stock and act on what really matters in my life. Before that, I felt pulled in all directions. I was so busy working to do everything, desperately trying to be “successful” by other people’s standards. It left me close to burnout, broke, and unhappy. 

Don’t get me wrong: every day is still a balancing act. There are bills to pay and children to feed—but instead of chasing everything , I’ve learned that I can make purposeful choices about what to juggle. 

It’s the difference between intentional living and merely existing on auto-pilot. Instead of an arbitrary (and endless) to-do list, you prioritise the things that matter most to you. Life becomes more meaningful, more focused and even more enjoyable. It’s a simple but significant shift, and it all starts with setting aside time to define your priorities.

What Are Life Priorities?

Why it’s important to define your priorities in life, what should influence your life priorities, how to set your priorities.

Priorities are a hierarchy that applies to tasks, activities, and even goals. You’ve probably set work priorities to get through a long to-do list or a big project. Usually, in the office, the order of importance is defined by a pressing deadline or costs. They’re helpful to manage time, work efficiently, keep projects moving, and to maintain focus.

Life priorities work in a similar way, but on a more personal scale. It’s an exercise in big picture thinking about how you want to live.

Some examples of what life priorities can be are good health, spending more time with family, feeling fulfilled at work, allowing time to be creative, having work-life-balance, or spending more quality time with your partner. 

Your life priorities will be personal—a unique set of guidelines that will help you decide how you want to spend each day, so you can navigate life with purpose and intention.

Related Post: 21 Journaling Ideas + Prompts For Self-Discovery

The importance of clarifying your priorities in life can’t be understated. There’s so much to be gained by having a better understanding of what means most to you. Practically, it will help you to manage your time more meaningfully. 

No one functions well in a state of overwhelm. Yet, without setting priorities, we’re allowing anything and everything to take up our time and attention. And we’re placing equal importance to it all. 

Setting priorities helps to inform how much time we want to spend on different things. This means that we can be present with what we’re doing, instead of feeling guilty about the billion other things we think we should be doing instead.  

Before I clarified my life priorities, my time was spread incredibly thin. I was mindlessly chasing everything—I wanted more money, a better job, a bigger house, an exciting social life—the list was never-ending. 

I was working so hard but I wasn’t focused. In the end, it was incredibly demoralising because I invested so much of myself yet it felt like I was getting little in return. 

When I started thinking about my priorities ( really think about them, and not just assuming ) things started to shift. I became more deliberate with my time and energy. I stayed focused, inspired and began to feel fulfilled. 

Setting priorities in life is essential because they act as a guide to what is valuable, which we can then use to decide how we spend our time, money, and energy . Priorities empower us with the knowledge of what we need to live life more meaningfully.

Your life priorities should be influenced by what really matters to you. I know this might sound obvious but I know from experience that this is often easier said than done!

In reality, there are many external expectations that weigh heavily on us. You might even feel torn—your heart wants one thing but your head is trying to steer you in another direction. It can be hard to know which voice to follow. 

This is why it’s important to know your values . Your values are like a compass, and they help ensure that your outward actions fit with what you truly want and need. 

Without knowing what you truly value, you’ll continue in a misguided trajectory. Again, I’ve been there and done that. I’d never taken the time to consciously decide what I really wanted, so I let societal expectations and feelings of instant gratification lead me. For example, I prioritised a stressful job that I hated because it paid for the life I thought I needed to be happy.

I knew I was off-track when I got much of what I wanted, but still felt a sense of emptiness. I wasn’t happy and I didn’t feel successful because what I had on the outside wasn’t a reflection of what I wanted on the inside. 

So I set out to discover my values by reflecting on my life, and I realised that freedom was more important than things; learning and flexibility mattered more than a job title, and that creativity and storytelling lit up my soul (hence this blog!).

Now I make choices in alignment with these values (such as living a minimalist lifestyle ), and I’ve found the clarity and confidence to write my own rules for life.

Related Post: 4 Practical Steps To Creating An Intentional Life

Let me be honest with you: this will take some time and self-reflection. But if you feel like you could use some meaningful focus in your life—it will be well worth it. The best part about the process of setting your priorities is that you’ll get powerful learnings at every step. 

In short, don’t be intimidated. There’s no right or wrong way because you’ll be moving forward (and in a direction you choose) regardless.

1. WRITE DOWN YOUR VALUES

One exercise you can do is to picture your ideal life in detail, paying special attention to how you feel in this imagined life. 

For example, you might imagine yourself in a beautiful house, but what it is about this beautiful house that you really want? Is it feeling secure and comfortable in a space that feels like home? Or is it the beautiful things that the home is filled with? 

If you picture yourself with career success, is it the paycheck or the slick office that makes you feel excited? Or is it the feeling of being proud of your work and achievements? 

Picture your ideal life, then reflect on why you have imagined those things. Try and come to a list of values that are based on feelings, rather than the material.

Related Post: 7 Questions to Inspire Intentional Living

2. FIT YOUR VALUES INTO YOUR REALITY

These type of changes don’t happen overnight. It will take some time to adjust, and these shifts need to be based on your current reality. 

Once you have your list of values, think about your current situation and decide on how it’s reflective of your priorities. Think about all the domains in your life: relationships, health, career, finances, and spirituality (just to name a few examples). 

Is what you do in these domains in line with your values? Use your values to guide what you can stop doing, do less of, or do more of in the future.

Note that a values-led life, guided by your priorities, is NOT about achieving perfection. There will always be hard choices and tradeoffs, but with practice you can become more intentional with your decisions.

3. BE ORGANISED ABOUT THESE CHANGES

Old habits die hard. So give yourself the best chance of making lasting change by writing your new priorities and values into your calendar and to-do lists.

Map out what you need to do and prioritise your time to include it. For example, if health is high on your priority list, make sure that is reflected in your calendar by setting time aside to fit it in.

4. SET LIMITS

Another thing you can do to integrate priorities into your life successfully is to limit the amount of change you commit to. Admittedly, it’s hard to make a change and stay motivated, which is why you should start small. 

