Welcome to Under 2, an email series delivering short insights to empower your money life – in 2 minutes or less.
Sign-up below to get Under 2 and other news from me landing in your inbox:
When it comes to managing our money, as well as time, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by an ever-increasing influx of demands.
Because no one gets more than 24 hours in a day. And we all know money can evaporate as fast as it’s acquired.
With the default being chaos (i.e. entropy), management of these limited resources is the cornerstone of a good and balanced life.
And what is the cornerstone of good management?
Decisions.
Prioritized decisions.
Because if everything carries the same importance, you will go in a hundred different directions at the same time. And as a result, you’ll do everything inefficiently and ineffectively.
In his book, Essentialism, Greg McKeown shares a fascinating perspective:
The word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. It stayed singular for the next five hundred years. Only in the 1900s did we pluralize the term and start talking about priorities. Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple ‘first’ things.
Greg McKeown in Essentialism
Indeed, none of us juggle one, single priority in modern life. We juggle multiple.
And this little bit of etymology highlights how nonsensical that can be. Humans seemed okay with a singular priority for hundreds of years of modern history. But now one priority seems laughable as we balance our spending and calendar appointments in a hundred directions today.
So what gives? How do we move forward?
(First, check out Essentialism, and McKeown’s latest book Effortless, for some good reading you can apply towards your money mindset and strategy.)
Second, let’s reframe how we use priority/priorities to control our expenses and spending.
Essentially, prioritizing is about ranking. Even if multiple things are important, we can agree they aren’t equally important, and thus, can be ranked. I need groceries, but certain staples are more important than others in that domain.
Expenses we juggle also don’t come with the same cost. Both Netflix and YouTubeTV provide streaming we want and like, but the latter costs significantly more.
Prioritizing your expenses, then, is about ranking them in order of importance or impact, and then by cost. This matrix of importance vs. cost can then inform our decisions when making cuts or deciding to take on additional burdens, much like Stephen Covey’s grid of importance vs. urgency for managing one’s time.
It helps us prioritize on a practical level, to figure out what matters more or less than the next thing.
And this is essential perspective on how we ultimately manage our money.
Because if everything matters, then nothing does.
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Under 2, an email series designed to share quick bites of wisdom to empower your financial journey (while keeping it short). Be sure to sign-up below to get these messages in your inbox.
All for now,
Lindsey