priority

It can often feel like there is a consistently increasing workload incompatible with hours in the day. With multiple projects and competing deadlines, alongside day-to-day living, it can feel like hanging on tight as the rollercoaster of life speeds up.

Living in an attention economy creates an environment where extended focus on a subject is becoming increasingly rare. Information overload is a touch away, living in the feeds, reels, videos, instagrams, facebooks and all of the various platforms making a profit from our living hours on this planet. We have the daily task of filtering through all the noise to find the essential. 

Change exists constantly. Our world is evolving and we are co-creating it continuously. In Essentialism, McKeown highlights the history of the word ‘priority’, defined as “the very first, or prior thing”. In the English language, ‘priority’ was used as a singular term for 500 years until the 1900s where we “pluralise the term and start talking about priorities.” 

In retrospect we can see it as an aftereffect of industrialisation and the emergence of the capitalist economy, though, the moment we pluralise the word, it no longer holds its intrinsic meaning. 

We cannot have multiple priorities.

Perhaps there is something to be said for this. As we live in an age of ‘more’, maybe our pursuit should be of ‘less’. Not necessarily less work but less competing. To aim rather for depth on a singular or limited couple, rather than breadth over many.

“No is a complete sentence” - Anne Lamott