Some people have alleged that I am creepy, as in I can observe someone for a short period of time, and build an ever strengthening algorithm with which I can predict their actions, and know their emotions without them deliberately expressing them.
These allegations are true, and today I will share with you some of the insights that allow me to build these algorithms.
One of the easiest things to figure out in a person is what drives them to do what they do.
Have you ever seen the commercial for the car where the guy is talking to his friend, and he says "You can tell a lot about a person by their car. Whoever has this car is the man!"?
While the man in the commercial obviously doesn't have it down to an art, you can tell a lot about people by their house, or their car. Not because of the vehicle or the home themselves, but because the things in the car or house will reveal their priorities.
This is why priorities are probably the easiest things to figure out about a person: Priorities don't really require a frame of reference. You can safely evaluate a person's priorities without spending a great deal of time with them.
For example, one of my closest friends is a mother of two boys. You can tell as soon as you walk into her house that her kids are one of the most important things in her life. There are pictures drawn by her children on the fridge, a wall of pictures of her kids on the wall in the living room, and everywhere you look there is some kind of reminder that children live there.
On the other hand, another friend of mine is a mother as well. But her house is sterile, in order and just so. No where you look do you see evidence that children live there.
The first friend's days are spent taking her kids to and from ball games, activities, and spending time with her children. The second friend spends her days working out, going to events for herself, and doesn't take her kids places unless she is already headed in that direction.
It becomes apparent that the first friend places a higher premium or priority on her children, where the second friend's priorities are more self focused.
People will allocate the things that are important to them, to things that are important to them. This seems obvious, but upon closer examination, it is the key to unlocking the priorities of others.
Time is very important to me. I am very busy, and since I am so busy, I have to budget my time to maximize its use. In other words, things and people that are important to me will get more time than those that are not. For almost two years, I worked (for free) at Celebrate Recovery. There were many times where other things I wanted to do were going on at the same time, a LAN party at the college, or a TV show about a choir. I had to decide which was more important. So without knowing much about me, you can tell how important (relatively speaking) CR was. For the past two years, I have missed maybe a total of four Fridays since I have started, and none of the times were because of the LAN party or the TV show.
Money has a value many of us appreciate. So you can safely tell where an organizations priorities are by how they allocate their funds. For example, at Central they have a 9 Million dollar building budget. So when they decided not to pay the people who were running it $60,000/yr to be able to stay, they said that CR was less important than the building. Ok, this might not be bad right? Without a building, CR would be much more difficult to facilitate. But then we see: The youth pastor they are looking to hire will get paid. The senior pastor and associate pastor get paid. So does the administrative pastor. So that means that CR is less important than the other programs. it is that simple. People will spend money where they see value.
The last church I worked at had a $50,000 budget (total). $47,000 was the senior pastor's salary, $2,600 was my pay, $2,600 was rent for the building. The rest was misc church related costs, office supplies, licensing, insurance, etc. Where were their priorities?
Where are your priorities? Think about the things most important to you. Maybe it is your time. Maybe it is your money. What do you spend the things most precious to you on? Who gets your resources?
As many of you (and by many I mean the two of you who read these anyway) have noticed, I am once again late, and not only am I late for this week, last week's post isn't up yet.
Fear not, my children. It looks as if my internet has finally been restored to me. Yes, that is right. 1.5 weeks, daily phone calls, and six visits from techs later, I am back in the swing of things.
To celebrate, I will be posting a two for one special this week. That's right, twice the Will blogging goodness, half the calories.
Or something like that.