It’s easy to overestimate how much we can get done in a day, so if you can’t entirely overhaul your calendar (because of a job, for example), integrate your priorities bit-by-bit. If you want to prioritise health, start by committing to 20 minutes of exercise daily, rather than an hour. You can slowly build it up as you find new ways to shift your schedule.

5. CHECK IN

Life is fluid and ever-changing. Set-backs are inevitable. And self-reflection is valuable. This is why it’s essential to take time out to reflect and review any changes you’ve made to ensure that they are still working for you and your values.

Remember, this isn’t a race. Instead, intentional living is the lifelong practice of defining, reflecting, and living by your values and priorities. Slow and steady, every little step counts.

If you’d like to learn more, my course Values + Vision is a deep dive into values-led living. On this journey of self-discovery, you’ll clarify your values and priorities, and then learn how to align your life with what matters most.

Have you thought about what your priorities in life are? What are your tips for putting them into practice? Let us know in the comments below.

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1 Successful students have goals

Succeeding in college is rather like succeeding in life. It’s really much more about you than it is about college. So the most important place to start is to consider why you’re here, what matters to you, and what you expect to get out it. Even if you have already thought about these questions, it’s good to reaffirm your commitment to your plan as we begin to consider what’s really involved in being a college student. Let’s take a look at successful student have goals.

Students who have long term life and career goals see college as one step towards achieving their goals. This can set a purpose and a direction for students. It can increase students’ day-to-day and semester-to-semester motivation because they see that each course is part of a greater whole that will help them in the future. This can also help with persistence, with keeping at it when things are tough. There will be challenges during your college career. There may be times you feel like giving up or you just don’t feel like going to class, reading your textbook, or writing that paper. Having that purpose, that long term goal can help you decide to move past that challenge and keep going. We call this resiliency.

Goals help you set priorities and remain motivated and committed to your college success. Setting a long term goal usually leads to setting medium and short term goals. These are practical goals related to being a student that can help you make better decisions when considering your choices of how to spend your time. Setting priorities with shorter term goals can help you see what you need to do next. Working through goals can help you feel more in control and can reduce stress.

Attitude is the largest factor determining success in college. Work to stay positive and surround yourself with positive people, and you’ll find you are motivated to carry out the activities that will help you succeed in your courses.

Goal Setting

A goal is a result we intend to reach mostly through our own actions..

Things we do may move us closer to or farther away from that result. Studying moves us closer to success in a difficult course, while sleeping through the final examination may completely prevent reaching that goal. That’s fairly obvious in an extreme case, yet still a lot of college students don’t reach their goal of graduating. The problem may be a lack of commitment to the goal, but often students have conflicting goals. One way to prevent problems is to think about all your goals and priorities and to learn ways to manage your time, your studies, and your social life to best reach your goals.

It all begins with setting goals and thinking about priorities.

As you think about your own goals, think about more than just being a student. You’re also a person with individual needs and desires, hopes and dreams, plans and schemes. Your long-term goals likely include graduation and a career but may also involve social relationships with others, a romantic relationship, family, hobbies or other activities, where and how you live, and so on. While you are a student, you may not be actively pursuing all your goals with the same fervor, but they remain goals and are still important in your life.

Goals also vary in terms of time.

• Short-term goals focus on today and the next few days and perhaps weeks.
• Midterm goals involve plans for this school year and the time you plan to remain in college.
• Long-term goals may begin with graduating college and everything you want to happen thereafter.

Often your long-term goals (e.g., the kind of career you want) guide your midterm goals (getting the right education for that career), and your short term goals (such as doing well on an exam) become steps for reaching those larger goals. Thinking about your goals in this way helps you realize how even the little things you do every day can keep you moving toward your most important long-term goals.

Write out your goals.

You should literally write them down, because the act of finding the best words to describe your goals helps you think more clearly about them.

Follow these guidelines:

• Goals should be realistic. It’s good to dream and to challenge yourself, but your goals should relate to your personal strengths and abilities.
• Goals should be specific. Don’t write, “I will become a great musician;” instead, write, “I will finish my music degree and be employed in a symphony orchestra.”
• Goals should have a time frame. You won’t feel very motivated if your goal is vaguely “to finish college someday.” If you’re realistic and specific in your goals, you should also be able to project a time frame for reaching the goal.
• You should really want to reach the goal. We’re willing to work hard to reach goals we really care about, but we’re likely to give up when we encounter obstacles if we don’t feel strongly about a goal. If you’re doing something only because your parents or someone else wants you to, then it’s not your own personal goal — and you may have some more thinking to do about your life.

Everything people do and how they do it starts with attitude.

One student gets up with the alarm clock and cheerfully prepares for the day, planning to study for a couple hours between classes, go jogging later, and see a friend at dinner.

Another student oversleeps after partying too late last night, decides to skip his first class, somehow gets through later classes fueled by fast food and energy drinks while dreading tomorrow’s exam, and immediately accepts a friend’s suggestion to go out tonight instead of studying.

Both students could have identical situations, classes, finances, and academic preparation. There could be just one significant difference— but it’s the one that matters.

Here are some characteristics associated with a positive attitude:

• Enthusiasm for and enjoyment of daily activities
• Acceptance of responsibility for one’s actions and feeling good about success
• Generally upbeat mood and positive emotions, cheerfulness with others, and satisfaction with oneself
• Motivation to get the job done
• Flexibility to make changes when needed
• Ability to make productive, effective use of time

And here are some characteristics associated with a negative attitude:

• Frequent complaining
• Blaming others for anything that goes wrong
• Often experiencing negative emotions: anger, frustration, resentment
• Lack of motivation for work or studies
• Hesitant to change or seek improvement
• Unproductive use of time, procrastination

Stay Focused and Motivated

Okay, you’ve got a positive attitude. But you’ve got a lot of reading for classes to do tonight, a test tomorrow, and a paper due the next day. Maybe you’re a little bored with one of your reading assignments. Maybe you’d rather play a computer game. Uh oh—now what?

