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Level Three. Priorities.

Level Three. First things First.

By Michelle Lloyd.

Sammy had heard it talked about but to be honest he understood the meaning of it less and less. What was the difficulty he had been experiencing? Comprehension of a certain topic had him in a muddle and when priorities were established Sammy walked right out the door because he could not accept the explanation for it.

It had been summarised that when a situation warranted it, one should tackle objectives in order of priority. Basically Sammy knew to do the most important or time-dependent task first BUT and this was his bugbear, in a busy life filled with demands on his time how could he decide between all the drains on his resources… for example at school, his attention was needed on the focus of the class subject, his own work and on what others were doing, what should he do when he had to perform all the objectives equally well and almost simultaneously? Was it his fault if he could become a tad distracted?

At home too, Sammy felt his loyalties divided. When he did homework he was pulled in many separate directions. He felt as if many of his evening’s objectives were done on a dictatorial basis and not as he would have planned them. If first things first meant that he could truly decide for himself, then perhaps Sammy would not have felt so unjustified about it.

Feeling tired and unenthusiastic Sammy did not like being pressured into doing work first because certain authorities demanded it. This kind of strategy left him lethargic and listless when he needed to get down the truly needed objective of his, which was to play a game or two. The rigour of all the priorities had gotten Sammy down and he decided that if first things first was to be obeyed then maybe he could do it the way he thought it should be done.

At first Sammy took on the philosophy at school and he base his priorities on instinctive drive alone. Watching how well others were getting on at their own studies in the class took a slight precedence over working at his own comprehension. It did not take too long before this was noticed and Sammy’s reprimand was evidence of that.

At home, Sammy who had left it as an agree to disagree with his parents on the first things first scenario, subsequently he started to arrange his priorities. Of course his games took priority over the homework and the few household helps that he knew were lined up for him. He got straight down to his games and the art of displaying his skills to his opponents while time got further and further away from him. It was after a long and drawn-out battle of which Sammy thought that he should have won far earlier, that he heard the voice of his mum asking why he had not taken out the rubbish.

Sammy who had not been feeling all that great about his earlier rebuke that day began to get a weird niggling feeling. When he got to actually taking the rubbish out, he found that dad had been forced to step in and that set off another bad feeling for Sammy. While he complained about it, not doing the set out tasks at home meant that he felt less happy and not more so, as he had imagined he would do.

At dinner Sammy was even more glum. Not having completed his tasks at the times he should have done meant that several of their evening patterns had been put out, Sammy had then not even got around to the homework he had been assigned and all of this cast worry and feelings of unease.

In the end Sammy’s unusual lack of enthusiasm for any dinner debate got his parent’s curiosity up and they asked him about it. Finally having realised that there was a bit more to this whole First things First philosophy Sammy decided that if given the opportunity he would have opted for a do-over in regards to many of his objectives that day.

It was not all about what suited Sammy best at that moment because when he thought about it many of the priorities that his parents had tried to get him to learn did make his life easier. Having reached his conclusion he decided that he would break with habit and tell his parents that they had something in their plan to prioritise and that maybe he needed to adhere to it a bit more.