Live Right Now
Logan Barfuss - Prioritizing the Non-Urgent
- Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Live Right Now. We have my friend Logan with us today. This recording was made on the spot right when he just walked in. I asked him if he would be willing to be interviewed on my podcast. So here's that conversation. Enjoy. - Okay, so the first question is Logan, what do you feel like are the things that matter most in life? - You know, something on my mind lately, as I mentioned before, I'm getting married and I'm preparing for that stage of life and it's really kind of shifted my frame of mind towards the things that matter most. There's a talk by other Ballard that I actually intend to listen to and probably will on my way home, but even the title teaches us something. It says, "What matters most last the longest." So I'm excited to listen to the talk. I don't think I have before, but even the title says that these things of temporal value, something like my truck and everything that's loaded in the back is important to me and it helps me live and I have my skis and I have a backpack and I have boxes of clothes and I have shoes and I have my mountain bike and all those things are nice to me and they're great, but as I leave them in the shop and leave them away, I wonder are those things really what are the most important to me? Some of them will last very long time. I hope that my bike will last me and I'll be able to get a lot of use out of it, but will my bike last me for eternity? No, it will not. And so that's something I've been thinking about is how important are my things to me and how important are my people to me? How important are these relationships that I'm building with my family and my friends and my fiance versus the emphasis that I place on my things of material value that break and degrade and we get new ones and we think those are important too. So that's been something on my mind. I think where our value should go and our time should go, are two things that are going to last for eternity. Which are those relationships? Okay, so relationships are the things that matter to us. Specifically like family relationships, like your spouse, your siblings, your parents, right? Of course. So my other next question then, assuming we've answered one of the biggest questions or what matters most is how do you prioritize those things and how do you keep them as a priority in your life? What are your thoughts on that? I think one of the purposes of our life on earth is to not only understand and identify the things that are most important to us and not get distracted amidst the other myriad of enticing objects and things that exist that Satan draws us towards. So I think that is one challenging aspect of just focusing on the things that really matter most. But then as we focus on those things, they're also going to be difficult because nothing worthwhile comes easy. And so I think those things that do matter most are also going to be some of the hardest. For example, with relationships, there's a therapist that told me once he's in my ward, he said, "Marriage is a wonderful thing. "And within marriage you have the capacity "to experience the highest of highs." And also at the same time, the lowest of lows. And so if you choose not to marry, you may avoid some of those low moments, but you also will avoid those high moments. And so that's a decision that you make to get married in accordance to God's plan because we know that is God's plan. You know, we choose to prioritize those things and to accept what comes with those. So I think the main thing we can do to prioritize those relationships is to make sure our emphasis and make sure our time is on. And one thing that I've been trying to do is I prepare for marriage. And we'll continue to do, I think, this is something we have to do every day is to choose that. Because if we don't choose that, then other things will choose us. - So consciously choosing to prioritize things that matter most. - Correct. It has to be a conscious decision. - So it's interesting you say that because, you know, with the things that matter most, like, and a lot of those things are important that they're not urgent. You know, like some things that come to mind to me are like spending time with family, reading scriptures, reading books, exercising, eating healthy. You know, like there's like more urgent things that will always invite us to do those things instead. Like for me, I know like this last semester doing my homework definitely like came up as more urgent than reading my scriptures. And I really struggled to read my scriptures. So do you have any insights on how can we prioritize things that aren't urgent, but they're really important? - And to those on the podcast listening, I'm here in the room nodding like crazy because I agree with everything that Jacob is saying. And that's something actually that my fiancee and I have struggled with quite a bit already is because she is, and I can't speak for all women. I feel like women in general are more prone to prioritize relationships, especially her, which is one reason why she's great. So I could be totally false in saying that. But my fiance is amazing at prioritizing those relationships and keeping those, she's told me she's like, I just, I always prioritize what's most important to me. And I'm like, you know, I would like to think that I do that same thing, but I don't because I'm exactly the way Jacob is in that I prioritize my to-do list. I prioritize whatever is calling me, whatever is nagging in my attention, whatever like assignments I need to do, whatever my church calling is, whatever my neighbor is calling me over for, whatever, you know, people need from me. I want to be there for everyone and I want to do everything, but that's just not possible. And so if you're looking for answer this question, I can't say I have one, I can't, I don't know. I can't say I have a black and white answer to this question, I wish I did, and maybe follow up with me in a year or two, maybe I will, but I think that's another great question of life that is specific to every individual, and that's something that I'm trying to find out on my own, and Jacob will need to find out on his own, and the listener will also need to ponder is what can I do in my life to prioritize what is truly important? One thing that helps me a lot is writing out lists. I love to write my journal, I love to make lists, especially when I'm in a particularly contemplative mood. I will just sit down and pull out a blank sheet of paper and I'll just