Attitude can change at almost any moment. One minute you’re enthusiastically starting a class project, and then maybe a friend drops by and suddenly all you want to do is close the books and relax a while, hang out with friends.

One of the characteristics of successful people is accepting that life is full of interruptions and change— and planning for it. Staying focused does not mean you become a boring person who does nothing but go to class and study all the time. You just need to make a plan.

Planning ahead is the single best way to stay focused and motivated to reach your goals. Don’t wait until the night before an exam. If you know you have a major exam in five days, start by reviewing the material and deciding how many hours of study you need. Then schedule those hours spread out over the next few days — at times when you are most alert and least likely to be distracted. Allow time for other activities, too, to reward yourself for successful studying. Then when the exam comes, you’re relaxed, you know the material, you’re in a good mood and confident, and you do well. Planning is mostly a matter of managing your time well, there is more about this topic in the Successful Students Get it Together chapter.

Here are some other tips for staying focused and motivated:

• Remember your successes, even small successes. As you begin a project or approach studying for a test, think about your past success on a different project or test. Remember how good it feels to succeed. Know you can succeed again.
• Get the important things done first. Stay focused, motivated and concentrate on the things that matter most. You’re about to sit down to read a chapter in a book you’re not much enjoying, and you suddenly notice some clothing piled up on a chair. “I really should clean up this place,” you think. “And I’d better get my laundry done before I run out of things to wear.” Don’t try to fool yourself into feeling you’re accomplishing something by doing laundry rather than studying. Stay focused!
• If you just can’t focus in on what you should be doing because the task seems too big and daunting, break the task into smaller, manageable pieces. Don’t start out thinking, “I need to study the next four hours,” but think, “I’ll spend the next thirty minutes going through my class notes from the last three weeks and figure out what topics I need to spend more time on.” It’s a lot easier to stay focused when you’re sitting down for thirty minutes at a time.
• Imitate successful people. Does a friend always seem better able to stick with studying or work until they get it done? What are they doing that you’re not? We all learn from observing others, and we can speed up that process by deliberately using the same strategies we see working with others. Visualize yourself studying in the same way and getting that same high grade on the test or paper.
• Separate yourself from unsuccessful people. This is the flip side of imitating successful people. If a roommate or a friend is always putting off things until the last minute or is distracted with other interests and activities, tell yourself how different you are. When you hear other students complaining about how hard a class is or bragging about not studying or attending class, visualize yourself as not being like them at all.
• Reward yourself when you complete a significant task – but only when you are done. Some people seem able to stay focused only when there’s a reward waiting.

Thinking about your goals gets you started, but it’s also important to think about priorities. We often use the word “priorities” to refer to how important something is to us. We might think, this is a really important goal, and that is less important.

Try this experiment: go back to the goals you wrote and see if you can rank each goal as a

• Top priority
• Middle priority
• Lowest priority

It sounds easy, but do you actually feel comfortable doing that? Maybe you gave a priority 1 to passing your courses and a priority 3 to playing your guitar. So what does that mean—that you never play guitar again, or at least not while in college? Whenever you have an hour free between class and work, you have to study because that’s the higher priority? What about all your other goals — do you have to ignore everything that’s not a priority 1? And what happens when you have to choose among different goals that are both number 1 priorities?

In reality, priorities don’t work quite that way. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to try to rank goals as always more or less important. The question of priority is really a question of what is more important at a specific time. It is important to do well in your classes, but it’s also important to have a social life and enjoy your time off from studying. You shouldn’t have to choose between the two — except at any given time.

Priorities always involve time: what is most important to do right now. As we’ll see later, time management is mostly a way to juggle priorities so you can meet all your goals.

When you manage your time well, you don’t have to ignore some goals completely in order to meet other goals. In other words, you don’t have to give up your life when you register for college—but you may need to work on managing your life more effectively. But time management works only when you’re committed to your goals. Attitude and motivation are very important. If you haven’t yet developed an attitude for success, all the time management skills in the world won’t keep you focused and motivated to succeed.

Key Takeaways

• Having long-term goals (college diploma) lead to setting midterm goals (by semester) which can be broken down into short-term goals (completing an assignment).
• Writing out your goals helps you think more clearly about what you want to achieve.
• Having enthusiasm for daily life, accepting responsibility, being motivated and flexible, and making effective use of time are signs of a positive attitude.
• Planning ahead is the single best way to stay focused and motivated to reach your goals.
• When deciding what to do with your time, considering your priorities is a good way to decide what to do next.
• Goals help you set priorities and remain committed to your college success.

A Guide for Successful Students Copyright © 2019 by St. Clair College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Augmentative and Alternative Communication: How Becoming a User Changed My Relationships

By Alice Wong

This June is the second anniversary of one of the most horrific and traumatic times of my life . After several weeks in the ICU and almost dying several times, I came home from the hospital with an irrevocably altered body. I was left with an even more disabled body, the latest iteration from my progressive disease, leaving me unable to eat, drink, or speak. Being part of the disability community for decades, I had no idea I would become a user of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) , a range of communication methods that replaces speech or writing for people with various disabilities like cerebral palsy, autism, or Parkinson’s disease.

While in the hospital, communication access was one of my major priorities before I was discharged. A friend connected me to CommunicationFirst and one person from the organization suggested a text-to-speech app, which is what I currently use. While it has its limitations, like any form of AAC, I liked that I could use it on my smartphone. When I got home, it took me a long time to get myself situated back in my wheelchair. I had to find the right clamp that could attach my phone next to my joystick since I will need it close to me forever. My phone was important to me in the Before Times but now it is a vital appendage allowing me to communicate with the world.

As I tried to adjust to my new body. I had to adjust to the way I presented myself to the world as a nonspeaking person. I had a new disability identity and was part of a new segment of the disability community. It was a bit intimidating being an outsider who is slowly easing into a new way of being while still mourning my voice, which expressed so much of my personality. I entered a world where time has slowed down. Conversations are now stilted, extended in a way that gives me anxiety and pressure to keep up with normative speaking speeds and patterns. Even with my family when we are guffawing about something, by the time I type a banger of a remark, they have already moved on to another subject. Although I am not excluded by my family, I am still left out.

