Habit 3 : Put first things first!

The habit of putting first things first hits pretty close to home for me. I truly believe that we are all creatures of habit and learn these habits at an extremely young age. I know that there are many habits that I learned from watching family members, as I am sure we all do. Something that I remember was really difficult for me was being punctual when it came to after school activities. I know that my mom was super busy, but I feel that since we grew up in a family of six children and many different events it was awesome that my mom even got me to practice or church functions at all, even if I was known for showing up late. Once I reached adolescence, I realized that I had more power than I realized. I realized that I was not doing my part in making sure that I was doing everything I could to keep track of my own priorities and obligations. I will admit that I didn’t truly make as much progress as I could have, but by senior year, I had made some drastic changes in habits. I also noticed that these changes had a large impact on my school efforts and overall work ethic, pulling me into lunch tutoring as such knowing that afterschool I had practice.  I now am (usually) a person who shows up early for work and such just to make sure that I am ready for the day and in the right mind-set. I learned this from my dad. In high school, he had told me that when I get a job, it is important for many reasons that you are never planning on showing up when your shift starts, but early.  It may sound silly but I like to also sit in my car in silence before walking in. 

            When watching the video, I was laughing because I have actually come pretty close to running out of gas because I didn’t have to stop. ??? I know.  I also understood completely how negatively it can impact your life by putting small unimportant and non-urgent things in front of others that may be more time sensitive or valuable.

            So I can admit that there was a time when I found myself in putting time aside for what quadrant IV calls “time wasters” but have learned from my errors.  What I find difficult at this time in my life is prioritizing what I want to do first because there are so many areas of my professionalism that I want to build upon. For example, I just realized that I had fallen a bit behind with a few posts due to the fact that my mind has been focused on the Time to Thrive conference that I am attending right now in Portland, Oregon. So this is going to be a focus of mine and I am going to do my best to reflect on this with my students so that they start earlier than I did! My goal is to do an activity that can tie into their character reflection journals that helps them list what they have going on in their day and then try to list them in order of importance. I also think tat a demonstration as shown in the video would be fun! It would also be an easy activity to produce!