Misplaced Priorities, The Challenge of Today’s Youth |Paul Amoako

The present youth, the stepping stones of the future has a very good capacity to succeed and visualize their dreams and visions. In one of my articles, “A Sleeping Man has no Future” I said,“People in this generation have all it takes to succeed and make it in life.” This is because they are exposed to greater things like technology, information, resources and other things. Your dream to make a plane today is easier than in 1900. Success is easy to be tasted by the youth of today as compared to generations and centuries ago.

The journey to the City of Success is fueled by some determinants which include your clarity in life (becoming clear about exactly what you want from life), your goals, dreams,vision, dedication, focus and determination. The aforementioned determinants are key and critical to the success of every individual in every aspect of their lives.

Everyone has a lot of things in mind that they want to achieve in life; talk of education, marriage, family making, ministry, business, a whole lot. Each of these necessities require these determinants to fuel them. But one side of achievement and success we don’t normally give attention to, is the fact that we cannot achieve all these things before we leave this earth. Some of them will be carried out later by our children and in the same way, they will also leave some unaccomplished, for their children to carry on, and the cycle continues.

If that be the case, how then do we get to the City of Success? Many people who have made it in life, yet, have some dreams unaccomplished, some of them have not started -and will never start, but they have still made it in life. What was their secret?

The determinants mentioned in the second paragraph, although good keys, need something to complement their efforts and that is to set your priorities right! Priorities need to be set since we cannot achieve all our dreams or goals at a go. Priorities, the plural form of priority, means “to regard or to treat something more important than others.” In this case, you scale your goals and dreams, that is arranging them from the most important ones to the least. It is also prudent to ascribe reasons as to why they were arranged in that order. For instance, a young guy has three things he wishes to achieve within a year; pursue his Master’s Degree, marry and rent an apartment for his family. The guy must prioritize among the three, the most important one to the least, as Economics taught us, “Resources are scarce to meet all our needs.”

As earlier said, since we cannot achieve all our dreams and goals at a go, there is the need to prioritize in order to achieve the most productive ones. Prioritization keeps you focused, helps minimize stress, boost productivity and also helps save time. In fact, prioritization is a tool for productivity. Despite the large amount of information available and our exposure to

global ecosystem, the people of today, especially the youth still seem not to be achieving much in life and a lot are even spinning the wheel. Everyone seems to be going up and down working hard, a week…a month…a year goes by, and we see only a few are crushing the nut. Why is it the case? Allow me to answer it for you in the next paragraph.

Many people seem too busy day by day, to the extent that they do not have ample time for a healthy meal, not to even talk about spending quality time with their family. A peep into these people’s lives and shockingly, you will see nothing great from their busyness. To be honest with you, crushing the nut will never be determined by by your ups and downs in life, nor will it be determined by the huge or large list of goals you have on your table. But! It will be determined by your focus on yourdreams. Focus on goals or visions is the key component to greater achievements or success and the problem of this generation is, lack of FOCUS.

Lack of focus has been the biggest problem of the increasing un-achievements in these times and as earlier said, focus is possible when you have been able to prioritize your goals. Prioritization helps you to pay attention to your goals, that is, it keeps you from jumping from one thing to the other. When your goals are prioritized, you are able to stick to them, especially, to the most productive ones. 

Because of de-prioritization, many people out of their busyness are majoring the minors and minoring the majors instead of the vice versa in both cases. They are giving much attention to the less productive goals and giving less attention to the most productive ones, they are saying yes to activities they are supposed to say no to and they are saying no to activities they are supposed to yes to. They have also become serious hoppersin life moving from here to here, one thing to the other.

You might have a lot of things on your table but that doesn’t mean you should be jumping from one thing to the other. Instead, you should only move from one thing to the other,seeing that the former has been fully accomplished. Don’t be like a drifted piece of wood in a river, moving in whatever direction the wind blows. Rather, you should have a compass that gears you. Focus on your productive goals first and interestingly, these accomplished goals might even give you new opportunities and dreams. Don’t be frustrated, always bear in mind that you cannot achieve everything in a day. Oh, have you forgotten the saying, “Rome was not built in a day?” Go out there and ask about the success stories of those who made it to the top. One answer that will always cut across is, “Set priorities – and not just any priorities.