Essentialism

"If you don't prioritize your life, someone else will."
These words come from Greg McKeown, the New York Times bestselling author of the book "Essentialism - The Disciplined Pursuit of Less".
The book explains how we can't do it all and, in order to arrive at maximum success, we need to cut out anything that is not essential to our success. This does not only mean cutting out the unnecessary, but it includes cutting out great opportunities that we want to pursue and cutting out tasks that seem important. All of these might seem essential, but, in reality, they are not.
Nonessentialism is probably part of all lives. Or, at least, it was until some point in most lives.

Before prioritizing my activities, I accepted meetings in the middle of the night because my meeting partners were located on other continents, I followed my to-do list by order rather than by priority, and, overall, I stretched myself too thin. Luckily, this period of time did not last for long.

Then, even before reading the book, I started my essentialism journey. I started planning meetings at working times that are convenient to everyone. I realized that this does not make me less respected, but even more respected, because I took better care of myself and therefore improved the quality of my work. I also prioritzed my work by finding out what my "high energy" and "low energy" times were. High energy times were used for creative entrepreneurial tasks and essays etc. and low energy times were used for replying and writing emails or folding laundry etc.

Now, after reading the book, I am refining my approach to essentialism as I did not think before that essentialism means cutting out great opportunities for maximum success without stretching oneself too thin. I am still learning to prioritize my tasks.
At the end of the day, as the book explains, "the word priority came into the English language in the 1400s. It was singular. It meant the very first or prior thing. [...] Only in the 1900s [we pluralized] the term and [started] talking about priorities."
I hope that you are on the same journey.

References
McKeown, Greg. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. VIRGIN BOOKS, 2021.