write down whatever's on my mind or make a list of all the things that are stressing me out, maybe in this case, you make a list of the things that are most important to you in your life and rank them. Maybe it's gone, maybe it's family, maybe it's your friends, maybe it's other things that are going on when you rank those and then you assess how much time you're giving to each, and if you're giving too much time to distract us, I think those are a big deal too. I had a teacher on my last day of class, say. You know, it was completely unrelated to the class, although it was psychology, she said before handing out our final grades and letting us go for the rest of the semester, she said, I won't just say that if you are spending more than an hour a day on any social media video games or kind of media like that, a movie's in TV maybe that isn't necessarily progressing your life. I mean, you'd be the judge of that, but she said I would encourage you to evaluate your priorities, to evaluate your life. And so I think that's a pretty good answer, right, is like, are you placing a dramatic emphasis on these distractors? Are they distracting you from other things? You know, what's good, what's better, and what's best? So even if you're doing all great things, maybe my homework is important to me and maybe it's good, but maybe instead of prioritizing, you know, four hours of homework a day, maybe I could, you know, get more out of three hours, spend some time with those people that matter more to me, and then my bucket is full. And then I have more to give, I have more to give to school, I have more to give to others. I truly believe that as we take care of the things that matter most, then we will be taking care of in a reciprocal manner. Does that make sense? - Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. And it's like as logical as even though it's not urgent that you sleep or eat food or drink water, it's super important and it doesn't enable you to do everything else, right? Like, it would be silly for someone to say, oh, I'm just not gonna eat today because that is not really super urgent. I have all these other things, but it's like actually, even though it does take time to eat, it also gives you more energy so you can do everything else, right? - Yeah, of course. I think it's funny how as me as an individual and as society as a whole, places so much emphasis on emergencies and so little emphasis on prevention. And this is one thing I want to do in my career as I pursue psychology and particularly health psychology is where this applies to the most. I think people neglect their health. They neglect to eat healthy. They neglect to exercise, which we touched on that earlier. We'd neglect to, of course, pursue relationships like what we talked about before. Sometimes or put maybe the sufficient effort into our relationships until they go wrong, right? And as soon as our relationships go wrong, as soon as our health goes haywire, as soon as our cars break down, then it's suddenly the most important thing in the world to us. And I think we all know, we all know in our mind that that we should be preventing these things, that we should be checking our cars, that we should be eating healthy, that we should be checking up with loved ones, but we don't do them, why? - Yeah, I agree. I have the same question. I heard something in a podcast like Jay Shetty, it's called On Purpose. Is this guy talking about health? And he said that most of the time when you go to the doctor, they will look at your levels like blood pressure, blood sugar, heart rate, all those different indicators of health, but they won't say anything unless you're in the red on most of those. Even if you're in the yellow, you know, even if you're like trending towards a bad direction, it's acceptable. They can't do anything to help you unless your body starts showing symptoms. And that's already the tip of an iceberg, you know? That means you were going down there way before and if you hadn't known about it, if you've been watching it and then you could have started preventing it. And it's just, you know, I just thought about that with what you're saying, how we really only do something when things get in our face and start interfering with our daily life functions instead of way ahead of time. I honestly think most people don't really act, they're just more reactive. Most of us, most of the time, are just reactive. And that's our system one thinking, right? Like our default thinking and easiest doesn't require any mental effort. Whereas system two is going to, you know, be slow and methodical and really think through things, but, you know, we like to avoid that as much as possible. - It does require more effort to do it. That's a, well, Logan and I, both to cognition this last semester. So we're speaking alien terminology, but just basically that the difference between effortful thinking and automatic habitual thinking. But yeah, that's interesting. I think that does play a huge role in how well we actually prioritize the things that matter most is, are we willing to take the mental effort to take the time and make the choice to do something that's not urgent but is important. - Right. I think that's such an interesting, interesting thought. And, you know, some people, you know, might know that that's the best thing to do, but we just don't. This is another thing I've learned about in psychology is there's preventative mindset and there's a provostial mindset. Preventative is very like, what am I doing to make sure that something doesn't happen, like an emergency, like worst case scenario. Promotional thinking is going to not only prevent things from happening, but like taking steps to prevent them from happening in the future. So like that would be, you know, getting regular like health pickups and scans or making sure you have the best diet so that you can kind of promote your health for the future. So that when you're 70, you don't have heart disease instead of just kind of preventing heart disease by not smoking or not drinking alcohol. - I see. So it's more like optimizing for ideal conditions. - I think so. - In the end. - Well, I think about like cause and effect or like actions and outcomes. And like in this present moment, the outcomes we're experiencing in our life are caused by the actions that we've taken up to this point, right? So like you, your level of health, your understanding of life, your intelligence, your, I don't know, your relationships, every, I mean, your financial wellbeing, whatever your current state is in any area