And the Race is on

Or- Watering your horses

Think.

My go-to analogy for describing prioritization is the carnival horse race.

Earlier this month we talked about creating buckets for the categories of things that fill our lives. I used the analogies of spinning plates and juggling glass and rubber balls, but this game is by far the best analogy I have come up with.

If you are not familiar with the game, the horses were arranged along the back of the game booth like in the photo above.

To play, you forked over your tickets and then took a spot at one of the stations in front of a water cannon.

When the game started, the water cannons came to life spraying a thin stream of water. It was your job to direct that water to the small bullseye associated with your horse. The more accurately you aimed, the faster your horse moved. If your horse made it to the finish line first, you won a stuffed animal.

The difference between the game and real life is that we are playing alone. We have one water canon with which to move all of our horses.

We have a finite but unknown supply of water, and our job is not to get one horse to the finish but to move all of them forward as needed based on our current prioritization.

The horses are the buckets and balls that make up our days. We need to decide how to prioritize which horse gets the water.

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Read. The Mind Gym

By Ryan Ford

Mental Fitness Workouts

Write.

If you have identified and named all of your horses (buckets, and balls), your writing prompt is to figure out which horses are going to take you the farthest.

I’d love to hear what you come up with.

Repeat.

Words of wisdom from those who said it best.

“The key is not to prioritize what is on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

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