Sunday, May 19, 2024
Everyone one of us make priority decisions all day long, every day. We decide if we want a new TV now and put off a bill or stop a get breakfast burrito and risk being a minute or too late, play a game or do homework, and a myriad of other little decisions. Priorities in our life are constantly changing and we make decisions based on what they are constantly. Priorities are meant to be changed, adjusted, and used to make decisions. That is why we have them. We get to determine what is a priority to us, make decisions based on that and adjust them as needed or desired. Here is a way of looking at priorities. Think about your daily morning routine before going to work. It may look something like, you get out of bed, you shower, brush your teeth, get dressed, make a cup of coffee, head out to work, stop for a breakfast burrito to eat on the way and arrive at the project to go to start work. Now let's supposed that you have been late by a few minutes every day and your supervisor has counseled you about this and let you know that you need to get to work on time. The next day, your alarm goes off at the same time and you remember what your supervisor said the day before. So, you decided you need to eliminate some things from the routine so that you can be on time. Of course, we can eliminate picking up the burrito, that seems easy, we can even skip the shower this morning if we are running behind maybe, perhaps forgo making coffee if we need to. Each of these thoughts are and decisions are the process of choosing priorities. Is being on time a priority to me over stopping and getting a burrito, etc. and do this type of thing all the time. There is a part of the routine that would not be considered, however. He would not even consider skipping the getting dressed part. It would not occur to us for even second that we could just skip getting dressed and save time that way and go to work without being dressed, and rightly so. That is because dressing for work or going out in public is a core principle of ours. It is not a priority. It is not something that we could consider not doing in favor of something else. That is the difference between a priority and a principal or a value, some may call it.
Many times, we also state that safety has to a priority on our sites, or it has to be the first priority on our sites. We need to stop saying that and thinking about it that way. Safety cannot be compared to making a decision about whether or not we have time to stop for a burrito. That is priority decision. Safety needs to be on the same level of whether or not we take the time to get dressed before we go out in public. Safety needs to a principle and a value for each and every one of us.
Comments