Why is time such a commodity?

Sometimes life just feels like running around from chore to chore. Always doing little tasks occasionally takes over our lives. Where does all that time go? Why does it feel like such a commodity?

One of the causes for this feeling could be a lack of task priority. If everything feels important, then it feels horrible not to accomplish even one thing on your list. Are you thinking “But every task is important!” ? Well… okay. That may be true. But not every task is EQUALLY important.

In many cases, there are two categories that direct us in priority: 1. most significant, and 2. most urgent time-wise.

At times, these fight for priority. Say your goal is to spend more time with your family, but you have chores that you need to get to. You value your family time as most significant, but going grocery shopping is more urgent. How do you decide?

There isn’t a really easy answer in some cases – but… The more that you can focus on the things that are most important to you, the more contented you are likely to feel. The above situation is a tough one, but maybe you can go without frozen peas for one more day after all.

In many cases, you may find that the thing that is urgent is not actually very significant in your life. There are frequently pressures applied from external sources for a task to be done quickly. A boss might want you to volunteer for something. A client might need that project completed “yesterday”. The fundamental issue with that is that they are not significant to YOU. Often they are actually not essential to be completed in your life at all.

Would your job really be in jeopardy if you turned down that volunteer position? Would you really loose your client if you didn’t put down all of your other tasks to focus on THEIR problem?

Sometimes yes. Most of the time no.

In order to do this, you might need to take some time and energy to explore your goals and priorities. What’s that? Too busy? If you can’t take the time to decide what you want to spend your time on, someone else will.


We all get the same amount of hours in a day. Make them count.