in life is the result of the choices you made up to this point. - Correct. - So I think about that. And I think also that if there's certain outcomes that we want, like you probably want to be fairly wealthy and successful in life. Or at least you want to be healthy. You want to have good relationships. You want to accomplish your goals. Okay, so those are the outcomes. What are the actions that we can take now to optimize those outcomes to occur? And I would actually like to hear like your actual thoughts. Like what do you think you can do right now to set yourself up to have the most ideal outcomes that you can have in your future? - That is, that is the question, isn't it? That's the loaded question. - It's super loaded. - We're exploring those very deep and profound concepts of life right now. But if you don't mind me backing up for just to say-- - Oh yeah. - There was something that came to my mind just about, I went to a conference a couple months ago. I'm about to actually go to a different conference with the same guy, this coming weekend, which I'm very excited for. But he says, imagine you have this timer of five more minutes and it's counting down. And you know that at the end of those five minutes you're going to die. - Oh my gosh. - He says, at that moment, what would you be willing to do to have just five more minutes or just 10 more minutes? And he says, at the end of your life, it doesn't matter what you have done with your life or what you have or how much money. He said, you would be willing to give everything, anything just to have more time, more health, more time with loved ones, you know, anything like that. And I thought that was so interesting. He's like, all those things that we prioritize right now, are they going to have the same importance to you on your deathbed? - I feel like that is such a big question, but I think it's true, you know, for one, I don't think it's a bad thing that we spend some time on some things that are just for fun, you know, get an ice cream cone, whatever. Like some of life is allowing for the nuances and allowing for a little bit of wasting time. But I think we should always remember that that only happens because of the price that's been paid for it. Like in a typical family and home environment, the dad works, makes some sacrifices of his time, his life, or, you know, maybe it's a mom sometimes, but somebody's working and that allows for the kids at home and those who are at home to watch a movie, play on Wi-Fi, play some games, you know, live and enjoy life. And we should always remember that the easy things are life, the fun things come at a sacrifice and that, you know, that we should prioritize them. But anyways, final thoughts on what matters most in life? - Well, I love that ice cream analogy is you can, you know, I think of two different people. You have one guy who's a hard worker, he's providing for his family, buses butt for them and then maybe they're poor and they're able to go, you know, go out to ice cream as a family at night and think of how that father feels as he buys his little three-year-old ice cream and she drops it and then they pick it back up and they're laughing and they're giggling and they're licking each other's ice cream cones and they're having a good time as a family and it's a simple moment and it's not life-changing. Of course, ice cream isn't gonna change your life. I don't know if you believe that. Hasn't changed mind, it sure helped me, but I love ice cream. - It's like ice cream not important, but family's important, right? - Right, it's who you share those experiences with. So it might not even be the experience itself that's important, it's who you share it with and how you remember it, right? That's why we chase remembering things is so important to us taking pictures and videos and journaling and that's something I've spent a lot of time doing. But then on the other spectrum, you have maybe someone else who's maybe inherited all of his money and this isn't, of course, gonna represent many people, but maybe it could, like, metaphorically, is that they have kind of been given everything or maybe they don't work very hard and then they take themselves up to ice cream. What is that gonna mean for them? Is it gonna be more of like a hey, I'm depressed, so I need ice cream and maybe make me feel better and need a pint of Ben and Jerry's? Or is it just gonna be kind of like a meh, like this tastes okay? But I think those experiences that we have are contingent upon how we're living our lives, right? There's a quote I like that says, "The capacity to fill joy is contingent "upon the depth of the sorrow we also experience." So that receptacle, that every time we struggle, every time we have a deep moment, that that canvas, that whole kind of just penetrates deeper and as we experience those hardships, but then later that deep hole can be filled with joy. And so basically, the more hardship we experience, the more joy we feel. It's kind of an inverse relationship, does that make sense? - Yeah, that's an interesting analogy 'cause the whole dollar always gotta get filled up to the top, right? - And so if you only have just a shallow life, a shallow relationship, a shallow work ethic, then you're also gonna feel shallow joy. - I think that's a powerful message to share, that's important to not just recognize what matters most, but to appreciate life and appreciate the little things and recognize the value that everything has in mind, especially in context of the greater things, you know? Because I think when you do prioritize the things that matter most, it also helps you to enjoy everything else in life to you, right? - Of course. - Of course. - Thank you. - Thank you. - Thanks everyone for listening to this week's episode of Live Right Now. I hope that conversation was as insightful and interesting to you as it was for me. I think it's always good to take a step back and think about what really matters most and how we can align our actions today with the outcomes we ultimately really want in the end. There's always that temptation of doing the urgent things first, neglecting the important things that aren't that urgent. But I hope that we can start to build habits in our own lives of prioritizing the really important things. Invest in your relationships. Invest in your health. Invest in your future. And not just in the pleasures of the present moment right now or the most urgent things. And with that, I hope you have a great day and a great rest of your week. And we'll see you next time on Live Right Now. (upbeat music)