In the old days, words tumbled out of my mouth like Niagra Falls, a torrent of thoughts and ideas. I now find myself saying less, skipping certain parts due to time constraints, which feels like editing my personality out. When I’m with strangers, the calculus changes. I have to explain that I am nonspeaking and pray that they don’t freak out, or become filled with pity, or impatient. I am now constantly editing, thinking of what to say, typing furiously on the phone, and orchestrating my social interactions, which creates a huge cognitive load.

When I was younger, internalized ableism forced me to work harder and achieve more as if that would give me respect, credibility, and equality with nondisabled people. While I don’t care about what nondisabled people think of me anymore, I am working through the internalized ableism of valuing one mode of communication over another. I miss laughing and all the sounds I can make that you will never find in an AAC glossary and mourn the loss of my voice. Adaptation is one constant in my chaotic, disabled life.

The ableism, microaggressions, and discrimination I experience are greater now with my additional disability. This past January, I went to the emergency room because my feeding tube became clogged and my abdomen became rigid and tender. As I wrote in a previous column for Teen Vogue , there was so much I needed to say about my pain before and during the procedure to change my tube but I couldn’t. My phone was not allowed in the room because of their infection-control protocols and my caregiver, who could read my lips, could not join me. I wanted to scream, beg, and wail and tell people how much pain I was in. If only these health-care providers could sense the terror of not having your AAC device for two hours or even a minute. I was in the hospital for only two days, but the experience left me shaken and vulnerable . I am still processing the trauma.

The essay Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time by Dr. Ellen Samuels resonated deeply with me in the Before Times and it speaks to me even more deeply now from the vantage point of a newly nonspeaking person. “ Crip time is broken time ,” Samuels writes. “It requires us to break in our bodies and minds to new rhythms, new patterns of thinking and feeling and moving through the world. It forces us to take breaks, even when we don't want to, even when we want to keep going, to move ahead. It insists that we listen to our bodyminds so closely, so attentively, in a culture that tells us to divide the two and push the body away from us while also pushing it beyond its limits. Crip time means listening to the broken languages of our bodies, translating them, honoring their words.”

To crip something is to bend, compress, twist, subvert, and imbue disabled wisdom into systems, institutions, and cultures. As I’ve done before as a physically disabled person, I will now crip the world mightily with the multiple perspectives I have as a disabled, nonspeaking, ventilator-dependent, high-risk Asian American woman. It takes a tremendous amount of emotional and physical labor to crip the world. Like a baby snail, I am slowly becoming more involved with the AAC-using community, exploring and discovering new branches of lived experience. From what I’ve learned, the power of community is more important than any software update to my text-to-speech app or another new intervention.

Ableism is baked into our society, and AAC users face many challenges in public life. But we belong in public, holding court in conversations, doing our thing, having our access needs respected , and being our full selves unapologetically. I am a baby AAC user and am still evolving, discovering new aspects of life without speech. AAC users can collectively bend conventional modes of communication, practice crip time, teach speaking people to slow down, and have us centered for once instead of at the margins. That’s my dream so that other newbies don’t have to experience what I did.

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After my boomer husband retired, we moved to a bigger house. We now have space for our hobbies and grandchildren to visit.

• After my husband retired we decided to move to a bigger house to be more comfortable. 
• We didn't tell anyone we were looking for a bigger house. 
• We now have the space we need to fulfill our hobbies and passions. 

My husband retired last year, and recently, we upsized our home. For us, it was a move to what I call "rightsizing."

We lived in a large house built in 1870 in the center of town. We had great access to many shops and amenities, but the downtown was getting busier and noisier . The house needed more and more maintenance, and we had a tenant in a rental unit upstairs and we didn't want to be landlords anymore. We continuously talked about having more space.

After listing our priorities, we started looking for a newer house that we could move into "as is" as we were done renovating . We did look at a few compact houses as we were under the illusion that we needed to go smaller, but we knew in our hearts it wasn't for us.

There are different ways retiring boomers are moving , including a lateral move to another kind of space, changing the age of the house for less maintenance, changing location, and upsizing. Here's why we decided to move to a bigger house.

It felt like the timing was right

As we kept talking about more space, we also thought, if we don't do it now, when will we?

When we first walked into the house we eventually bought, I had goosebumps from the top of my head to the tips of my toes as I stood in the large foyer with marble floors and a spiral staircase. It had an enormous chef's kitchen, a finished basement, and four bathrooms, including an en-suite. The boxes were being ticked one by one. A hot tub in the back garden was a major bonus, and then my husband saw the large workshop in the basement, and his eyes lit up.

Our real-estate agent said as we gazed lovingly at the exterior, "It's a really big house for you two." We made an offer the next day and managed to sell high and buy lower.

Related stories

We had made a conscious decision not to tell anyone in our circle that we were looking for a larger house because we didn't want to be swayed by their opinions and input, which was the best choice we made. The reaction of friends and family has been astounding, including, "I don't want to offend you, but why are you moving to such a big house with so many stairs at your age."

We have space to embrace hobbies and passions

We now have space to do all the things we love, but didn't have space before.

In our bigger house, my husband now has a full workshop to fulfill his dream of doing woodworking. COVID-19 made us share an office, which drove me to work at the dining table. Now we each have separate big offices on separate floors. In our old house, he would set up his drum kit , play for a while, let the grandkids play, and pack it up again. He now has his drum kit set up and space for a fly-tying desk in his large office. There is a finished basement and a nice backyard with a hot tub to soothe my rheumatoid arthritis.

We have a more active lifestyle in the suburbs now

As we had a large, centrally located older house with income, we sold for more than we bought for because we moved to a quiet suburb into a newer home.

