When we accept seeing time as a resource, we discover that we allocate it according to our priorities.

When I was an active member of JCI, I saw this countless times. A lot of people became members of JCI without being clear as to why they joined. They still needed to discover what they were looking for. And, somehow, JCI hadn’t been able to make it clear to them until then. I’ve come to understand that this is a normal feature of people joining an organization. At the beginning, people are simply interested; they join out of curiosity. While willing to invest themselves in the organization, new members still need support in discovering how. Which is a detail many organizations miss. They assume that the people who join are just as invested as the people who invited them to join.

Whenever people realized how they could contribute and found themselves liking this approach, it became noticeable to others that there seemed to be no limit to their engagement, and thus the time they invested.

Experiencing and noticing how this switch occurred to members has always been fascinating to me. It also helped me see the difference between resources and priorities.

The priority determines the allocation of our resources. Whenever there is no priority to attribute a resource, it most probably remains scarce. Or doesn’t experience a change in how it is allocated.