YOUR Priorities versus Other People's Priorities

If everyone would have the same priorities in life, the world would be a pretty dull place. Not to mention, hard to picture.

Imagine a seller and a buyer having the same priority. That hardly happens, and when it does, it kind of feels incredible and the buyer would likely spend more there...

How about a builder and a marketer? They don't agree on many things.

How about the priority of a developer to push an update, and the priority of a user to not lose their content (just happened to me earlier to have no draft saved on my post already written on a different subject 😠)? Seems pretty minor in comparison with what else we can think of.

People, families, companies, societies, countries, make choices on what to prioritize.

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In a small village, a family raises cows for milk, while another may need animals to work the farmland. In the end, they will trade some of their products for something else they don't have and wasn't their priority.

If everyone raised cows, who would provide the grain?

If all building companies focused on big projects, who would be left to prioritize the small ones?

If every extractor was looking for rare earths, who would be left to extract some plain ore?

How about prioritizing defense over offense, or diplomacy instead of both?

North Korea pushes everything into military expenses, while people are starving. That's a choice, a national priority, and one that keeps them underdeveloped in most ways but militarily (and possibly in that way too). They also have good hackers, which probably came as a necessity for them - to get their hands on some funds which they don't produce in the country's economy.

If you sell a token, someone else is buying it. Or vice versa. Why is that? Usually, because the two have different priorities, targets, projections, time frames, or interpretations of the same events.

We also often get influenced by other people's priorities. It happens at the personal level, inside the family, but also in larger cultures and organizations.

A few Asian countries are renowned for the work ethic of their people. Imagine that in a country where people are more focused on having fun or living life one day at a time.

Have you ever stopped and wondered if one priority you have is really yours or it is borrowed from others? If it is borrowed from others, does it represent you? Is it what you want to do, or you feel constraint to do something you don't really like doing?

Nowadays, freelancing or working for yourself is more common than a decade ago, more or less. And thirty years ago, it was almost unimaginable not to have a job after you graduated... Or, in fewer cases, your own company.

How many of people's priorities are their own, and how many are part of a larger trend? It's true, in cases where priorities are from a small set of options, you will likely fall into the same category as other people with your choice. But if people would generally make up their minds by themselves, influencers wouldn't be as influential nowadays or... always.