Our old house was downtown in our city and was becoming less safe, so we wanted a quieter, safer neighborhood and opted for the suburbs. We live an active lifestyle biking, hiking, and kayaking and because of travel frequently, easy access to the airport was necessary,

When I called our insurance company with a change of address, our house and car insurance dropped in price because of less crime and fewer car thefts in our new neighborhood, validating our choice.

There's room for our family to come stay with us

We love that we now have space for our grandchildren to stay over in a larger room than before and can invite visiting friends to stay. We wanted a house that we were excited about, and we feel we have transitioned from an "empty nest" to a "welcome home."

The hot tub adds to the enthusiasm of the grandkids visiting, treating it like a pool. We feel as though every house we have sold and profited from before has been working toward this home.

Within a few weeks after moving in, we had a party hosting 65 people because it was the first time we had the space so we celebrated my husband's 70th and the new space.

Melody Wren is a freelance journalist. You can find her at: www.melodywren.com or follow her adventures @melodywrentravels

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Guest Essay

‘The Seeds Had Been Planted. Trump Didn’t Do It Himself.’

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Over the past 30 years, authoritarianism has moved from the periphery to the center, even the core, of global politics, shaping not only the divide between left and right in the United States but also the conflict between the American-led alliance of democratic nations and the loose coalition of autocratic states including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Marc Hetherington , a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a co-author of “ Authoritarianism and Polarization in American Politics ,” has tracked the partisanship of white voters in this country who are in the top 15 percent on measures of support for dictatorial rule.

Replying by email to my inquiry, Hetherington wrote:

In 1992, those whites scoring at the top of the authoritarianism scale split their two-party vote almost evenly between Bush and Clinton (51 to 49). In 2000 and 2004, the difference becomes statistically significant but still pretty small. By 2012, those high-authoritarianism white voters went 68 to 32 for Romney over Obama. In both Trump elections it was 80 to 20 among those voters. So from 50 Republican-50 Democrat to 80 Republican-20 Democrat in the space of 24 years.

The parallel pattern of conflicting values and priorities that has emerged between nations is the focus of a paper published last month, “ Worldwide Divergence of Values ” by Joshua Conrad Jackson and Dan Medvedev , both at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The two authors analyzed data from seven studies conducted by the World Values Survey in 76 countries between 1981 and 2022.

Jackson and Medvedev found that over those years, “Values emphasizing tolerance and self-expression have diverged most sharply, especially between high-income Western countries and the rest of the world” and characterized this split as a clash between “emancipatory” values and values of “obedience.”

I asked Medvedev whether authoritarianism represents the antithesis of a regime based on emancipatory principles, and he wrote back, “It certainly does seem that authoritarian regimes tend to reject values that we categorize as emancipative.”

He said he would prefer to use the word “traditional” but “that’s just my preference — I don’t think it’s incorrect to use ‘authoritarian.’”

Jackson and Medvedev found that “the rate of value divergence” could be determined using seven questions producing “the highest divergence scores.” Those were:

(1) justifiability of homosexuality, (2) justifiability of euthanasia, (3) importance of obedience of children, (4) justifiability of divorce, (5) justifiability of prostitution, (6) justifiability of suicide and (7) justifiability of abortion.

I wrote Jackson and Medvedev, asking about this divergence:

There has been a lot of speculation lately about new global divide pitting democracies led by the United States against a coalition including China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. Does this divide show up in your data on values differences between countries? Are there values differences between democratic countries and autocratic countries?

“The short answer is yes,” Jackson and Medvedev wrote back and provided a detailed analysis in support of their reply.

Their data shows that the citizens in authoritarian countries tend to “believe that homosexuality and divorce are not justifiable” while those living in the United States, Japan, Germany and Canada “tend to believe that homosexuality and divorce are justifiable and disagree that obedience is an important value to teach their children.”

More important, Jackson and Medvedev found that over those years, Russia, China and Iran have moved in an increasingly authoritarian direction while the democratic countries have moved in an emancipatory direction.

“These cultural differences were not always so stark; they have emerged over time,” Jackson and Medvedev wrote. “These two groups of countries are sorting in their emancipative values over time. For example, Russia and the United States used to be quite similar in their values, but now the United States is closer to Germany in its values, and Russia is closer to Iran.”

There is a debate among scholars of politics over the level of centrality that authoritarianism warrants and the forces that have elevated its salience, especially in American politics, where high levels of authoritarianism are increasingly linked to allegiance to the Republican Party.

What is clear is that authoritarianism has become an entrenched factor in partisan divisions, in global conflicts between nations and in the politics of diversity and race.

Rachel Kleinfeld , a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, wrote that the embedded character of authoritarianism in America “is like a barnacle attached to our affective polarization, a side effect of a political realignment being run through the uniquely polarizing effects of our first-past-the-post, winner-take-all system and primary structure.”

In an email, Kleinfeld argued that the Great Recession played a pivotal role in stressing the importance of authoritarianism in American politics:

In 2008, the financial crisis created a great deal of anger and a desire for more government intervention. At the same time, an identity revolution was taking place in which group identity gained increased salience, especially in America. Together these movements opened space for a political realignment: a long-dissatisfied group of voters who were pro-economic redistribution, but only to their “deserving” group, found political voice. These “more for me, less for thee” voters who hold left-wing redistributive economic ideas and socially conservative views formed Trump’s primary base in 2016, and moved firmly into the Republican camp in 2020.

The two-party system in the United States, Kleinfeld contended, strengthens authoritarianism by failing to provide a vehicle specifically dedicated to the agenda of the disgruntled electorate. As a result, these voters turned en masse in 2016 to an autocratic leader, Donald Trump, who, in his own words, became their “ retribution .”

This newly mobilized, angry electorate, Kleinfeld continued, is “not choosing the antidemocratic behavior — they are choosing their tribe, and the behavior comes with it. Authoritarian behavior is happening in America, not in Europe, because of our political structures.”

In support of her argument, Kleinfeld cited a January report issued by the Democracy Fund, “ Democracy Hypocrisy : Examining America’s Fragile Democratic Convictions,” that shows how Americans can endorse democratic principles and simultaneously support autocratic behavior by fellow partisans.

