A variation of the above question could be: "What should be your priorities in life?" I find it interesting that replacing one word can turn a fairly mundane enquiry into a value laden challenge! It would be reasonable to expect some people to become a little defensive when asked to both state their answer, but also assess if their answer is justifiable against some standard, set by either themselves or others.
How should we begin to answer the question: "What should be your priorities in life?" By definition the first consideration must be to consider the sustainability of the life in question. If you find yourself in a life threatening situation, the priority you place on your own safety might need to be elevated from the depths of the everyday ranking to take a much higher ranking, and do so very quickly. However these situations don't happen very often so let's treat them as a special emergency case that can be put aside for now.
Of course there is a practically limitless number of activities that could be argued as being worthy of being highly ranked on an individual's priority list at any given time. Instead of trying to discuss these activities themselves, they might be categorised into three categories: constructive, destructive, and wasteful.
To cut the discussion short, I am going to suggest that being constructive should be a guiding priority, noting that destruction of physical things can still be constructive in a broader context, such as replacing old with new. I suggest that it would be hard to argue that being destructive or wasteful should be a priority over being constructive.
Reflecting on these three categories and the desire to possess constructive priorities, it would appear the challenge is how to distinguish between those things in life that are in fact constructive, rather than destructive or merely wasteful in a less apparent way. For example, the usefulness of some item, or the benefit of some activity, may degrade over the longer term despite some short term gains. This could be simply termed as a measure of sustainability.
It is desirable to cultivate sustainable and constructive priorities in the lives of ourselves and others. My final suggestion is that in our ever increasingly complex and hectic modern lives, the frequent self appraisal of the question itself may be the most practicable method to answer the question: "What should be my priorities in life?"
Jesus obviously thought about these issues and he cut to the chase, by saying our first priority is to love God with all our heart and all your soul and with all your mind…and love your neighbour as yourself (Matthew 22 verses 37-38).
This is the guiding principle for all our decisions in making priorities for our lives.