This exercise doesn’t take long. But it can radically shift how you live your days—and ultimately, how you build your life.

Don’t leave your life to chance. Don’t build without a blueprint.

Take the time to get clear. Then build intentionally.

One of the most important pieces, and honestly the place you need to start when building a highly intentional life, is having extreme clarity.

It is pretty much impossible to be intentional if you don’t know what you are supposed to be intentional about. 

Imagine you were hired to build someone’s dream house, but you weren’t given any blueprints or any instructions on what the house was supposed to look like or how it was supposed to function. You have no idea how many rooms or bathrooms there are supposed to be. You don’t know what they want to use it for. You don’t know their styles or preferences. You are just told to build it. 

You can wake up each day and make a plan for the day. You can be efficient with your time. You can remove distractions and get really focused. You can work harder than anyone else. You can use all the latest tips and tricks on home building…but almost guaranteed, you are going to end up with a house that is not what the original people envisioned. 

Now we all know it would be crazy for someone to expect you to build their dream home without the blueprints or a clear vision of what the house is supposed to be like, but oftentimes, we go about building our lives in that exact way.

That’s why intentional living has to start with clarity.

You have to know what your priorities are. You have to know what’s most important to you, what you value. You have to get clear on God’s purposes for your life and what he says is a valuable use of your time, talents, and money. You have to get a clear long-term vision so you know what you are working towards. 

You have to know the way that you want to interact with people. How you want people to describe you. And on a daily basis, you need to be clear on how you should spend your time and what you should be focused on.

Just like the house example, you could be the hardest working man in every room. You could be the most efficient. But if you don’t know what you should be working on or what you want your life to be about, you could very easily get to the end of your life and realize you were spending all your time and energy on things that weren’t the most important to you.

The times in my life where I have been the most passive. Where I have been the most complacent…are the times when I have had the least amount of clarity. 

There are a lot of different elements of clarity that we will continue to unpack, but today I want to focus on one - your priorities.

Do you know what your main priorities in life are? Have you taken time to clearly define what’s important to you? And then have you made sure that your life is actually aligned with those priorities?

I know this can sound pretty basic, it’s easy to know this is how you should live, but do you actually live in alignment with what you say is the most important to you?

As a man, you have so many different roles and responsibilities in life. You are juggling so many things. You have so many things that you need to spend time on, and on top of that, you are bombarded with distractions all day long. 

There are so many things competing for your attention all the time. There are so many people who are competing for your attention. There are so many different options of ways that you can spend your time. 

It can be overwhelming. I’m sure there are so many times where you feel like you don’t have enough time in the day to do everything you want to do or to spent time on the things you would like to spend time on. 

If I’m not intentional and clear about what matters the most, in all honesty, I will waste my time on things that don’t matter near as much.

Just recently, I was in a funk. I was wasting way too much time on things that don’t really matter. If you followed my time and my finances, they weren’t going toward the things that I would tell you matter the most to me.

Those are two really good signs of what is actually taking priority in your life - follow your schedule and follow your finances and you’ll usually get a pretty good picture of what you are actually making important in your life - even if that’s not purposeful.

By no means would I have purposely chosen to spend so much of my time on reading, watching, or playing sports, but when I took an honest look at where my time was going, that’s where it was being eaten up. The constant distractions on my phone were adding up. The time I was spending watching sports was adding up. 

The amount of money I was spending on entertainment was adding up. 

When you are unclear of your priorities and when you live a reactionary lifestyle instead of a proactive one, it is so easy to let meaningless things dominate your life. 

If you would ask me what the most important thing in my life was, I would tell you it was God. But then if you looked at my time and where I was focusing my attention, that’s not where it was. There wouldn’t have been evidence in my life to back that up. 

If you asked if pursuing my passions and dreams were more important to me than entertainment, I would obviously say yes. But then if you looked at my time, that might have not been the case.

This can happen so quickly and so easily if you are not intentional. That’s why I talk about living a proactive lifestyle instead of a reactive one all the time. When you let your mood, your circumstances, or your feelings run your life, you usually end up letting distractions get the best of you without realizing it. 

It’s very easy to end up being so focused on work that you don’t leave enough time for your most important relationships. It’s so easy to get so sucked in by your phone or by television that you don’t invest in your health or whatever else it might be.

Taking time to get clear on your priorities is a great way to take a step back and get clear on what you want your life to be about. 

Here is a simple exercise that I would encourage you to do. When I realized it was not living in alignment with what I said was important, I did this exercise and it has helped tremendously.

Step 1, just take time to list out all of the priorities, roles, and responsibilities that you have. Just getting these down on paper and actually identifying them is so helpful. Write down the things that you consider to be the most important to you. Then write down your other responsibilities - think spiritual, relational, career, financial, health, fun, family, friends, etc.

In this first part, don’t worry about it being perfect or having it in order. Just brainstorm and write everything down. 

Once you have those down, then rank them in order of importance. What are the things that are truly the most important in your life?

Think about what is truly going to be lasting. What do you want your life to truly be about? Take some time to think through this carefully. I would definitely recommend bringing God into this process. Spend some time in prayer and asking him to reveal what’s most important. Make sure that your priorities are truly in line with he says is the most important. 

Ask him to check your motives and make sure they are pure. 

Also, this is a great time to make some cuts on things that you don’t need to make a priority. Take a look at your original list and cut anything out that doesn’t need to be on there. One of the best ways to find time to focus on what matters most is to eliminate things that aren’t necessary. Trim the list down to what is truly important to you. 

Once you have your list trimmed down and in order of importance, the next step is write down the main activities that you need to do for each one of those priorities to actually be a reality in your life.

For example, if you have God as your number one priority, write down the activities that you need to do to have him be a major focus of your life. That could be daily time with God, consistent times of prayer and worship, going to church on Sundays, getting in a small group, going on prayer walks during the work day, reading spiritual books, memorizing scripture…those are some examples of things you could write there. 

If you have your family as number 2, then write down the things that you need to consistently do to make sure you are investing in your family. That could be a weekly date night with your wife, going to your kids sporting events, praying together, going to church together, having meals together, reading to your kids before bed…think through the activities that are truly going to bring your family closer together and identify them.

It’s so easy to say that God and relationships are the most important things in your life, and I believe you truly mean that when you say it, but then it’s too easy to get distracted by other things where they end up falling down on your priority list.

We want to be intentional. We want to be proactive. Don’t leave these things to chance and hope you prioritize. Identify what you need to do consistently to give these the time and attention they need.

Once you have your list and your activities identified, there are two things you should - review this list regularly and then actually put them into your schedule. We do what we schedule. If it’s not in your calendar, it’s easy for urgent things or distractions to take precedence. 

And then reviewing this regularly will help keep you focused. You won’t do everything perfectly when you first start and that is ok. Review it often to see where things are going well and how you can make adjustments.

This entire exercise will only take you about 30 minutes to do and can radically transform your life. 

Having this list has been so helpful for me. I look at it at the end of each week and check to make sure my time, attention, and money is actually going where I say my priorities are. It’s reminded me to give God more time…to give relationships more time. 

The more and more that you live in alignment with your values and priorities, the more confident you will be. The more energized and engaged you will be in life. And you will be truly building a life that you can be proud of. 

I hope this was helpful for you! This exercise was truly life-changing for me and continues to be as I review it often. If you’ve done anything similar or have other helpful ideas, please throw them in the comment section! And if you think this might benefit someone you know, please share it with them. 

Thank you so much for joining me today! I am grateful for you. I believe in you. You were made to do something great because God made you and he doesn’t make mistakes. 

Go live a life you are proud of by living intentionally!