Among the report’s conclusions:

While a vast majority of Americans claimed to support democracy (more than 80 percent said democracy is a fairly or very good political system in surveys from 2017 to 2022), fewer than half consistently and uniformly supported democratic norms across multiple surveys.

Support for democratic norms softened considerably when they conflicted with partisanship. For example, a solid majority of Trump and Biden supporters who rejected the idea of a “strong leader who doesn’t have to bother with Congress and elections” nonetheless said their preferred U.S. president would be justified in taking unilateral action without explicit constitutional authority under several different scenarios.

About 27 percent of Americans consistently and uniformly supported democratic norms in a battery of questions across multiple survey waves, including 45 percent of Democrats, 13 percent of Republicans and 18 percent of independents.

In contrast to an overwhelming and consistent rejection of political violence across four survey waves, the violent events of Jan. 6, 2021, were viewed favorably by many Republicans. Almost half of Republicans (46 percent) described these events as acts of patriotism, and 72 percent disapproved of the House select committee that was formed to investigate them.

While much of the focus on authoritarianism in the United States has been on Republican voters, it is also a powerful force in the Democratic electorate.

In their 2018 paper “ A Tale of Two Democrats : How Authoritarianism Divides the Democratic Party,” five political scientists — Julie Wronski , Alexa Bankert , Karyn Amira , April A. Johnson and Lindsey C. Levitan — found that in 2016 “authoritarianism consistently predicts differences in primary voting among Democrats, particularly support for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders.” More specifically, “as a Democrat in the Cooperative Election Study survey sample moves from the minimum value on the authoritarianism scale to the maximum value, the probability of voting for Clinton increases from 0.33 to 0.76.”

Wronski and her colleagues determined that “Republicans are significantly more authoritarian than Democrats” but “the variation in authoritarianism is significantly higher among Democrats than Republicans.” Put another way: The level of authoritarianism among the top half of Democrats is almost the same as it is among Republicans; the bottom half of Democrats demonstrates lower levels of authoritarianism than all Republicans.

One of the more intriguing discoveries is that growing racial diversity activates authoritarianism.

In their 2017 article “ Racial Diversity and the Dynamics of Authoritarianism ,” Yamil Ricardo Velez and Howard Lavine , political scientists at Yale and the University of Minnesota, determined that racial diversity “magnifies the political impact of individual differences in the psychological disposition of authoritarianism.”

“In white areas with minimal diversity, authoritarianism had no impact on racial prejudice, political intolerance and attitudes toward immigration,” they wrote. “As diversity rises, however, authoritarianism plays an increasingly dominant role in political judgment. In diverse environments, authoritarians become more racially, ethnically and politically intolerant and nonauthoritarians less so.”

Velez and Lavine defined authoritarianism as

a stable propensity concerned with minimizing difference and maximizing the “oneness and sameness” of people, ideas and behaviors or, more simply, as a preference for social conformity over individual autonomy. The worldview of authoritarians stresses conformity and obedience, as well as the belief that too much individual autonomy — and diversity in general — will result in social rebellion and instability of the status quo.

Authoritarians, Velez and Lavine wrote, “find diversity threatening, and they react to it with increasing racial resentment, anti-immigration beliefs and political intolerance. By contrast, nonauthoritarians react to diversity by becoming more politically tolerant and by embracing African Americans and immigrants.”

As issues “related to race and ethnicity, crime, law and order, religion and gender” have gained centrality, according to Velez and Lavine, “two fundamental changes have occurred in the nature of partisanship.”

The first is the creation of “an alignment between political identity and authoritarianism, such that high authoritarians have moved into the Republican Party and low authoritarians have moved into the Democratic Party.”

The second is that “the notion of partisan identities as social identities — defining what Democrats and Republicans are stereotypically like as people — has intensified, leading the two partisan groups to hold increasingly negative feelings about each other.”

As a result, the authors argued:

given that authoritarianism is (a) strongly linked to partisanship and (b) activated by ethnoracial diversity, it is likely that some of the “affective polarization” in contemporary American politics can be traced to authoritarianism. That is, perceptions of “us” and “them” have been magnified by the increasing alignment between party identification and authoritarianism.

Ariel Malka , a political scientist at Yeshiva University, contended in an email that there are further complications. “Public attitudes in Western democracies,” Malka wrote, “vary on a sociocultural dimension , encompassing matters like traditional versus progressive views on sexual morality, gender, immigration, cultural diversity and so on.”

Recently, however, Malka continued:

some evidence has emerged that the anti-immigrant and nativist parts of this attitude package are becoming somewhat detached from the parts having to do with gender and sexuality, especially among younger citizens. Indeed, there is a meaningful contingent of far-right voters who combine liberal attitudes on gender and sexuality with nativist and anti-immigrant stances.

What do these trends suggest politically? According to Malka:

As for how this relates to democratic preferences, citizens who hold traditional cultural stances on a range of matters tend, on average, to be more open to authoritarian governance and to violations of democratic norms. So there is some basis for concern that antidemocratic appeals will meet a relatively receptive audience on the right at a time of inflamed sociocultural divisions.

I asked Pippa Norris , a political scientist at Harvard, about the rising salience of authoritarianism, and she provided a summary of her forthcoming book, “ The Cultural Roots of Democratic Backsliding .” In a description of the book on her website, Norris wrote:

Historical and journalistic accounts often blame the actions of specific strongman leaders and their enablers for democratic backsliding — Trump for the Jan. 6 insurrection in America, Modi for the erosion of minority rights in India, Netanyahu for weakening the powers of the Supreme Court in Israel and so on. But contingent narratives remain unsatisfactory to explain a general phenomenon, they fail to explain why ordinary citizens in longstanding democracies voted these leaders into power in the first place, and the direction of causality in this relationship remains unresolved.

Her answer, in two steps.

