What is Essential?

Well, a week of spring break, followed promptly by a week or more of illness, and suddenly I find it's been a month since I wrote in the blog. Writing was not the only thing that fell behind; when one is fighting a sinus/lung/bronchial infection, one must be choosy about where to expend one's limited energy and attention every day.

Thus I quickly each day established the absolute must-do priorities each day to make sure I got those done before the funk set in. As it turns out, the truly essential does not always take long to accomplish each day. This frees up time for more prosaic activities--for me, unfortunately, it was resting and nose blowing and trying to get rid of headaches. But the point is, there is plenty of time in the day to do both the necessary and the desirable--it just takes discipline to identify the essential and get it out of the way first.

I've proved to myself yet again that time management isn't about scheduling or list-making; it's about priorities. What is it essential that you accomplish today? What else are you doing with your time? Why?