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If You Don't Prioritize Your Life, Someone Else Will

• doktrin 14y ago
  Having been in this situation before (albeit never missing something as monumental as the birth of my child), I would add another reason for this type of faulty prioritization : vanity. It's so easy to be tempted by the notion that I am in fact so crucial and important to the business at hand that I have to attend. Flaunting the notion of my own importance was even bizarrely empowering. It's of course completely hollow and meaningless, and ultimately self-defeating.
  • krosaen 14y ago
    So true, many times when I've lost sleep over a decision before ultimately saying, "no" I've been surprised that the other party is completely OK with it - I had assumed my saying yes was waaaay more important to them than it really was.
• miles 14y ago
  The title reminds me of this quote (which entrepreneurs will appreciate) from Christopher Morley's Where the Blue Begins: "There is only one success ... to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it." http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1402/1402.txt http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1402/1402.txt
  • tomelders 14y ago
    reminds me of another quote... “If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” ~ Jim Rohn
  • deleted 14y ago
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• columbo 14y ago
  More posts like these need to go up on HN. I became a developer during the first boom (97) and spent countless all-nighters working on products for companies that simply no longer exist. I remember sleeping at the office, being up for days in a row, all that work for software that is probably stored in an IT closet, or purchased and used simply for the patents. With this second boom and it's Hackathons and 2-week-challenges I find myself saying "No" quite often. "No, this is my daughter's soccer practice.", "No, I have a dinner date with my wife." and so on. I stil work on startup ideas and I tend to take on more than I can chew. But now if I've got to make a choice between finishing a product or being a good parent/husband I'll take the latter.
  • cantrevealname 14y ago
    > if I've got to make a choice between finishing a product or being a good parent/husband I'll take the latter And that's why most successful startups are founded by childless, unmarried, under 30s. Being young correlates to being energetic and not risk averse, and having no family commitments correlates to choosing the product over going to soccer practice.
    • mmatants 14y ago
      I'm not sure that working 16hrs per day vs 8hrs gives a 2x increase in productivity. Maybe not even 1.5x - maybe not even 1.2x. And even if it was a 2x increase in output, I'm not sure that that's an enabling variable in a startup's success.
      • columbo 14y ago
        I agree. I may be an old codger but when I think back on all the 16+ hour days I've worked the vast majority fell into a few categories: 80% Fixing some stupid emergency drop everything issue that was somewhere between the user's keyboard and the oracle database. 19.99% Implementing some feature that got lost in the shuffle when clients are showing up tomorrow morning for a demo 0.01% Actually bringing the product forward and beating out the competition. Honestly, over fifteen years I can only think of a few days where I ended at 10pm and said "yeah, that was a good day, we really got ourselves ahead", more often than not it was "shit, at least we are barely above water." Of course YMMV
• deleted 14y ago
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• samspot 14y ago
  For my wife's 30th birthday our inlaws paid for a mini vacation in probably the nicest hotel we'll ever visit. We had a fancy dinner planned for the first night and it had been a long time since my wife and I had gotten away from the kids. As we are pulling into the hotel the system for one of our largest clients goes down. I'm the only developer on this particular system (we're a small company) and we end up cancelling dinner so that I can work all evening to get the system back up. I still don't know if I made the right choice there. Yes it could have meant my job if I ignored the pager, but maybe I shouldn't be working for a place that has no respect for my other priorities.
  • Mz 14y ago
    fwiw: I think you made the right choice. Work is sacrosanct. I hope the rest of the weekend with your wife was lovely, but losing your job likely would not have made her happy. -- former military wife who spent many a birthday alone
    • cgopalan 14y ago
      Even at the cost of family and friends? I dont see work as sacrosanct. Its a section of your life devoted to help you sustain a living. Some people love it, some people dont. There are other parts of your life that need the same, if not more of an attention to develop your character as a whole.
      • Mz 14y ago
        I have been meaning to write a blog post about this. I think if friends and family don't understand that your work is a priority, they should be cut loose. There are times when you should try to prioritize family. I spoke to that in another comment in this same discussion. (And I was a homemaker and fulltime mom for two decades, so my family was my work.) But unless it is the kind of friend that would happily follow you through the gates of hell, they probably don't deserve more loyalty than your job. And if they are that kind of friend, you probably have a word for them other than "friend", like blood brother or at least best friend.
• minikites 14y ago
  How much of this is caused by the "asker/guesser" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/change-life-asker-guesser http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/may/08/change-li...) misunderstanding? Probably a lot, since the main example in the article seems like one.
  • paulgb 14y ago
    This is a great article, I hope you don't mind my submitting it to the main page. I was half-expecting it to forward me to past discussion.
• kjhughes 14y ago
  The wife and newborn example sure does evoke an easy, "duh, dude, you screwed-up" response. The trick is knowing, in the moment, which alternative action will best serve which subset of priorities over which time frames. It's not always so obvious as newborn vs client meeting. Sometime it's flying an airplane vs client meeting.