Deep-rooted and profound cultural changes have provoked a backlash among traditional social conservatives in the electorate. A wide range of conventional moral values and beliefs, once hegemonic, are under threat today in many modern societies. Value shifts are exemplified by secularization eroding the importance of religious practices and teachings, declining respect for the institutions of marriage and the family and more fluid rather than fixed notions of social identities based on gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, community ties and national citizenship. An extensive literature has demonstrated that the “silent revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s has gradually led to growing social liberalism, recognizing the principles of diversity, inclusion and equality, including support for issues such as equality for women and men in the home and work force, recognition of L.G.B.T.Q. rights and the importance of strengthening minority rights.

These trends, in turn, have “gradually undermined the majority status of traditional social conservatives in society and threatened conventional moral beliefs.”

Authoritarian populist forces further stoke fears and exploit grievances among social conservatives. If these political parties manage to gain elected office through becoming the largest party in government or if their leaders win the presidency, they gain the capacity to dismantle constitutional checks and balances, like rule of law, through processes of piecemeal or wholesale executive aggrandizement.

For a detailed examination of the rise of authoritarianism, I return to Hetherington, the political scientist I cited at the start of this column. In his email, Hetherington wrote:

The tilt toward the Republicans among more authoritarian voters began in the early 2000s because the issue agenda began to change. Keep in mind, so-called authoritarians aren’t people who are thirsting to do away with democratic norms. Rather they view the world as full of dangers. Order and strength are what, in their view, provide an antidote to those dangers. Order comes in the form of old traditions and conventions as well. When they find a party or a candidate who provides it, they support it. When a party or candidate wants to break from those traditions and conventions, they’ll oppose them. Until the 2000s, the main line of debate had to do with how big government ought to be. Maintaining order and tradition isn’t very strongly related to how big people think the government ought to be. The dividing line in party conflict started to evolve late in the 20th century. Cultural and moral issues took center stage. As that happened, authoritarian-minded voters, looking for order, security and tradition, moved to the Republicans in droves. When people talk about the Republicans attracting working-class whites, these are the specific working-class whites that the G.O.P.’s agenda attracted. As such, the movement of these voters to the G.O.P. long predated Trump. His rhetoric has made this line of conflict between the parties even sharper than before. So that percentage of high-scoring authoritarian voters for Trump is higher than it was for Bush, McCain and Romney. But that group was moving that way long before 2016. The seeds had been planted. Trump didn’t do it himself.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here's our email: [email protected] .

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Thomas B. Edsall has been a contributor to the Times Opinion section since 2011. His column on strategic and demographic trends in American politics appears every Wednesday. He previously covered politics for The Washington Post. @ edsall

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An Early Look at Black Voters’ Views on Biden, Trump and Election 2024

Black voters are more confident in biden than trump when it comes to having the qualities needed to serve another term, table of contents.

• Black voters consistently align with the Democratic Party
• Black voters prefer Biden in 2024 election, but some would replace both candidates
• Black voters’ views on Biden and Trump as presidents
• Black Americans’ policy priorities
• Acknowledgments 
• Methodology 

Pew Research Center has a long history of conducting surveys that examine the views of American voters. This analysis of Black voters’ views on political party affiliation, policy priorities and 2024 presidential candidates relies on data from four of these studies.

The first of these studies was conducted among 5,140 adults from Jan. 16 to 21, 2024, on Pew Research Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP). There were 759 Black adults in the sample, which included an oversample of non-Hispanic Black men. This survey provided the data on Black voters’ views on domestic policy priorities discussed in this report. For more information on this study, see its methodology and questionnaire .  

The second was conducted among 3,600 adults from April 1 to 7, 2024, on the Center’s ATP. There were 611 Black adults in the sample, which included an oversample of non-Hispanic Black men. This survey provided the data on Black voters’ views on foreign policy priorities discussed in this report. For more information on this study, see its methodology and questionnaire .  

The third used annual totals of data from Pew Research Center telephone surveys (1994-2018) and online surveys (2019-2023) among registered voters. All telephone survey data was adjusted to account for differences in how people respond to surveys on the telephone compared with online surveys. All online survey data was drawn from the Center’s ATP. This combination of surveys provided the data for Black voters’ political party affiliation trends. For more information on this study, see its methodology and the full report . Read more on how we adjusted for mode effects when combining telephone and online surveys .  

The fourth was conducted among 8,709 adults from April 8 to 14, 2024, on the Center’s ATP. There was an oversample of non-Hispanic Black adults, for a total of 1,372 Black adults in the sample. This survey provided the data on Black voters’ views on Joe Biden, Donald Trump and the 2024 presidential election discussed in this report. For more information on this study, see its methodology and questionnaire .  

The terms Black Americans and Black adults are used interchangeably throughout this report to refer to U.S. adults who self-identify as single-race Black and say they have no Hispanic background.

Black Americans include those who are registered to vote, not registered or are unsure. Discussions and charts limited to registered voters will be labeled as such and they will be referred to as Black voters .

Democrats and Democratic leaners are respondents who identify politically with the Democratic Party or who identify politically as independent or with some other party but lean toward the Democratic Party.

Republicans and Republican leaners are respondents who identify politically with the Republican Party or who identify politically as independent or with some other party but lean toward the Republican Party.

(In later uses, the terms Democrat and Republican are inclusive of those who lean to each party.)

Black voters will play a key role in determining the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. And while Black voters remain overwhelmingly Democratic and support Joe Biden over Donald Trump by a wide margin, Biden’s advantage among this group is not as wide as it was four years ago. 

Today, American voters are about evenly split between the two major political coalitions, both in their partisan identification and in their presidential vote preference .

But Black voters remain largely aligned with the Democratic Party (83% identify with or lean to the Democrats), and 77% of Black registered voters say they would prefer to vote for Biden over Trump in the 2024 presidential election .

At the same time, Black voters are very critical of Trump . Most say he was a poor or terrible president (72%). And many Black adults think he broke the law in his alleged efforts to change the outcome of the 2020 election (65%).

Despite their support for Biden and criticism of Trump, about half of Black voters (49%) say they would replace both Biden and Trump with different candidates if they had the ability to decide. This is similar to the share of all voters who say this.

