Someone close to me struggled with addiction. I was more supportive than most, making an effort to spend some one-on-one time, and having difficult conversation

Someone close to me struggled with addiction. I was more supportive than most, making an effort to spend some one-on-one time, and having difficult conversations about his treatment. (In hindsight I still wish I did more.) In spite of all my professional experience (where knowing and reassessing priorities is a constant) the most powerful impact on my ability to prioritize in my personal life was a phrase from his study: > What do you want to do? And what are you prepared to give up in order to do it? This hit me like the proverbial freight train. Every time I have to consider my inability to meet a priority in my personal life, I now always consider it in the frame of what I can lose. Indeed, letting go of things I previously prioritized - but are unimportant - is more joy than most of the pain needed to fulfill many of the difficult tasks in my life. Perhaps I also do this in my professional life too. On difficult projects in the past I enjoyed the disapproving glances in the morning stand-up when I say "didn't do it" to 2 tickets only to be able to say "done, merged, and closed" to 1. Doing a little bit of each, in some circumstances, would have murdered productivity. If they didn't like which one they should have said which was more important. I also appreciate what ISL said about the author's age. Time has also helped me to appreciate that everything exists in a context, and a person's age is a very important frame for understanding others.