I believe prioritising is a skill employers want employees to have. But just because you can write a list of tasks, and number them, does not mean you know how to prioritise in your life, especially when it comes to navigating your career and employment.

How do you prioritise things in your career

My current issue with a job

Adulting is very demanding, at any age. I am in my 20s and people say I should travel, find myself, experiment as much as I can but also enjoy the freedom, and take my time. There are only 168 hours in a week, and 48 of those, are the weekend. The rest? I am trying to keep myself alive and employed.

Trying to progress might mean dedicating more than your contracted hours thinking about your job. I said thinking not doing! Mapping out your development journey, your career pathway, applying for jobs, it doesn’t always get the chance to happen during working hours. So, it takes those out of work hours. Whether that’s upskilling at home, dedicating time to volunteer, or putting yourself out there, or just trying to earn more money. Either way, the concept of employment and career, eats up the time out of work, which also means less time is available for the other things. So, what do you do?

Prioritise

This is hard, and quite frankly it has taken me 4 years and 4 jobs to figure out what my priorities are. Prioritising is important, as if you have them straight, then when you have to make decisions the path you take is normally much easier to find, than if you haven’t got clear priorities.

Prioritising is taking the steps to figure out what is important to you. They can change. Just because you prioritise something in your early 20s, does not mean you still have to prioritise it in your 30s. The journey through life changes this and that’s ok. You shouldn’t feel like you have to stick to something, just because a previous (differently informed) version of you said so in the past. If we let the past control how we live each day presently, then we will live in fear of the unknown and never strive for any ambition. But letting the past inform the decision (not control it) helps us learn from the past, have better caution for risk and lets us grow.

How to prioritise?

I went and googled this and the first thing that came up was ‘Write a list, and determine the importance based on urgency…’ and I rolled my eyes, because this post is about prioritising your time when it comes to your career and employment journey. You can’t just write a list, because you don’t even know what the tasks are. If you’re trying to determine whether you are money driven or are motivated to work in other ways, but don’t know what those other ways are – how can you prioritise?

Experience

There is a reason why in your career, people say ‘Take every opportunity given to you’. It’s not to just give you life experience and a colourful CV, but it helps you gain clarity on what works on/for you. Like I said, it took me 4 years and 4 jobs to be able to prioritise what I want out of my career and employment. Without those 4 years, I would still be in my first adult job, still complaining that I feel unfulfilled and aimless, but also have 0 idea on what or where to go next. And that was what held me in my first job for the first 3.5 years. I had no idea what to do next, even though I knew where I was then, was not the right place to be at that time in my life. So, I went out and got experience.

I did secondments both within and outside my industry. I explored jobs and roles that were completely different from my chemistry background. I thought I wanted to be a project manager 2 years ago, and now I have done 2 stints as a PM, and I know now that I definitely DO NOT want to be a PM. But if I didn’t do those experiences, I would still be convincing myself that that’s where I need to take my career.

Exposure

Without exposure, you can think that the world around you is all there is. But it isn’t. It’s full of diversity, colour and variety, it’s insane. And the unfortunate thing is we all won’t live long enough to experience every single different part of this world. But with the time we do have, we should expose ourselves to as much as we can. This helps with prioritising, as when you see different perspectives, people and environments it further changes the shapes of what you decide is important. Your bubble is incredibly ill informed, so go and get it informed.

I finished my graduate scheme on 2023, and I got told it’s roughly 2 years in my role to get the next pay progression. In those 2 years, I took a 6-month break for one of my PM stints. I came back and continued to work to the progression, and earlier this year I was told, I was set back another year, maybe 2 because of that stint. That and a couple of other reasons is why I applied for a new job, and this new job showed me a different world even though I am still in the same company. This new job showed me how much I truly hate the idea of progressing into management. There are people in my grad cohort who are now managers, and me in early 2025 was so bitter. But me at the end of 2025, I am so grateful I got this clarity before I progressed. This job taught me that it’s not guaranteed I would manage a team of people I like. And though true, there are people managing people they don’t like, I DO NOT have to put myself through that if I don’t want. And I DEFINITLY don’t want to. Now I have a better idea of where I want my career to go (in my company you can either go into management or a specialism. I’m aiming for the latter, no team to manage but slightly more complex work, but feels like I sell less of my soul to capitalism that way).

Values

This one is hard, as it’s VERY personal, and requires a lot of introspection. As you experience new things and are exposed to other environments, you will experience your body reacting to the changes. Some might be for the better, and others not so. And this is where your values lies. You need to listen to that part of yourself, because that’s the part that either slowly destroys you from the inside, or gives you a glow and a new lease of life.

I really thought I was motivated by money. That if I got the promotions in my job, and thus the money, I would continue working harder and keep going. Turns out I’m not, and if I was, I wouldn’t have started this blog. I wanted to be able to make cash on the side so then my time out of work was purely for my use only. I want to have a little flexibility to try something new but not be bounded by money. So, if I can make more money, by not selling more of my time to my 9-5, then I’m truly happy with where my career is. Especially since, if I was promoted, there is more responsibility and more time dedicated to the job, which takes away the free use of my own time. I have realised I value my time out of work so much more than a lot of things, even money. But I am also aware that, I need income to supply my free control on my time. So, I’m not money driven, I am driven by the time I have to exist in this life, and that is a really strong value that dictates a lot of how I use my time in adulting.

TL;DR

- If you’re trying to determine whether you are money driven or are motivated to work in other ways, but don’t know what those other ways are – how can you prioritise?

• Experience

• Exposure

• Values

- Prioritising is important, as if you have them straight, then when you have to make decisions the path you take is normally much easier to find

- Your priorities can change and that’s fine (as long as you are making informed decisions)

- It took me 4 years and 4 jobs to realise:

• I am not driven by money

• I don’t want to progress to management

My first job was not right for me in my early 20s, but will be right for me later in the future

How to prioritise in adulting: Career and employment