Currently, 83% of Black registered voters identify as or lean Democratic, while 12% are Republican or lean Republican. This share is slightly smaller than the 88% who associated with the Democratic Party in 2020. Still, the vast majority of Black voters have consistently identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party over the last 30 years .

Similar shares of Black men (81%) and Black women (84%) are affiliated with or lean toward the Democratic Party. Roughly eight-in-ten or more Black men and women have consistently identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party since 1994.

Although the majority of Black voters across education levels are Democrats, there has been a slight decrease in affiliation with the Democratic Party among those with college degrees in recent years. While 93% of Black voters with college degrees identified with or leaned toward the Democratic Party in 2012, that number had decreased to 85% in 2020 and then 79% in 2023. 

Overall, older voters have tended to be more Republican than younger voters in recent decades, but this is not true for Black voters. While 7% of Black voters 50 and older currently identify as or lean Republican, 17% of Black voters under 50 are aligned with the Republican Party. This is not new, as younger Black voters have tended to be more Republican than older Black voters over the last 25 years.

When it comes to the significance of the 2024 presidential election’s outcome, 55% of Black voters say it really matters who wins. Fewer say it does not matter (17%) or are somewhere in between (28%) in their views of the upcoming election’s importance.

Black voters’ preferences

As of April 2024, the majority of Black voters say they would vote for or lean toward Joe Biden (77%). Fewer say they would vote for or lean toward Donald Trump (18%).

Among all registered voters, 49% favor Trump while 48% support Biden.

The wide margin between Black voters’ preference for Democratic candidates over Republican candidates is nothing new. In 2016, there was an 85 percentage point difference in the share of Black voters who voted for Hilary Clinton (91%) over Trump (6%). And in 2020, Biden (92%) had a wide advantage over Trump (8%) among Black voters.

The current margin of support for Biden (59 points – 77% to 18%) is lower than it was in 2020 or for Hillary Clinton in 2016, according to Pew Research Center validated voter studies .

Younger Black voters are more likely than older Black voters to say they would vote for Trump. While about two-thirds of Black voters under 50 favor Biden (68%), 29% support Trump. Black voters 50 and older favor Biden by a wider margin (84% vs. 9%).

However, this pattern is reversed among all registered voters: Older voters are slightly more likely than younger voters to prefer Trump (51% vs. 46%), while younger voters prefer Biden (52% vs. 46%).

Many Black voters are dissatisfied with the Biden-Trump matchup

About half of Black voters (49%) say they would replace both Trump and Biden with different candidates if they had the ability to do so. An identical share of all registered voters say this.

Fewer Black voters say they would keep Biden and replace Trump with a different Republican (36%). Even fewer say they would keep Trump and replace Biden with a different Democrat (8%). And only 6% say they would keep both candidates.

Like the rest of U.S. voters, Black voters differ on this question by age and education . Younger Black voters (57%) are more likely than older voters (37%) to say both candidates should be replaced. And a larger share of older than younger Black voters say they would keep Biden and replace Trump (42% vs. 22%).

Nearly 60% of Black voters with a college degree say they would replace both candidates if they had the ability, while 45% of those without a degree say the same.

A majority of Black Americans (55%) approve of the way Joe Biden is handling his job as president .

This is a shift from a January 2024 Pew Research Center survey , when Black adults were evenly split in their ratings of Biden’s job performance (49% disapproved, 48% approved).

Biden’s ratings among Black Americans were far more positive earlier in his term. For instance, in a March 2021 Center survey , 87% approved of his job performance.

Despite shifts among Black Americans in their ratings of Biden, they are still more likely than other racial and ethnic groups and the U.S. public overall (35%) to approve of Biden’s job performance.

Black voters are more confident in Biden than Trump

In further assessments of his presidency, 46% of Black voters say Biden is a great or good president. Far fewer say Trump was great or good during his time in office (12%). And a large majority of Black voters say Trump was a poor or terrible president (72%). Only 19% say the same about Biden.

Black voters are also much more confident that Biden has the qualities to effectively serve another term as president. A majority of Black voters (56%) are extremely or very confident that Biden respects the country’s democratic values, and half are confident that he acts ethically as president. No more than 8% of Black voters say Trump has either of these qualities .

Although most Black voters don’t express much confidence about the mental and physical fitness of either Trump or Biden, they are more confident in Biden. About a third of Black voters (34%) say Biden has the mental fitness needed to serve another term as president, and 26% say the same about his physical fitness. Only about one-in-ten say this about Trump.

Black voters are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups and the general public overall to say Biden has the mental and physical fitness to serve another term.

Trump’s election-related criminal charges

Beyond their critical views about Trump as president, the majority of Black Americans (65%) also believe he broke the law in an effort to change the outcome of the 2020 election. They are more likely than other racial and ethnic groups – and the U.S. public overall (45%) – to hold this view. 

For Americans overall, the economy (73%) sits at the top of the list of policy priorities for the president and Congress in 2024.

However, for Black Americans, improving the education system (79%) and ensuring Social Security is financially sound (74%) are just as important as strengthening the economy (76%).

Clear majorities of Black Americans also say reducing health care costs (72%), dealing with the problems of poor people (70%), reducing crime (68%) and addressing issues around race (65%) should be top priorities.

Foreign policy priorities

When it comes to international issues , most Black Americans (82%) say it is more important for President Biden to focus on domestic policy than on foreign policy (13%). Most adults in the U.S. share this view, with 83% saying domestic policy is more important.

However, when it comes to long-range foreign policy goals , Black adults are more likely than the general public to say that preventing the spread of weapons of mass destruction (73% vs. 63%), reducing the spread of infectious diseases (70% vs. 52%) and dealing with global climate change (52% vs. 44%) should be top priorities.

CORRECTION (May 20, 2024): Due to an editorial error, a previous version of the report overstated the share of Black adults who say Trump broke the law in seeking to change the outcome of the 2020 election. It was 65%.

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