And to get at this, I like to use language from one of the busiest people I ever interviewed

By busy, I mean she was running a small business with 12 people on the payroll, she had six children in her spare time

I was getting in touch with her to set up an interview on how she "had it all" --that phrase

I remember it was a Thursday morning, and she was not available to speak with me. Of course, right?

But the reason she was unavailable to speak with me is that she was out for a hike,

because it was a beautiful spring morning, and she wanted to go for a hike

So of course this makes me even more intrigued, and when I finally do catch up with her, she explains it like this. She says, Listen Laura,

everything I do, every minute I spend, is my choice.

And rather than say, I don't have time to do x, y or z, she'd say, I don't do x, y or z because it's not a priority.

I don't have time, often means It's not a priority.

If you think about it, that's really more accurate language. I mean I could tell you I don't have time to dust my blinds, but that's not true

If you offered to pay me $100,000 to dust my blinds, I would get to it pretty quickly

Since that is not going to happen, I can acknowledge this is not a matter of lacking time

it's that I don't want to do it

Using this language reminds us that time is a choice and granted

There may be horrible consequences for making different choices, I will give you that

But we are smart people, and certainly over the long run,

we have the power to fill our lives with the things that deserve to be there

So how do we do that?

How do we treat our priorities as the equivalent of that broken water heater?