It should come as no surprise that I watch Bravo TV shows. After all, I’m a writer, and when I don’t feel like writing or have no ideas or want to avoid pushing past page 22 and into page 23 — the Housewives are a good distraction.

So I’m watching the Real Housewives of New Jersey (not my favorite, but they’ll do in a housewife-y pinch) and I glance up to see Teresa praying in her private chapel. Located at the end of her vacation cabin’s driveway.

And I seriously doubt my own intelligence for choosing to keep watching in lieu of switching off the television for betraying my intelligence in such a fashion. Because there are people in the world who have taken the time — and tens of thousands of dollars — to build a chapel as an add-on to their vacation home.

They could have paid their mortgage on time. They could have stopped running up credit card debt. They could have saved money for their retirement, their kids’ educational needs, or a bigger cabin. Nope. A chapel — and they aren’t even religious.

Oh. Oh my. Have you been building a chapel, over there?

You’ve redesigned your blog header for the fifth time. You’re taking six hours to write a blog post. You’ve been telling your kids you’ll be with them in a minute for the last 38 minutes to catch some Facebook time.

When you let the details of your business overtake the big picture, you might as well be paying $3,000 for that imported turret on top of the teeny tiny church you’re building to impress the neighbors.

To make a quick chapel-check of your to-do list…mark each of today’s planned business activities as contributing to your long-term goals, your short term goals, or to this week’s goals. Because hey, you’re so busy that you can’t see more than 7 days from now.

Aim to double the number of longer term goals you’re working on.

Promotional designs, tasks related to next season’s projects, tweaking SEO effectiveness, hashing out your marketing calendar, and/or writing better web copy are all great activities to keep at the forefront of your daily to-dos.

E-mail checks, phone calls, order processing, packaging, shipping, and accounting are crucial business tasks — but they aren’t focused on the longer term or the bigger picture.

One misstep, and you’ll be ordering another angel statue for your driveway from Amazon instead of letting clients know about your latest promo.

P.S.  How to make space for what really matters.