The short answer: what you prioritise is not what you say out loud. It is what you choose when two things are on offer at once. Most of us avoid looking at that. Writing down the chance you let pass, with a line on why, is how you look.
This morning I had two opportunities. One was to work out and start the day well. The other was the final episode of Green Lanterns.
I watched Green Lanterns.
Nothing stopped me training. I had the chance, I knew I had it, and I picked the other thing. If you had asked me the night before what mattered more, I would have said the workout without thinking. So I have one list of priorities that I say out loud and another that I act on, and this morning they were not the same list.
Why we would rather not look
People avoid checking on the very things they say they care about. We do not look at the bank balance. We do not track what we eat. Researchers call it the ostrich problem, and they are plain about the reason: it “appears to be rooted in people’s desire to maintain favorable views of themselves.”
Sheeran & Webb (2016), The Intention–Behavior Gap, Social and Personality Psychology Compass 10(9), 503–518.
A habit tracker that records only successes is a comfortable place for an ostrich. On the days you did the thing, you get a tick. On the days you did not, you get a blank, and a blank says nothing. It does not say whether the chance never came, or whether it came and you chose the sofa. You are spared the one fact you most needed.
It is not just you
The same review puts a number on the gap: intentions get translated into action “approximately one-half of the time.” And the gap does not come from people who never meant to. It comes mainly from people who intended to act and then did not.
Wanting it more does not fix it. Across 47 experiments, a medium-to-large increase in how much people intended to do something produced only a small-to-medium change in what they did.
Webb & Sheeran (2006), Does changing behavioral intentions engender behavior change? Psychological Bulletin 132(2), 249–268.
So committing louder works on the list I say out loud. That list was never the problem.
Write down the one you let pass
Log both. The chance you took, and the chance you let pass.
“Let pass” is on purpose. I did not miss the workout this morning. Missing is something that happens to you. I was there, the opportunity was there, and I made a choice.
Then add one line on why. Mine today: finale was out, wanted to see it before anyone spoiled it. That is not a confession. It is information. One note tells you nothing. Thirty tell you which things reliably beat the things you claim to want, at what time of day, in what mood. It is a record of your real priorities, written by the only person who can know them.
Writing it down matters. A review of 138 experiments, almost twenty thousand people, found that monitoring progress moved people towards their goals, and more so when it was physically recorded than when it was only kept in mind.
Harkin et al. (2016), Does monitoring goal progress promote goal attainment? Psychological Bulletin 142(2), 198–229.
To be exact: those studies test monitoring progress, not a note on why you passed on a chance. The note is my extension. The honest claim is the smaller one: recording beats remembering, and you cannot record half of the picture and expect to see the whole of it.
Your hands on the wheel
This is not about feeling worse over a morning with a TV show in it. Some days the episode is the right call, and a note that says so is a good note.
You are already steering. Every chance taken and every chance let pass turns the wheel a little, whether or not anyone keeps track. Writing it down, in your own words, means you can see which way you have been turning it. Once you can see it, it is yours to turn.