How to prioritize your dream...

One of my coaching clients asked me this week “how do I create enough time in my life so that I can work on my DREAM?”  Most people would start to do the math…well there are 24 hours in a day, you work for 8 hours, you sleep for 7 hours…etc.  But my theory is that it is NOT a TIME issue but a prioritizing issue.  
This gal said “I have work that pays my bills and then I have my dream that I want to develop so that one day I don’t have to do my J-O-B to create an income.  However I find at the end of the day (week, month, year) that I have not really gotten anywhere on my dream because I am constantly just trying to keep up with my job and life in general.”  Can you relate?!
The author Steven Pressfield says “I am keenly aware of the principle of priority which states (a) that you must know the difference between what is urgent and what is important and (b) you must do what’s important first.“
So many things that feel urgent demand to get done now. Things like emails, texts, social media, and yes, our J-O-B.  These are things that are often thrown into our world by someone else. They are based on someone else’s goals and not our own.  But here’s the important piece:  Things that are URGENT will ALWAYS GET DONE because they have to!  Tim Ferriss in the book “Four Hour Work Week” suggests that you only read and respond to emails once a day and that it will save you hours in a week doing this.  Emails still get read, they still get handled, but it is done on your timing not the sender’s!
If you prioritize what is IMPORTANT first and get that accomplished BEFORE you do what’s urgent, everything will shift.  Working out, writing a few pages on your novel, making appointments for your network marketing dream, handling these first and then doing the URGENT stuff will change your productivity. 
Here’s how you do it:  At the beginning of the day, make a list with everything that you need to get done, and by each item mark it with an “U” or an “I” for urgent and important.  Now do the important things first.  You may need to go to your job from 8-5 and then when you come home do your important things first.  But make sure that before you get swept into doing the laundry, the homework, the cleaning, that you have spent time on your IMPORTANT list.  
That’s my tip for prioritizing your IMPORTANT list over your URGENT list.  Cheers!!