The prioritization of each day by importance is going to require you to arrange your day differently than you did before, and differently than others would. As you begin paying more attention to what you do and why you do it, you are going to notice that there is an awful lot that we all do in our lives without any good reason to, as well as a lot that we do not do although we have every reason to. So much of our lives are based on unspoken rules that everyone adopts without really thinking about them, and very few of those rules actually help us get to where we want to go in life.
While most people are confident in what they do because everyone else is doing it or because others expect it of them, this kind of false confidence evaporates the moment its negative consequences suddenly appear. When your confidence is based on a rational process of thinking about everything you could do and choosing the actions that best align with what you actually want the most, you will feel confident and content no matter what kind of obstacles present themselves. This true internally-produced confidence surpass the limits of those who do what they do only because of external examples or expectations.
The fact that others do things a certain way does not provide evidence in itself that this is the best way to do things. You have to ask why, and there has to be a good reason. You have to move past the comfort of conventions. Conventional wisdom can only generate conventional results, and conventional results are embarrassingly terrible.
Intentional people will do things that other people are unwilling to do because they are willing to submit to reason instead of being beholden to the desire to be comfortable, popular, or ignorant.
Intentional people will also abstain from things that other people readily do. They won’t do things just because other people are doing them or because others expect them to. They won’t act contrary to their principles, even if everyone else does.
If you are going to live with intention, you are going to have to get used to being different than you were before. In fact, you are going to need to get used to never getting used to anything. This is both possible and incredibly useful, but it also requires those around you to do the same, and some prior relationships simply can’t endure the changes that will become a permanent part of who and how you are.
When you set out for the things you truly want in life, you are going to find that either you will want different things than others want, or you want to actually obtain what others claim they desire but do not get. In either case, you have to realize that in order to get what others do not have, you have to be willing to do differently than what they are willing to do.