• eumenides1 14y ago
  In my experience, I started by saying yes to everything and getting burned. Then as I got older, I learned to say "no" and how say/how not to say/how to imply "no". At first it's hard, but people will learn to accept your "no"s and is a sign of respect when they stop questioning why you said "no". (assumption: no is backed up by reasonable and rational reasons)
• altrego99 14y ago
  What if the situation in his example was reversed? What if, his wife lay with the newborn baby, and he felt that he wanted to go visit the client, but he said 'no' instead? Would he still be wrong?
  • lookACamel 14y ago
    That's not really the point. It's not really about objectively correct decisions. It's about knowing the difference between what you think is important and what you think others think is important.
• jfischer 14y ago
  Nice article. I think it highlights the challenge of trying to balance multiple sources of priority, all of which are important to you. Of course, we can say that the family is the most important (which it should be), but, if you always prioritize family events over work, you might not have much of a career. Beyond maintaining an awareness of your internal decision process, I think it is important to communicate to everyone your commitments and stick to them. In the long run, being reliable is more important than being being a hero in a specific situation. In the Gandhi example, he did not prioritize his grandson to the exclusion of everything else, but he did make a commitment and followed through consistently. Of course, this type of prioritization issue also applies to work within a startup. There's always more to do than you can possibly finish, and you need to pick between multiple urgent tasks...
• fitandfunction 14y ago
  Great advice, but very difficult to follow when you're living paycheck to paycheck. For most people, I think the progression is 1) establish basic financial freedom (6 - 12 mo of basic living expenses in a liquid fund) and then 2) pick your moves purposefully. (1) is easier than most people think, and once you have it becomes a lot easier to clear your head and address (2).
• alexshye 14y ago
  Good article. Before quitting my day job, I was constantly surprised at the number of meetings I could miss. I would sleep through many morning meetings. Other meetings looked boring and I would choose to miss. If there was anything important in most of the meetings, someone would find me later and catch me up in a minute or less. It is very easy for people to spend their whole day doing what they think is required of them, even if very little of it is actually required.
• Mz 14y ago
  I don't understand the article title. It looks like no one was "prioritizing" anything for him. He made the wrong call when it wasn't really required. Why blame someone else? We all make mistakes. Hopefully, we learn from them. (If you do this right, the reward is that you get to make all new mistakes instead of repeating the same ones.) For any future father's here, my ex was there to hold my hand during the births of our two sons. It was one of the better things he did. I didn't care if he forgot my birthday, especially once I realized he couldn't remember his own. He had a demanding career and he was a challenging person to deal with. But it meant a lot to me that he was there when our sons were born. It meant even more to me when I found out 2.5 years later that I apparently clawed him bloody during the very difficult birth of our first child and he never complained. He brought that detail up exactly once in all the years we were married. He mentioned it while shooing away some nurse who thought I was being a bitch during the birth of our second child. He waved her off and said "You are doing fine. You haven't drawn blood this time." I both respected and appreciated that.
  • debacle 14y ago
    "If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice." By going with the flow, as many of us are wont to do, we get caught up by those who decide that they are going to go their own way.
  • ChuckMcM 14y ago
    My take on it was that when he was told "The customer will respect this choice." They were telling him that it was a higher priority that he make the meeting than anything else. Rather than question that, he simply accepted it. And therein lies the trap. You let people tell you what your priorities are rather than setting them yourself. And yes setting your own priorities will get you fired some times (been there, done that) but it will also keep you balanced. Time runs only one way, and then it stops. If you accumulate regrets life gets less and less enjoyable.
    • Mz 14y ago
      From the way the article is worded, it does not sound like he missed the birth of the child or left for a week. I agree with your point about needing to set your own priorities, but I honestly don't understand what the author is whining about. My ex was career military. Military men frequently cannot be home for birthdays, anniversaries and even the birth of a child. My husband had to find a way to get out of a deployment to be there when our second child was born. I appreciate that he did that but I also know I am fortunate: His chain of command was not required to give him an option. I tend to not understand the complaints of people who have had cushier lives than I have had. I am okay with that. I think most people are wusses and whiners and I wouldn't want to live like they live. I will no doubt regret replying to this. I seem to have misplaced my PC filter. Peace.
• jeffdavis 14y ago
  I generally agree with the sentiment, but I'm not convinced at all by deathbed regrets. It's easy to say you wish you spent less time working and more time doing the things you love, because it's easy to forget how working hard enabled you to do the things you love.
• zalew 14y ago
  In many cultures (f.ex. Japanese, Arab) it's the social norm to prioritize family, and you are expected to do it. It's the westerners who ruined it, I can't believe how it can be socially acceptable to miss a child birth for a client meeting. If I were his client and knew he came while his wife is at labor, I would think this guy is completely messed up and needs some serious help, and sent him away quickly.
• budley 14y ago
  What twaddle, look at the author. Greg McKeown is the CEO of THIS Inc., a leadership and strategy design agency headquartered in Silicon Valley. He was recently named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. Greg did his graduate work at Stanford.