Are Your Priorities Out of Whack?
After I left the military, I went to work for a Fortune 100 company. I was doing well and climbing the corporate ladder. The company moved us from Georgia to Ohio, from Ohio to St. Louis, and from St. Louis to Florida, all within five years. This was good. This is what you do when you work hard for yourself and your family. You get promoted, and you bounce around to move up. For my family. To give them a better life.
Here’s a typical work trip that I would have done back then. I would arrive in Orlando for a regional sales manager meeting on Tuesday afternoon around 3:00 pm. The entire time I was traveling to Orlando, I was on the phone, working – making things happen.
I would probably have forgotten to text or call my wife to let her know that I arrived when I pulled into the hotel at 3:00 pm.
From 3:00-4:58 pm, I would be in my hotel room knocking out as many work emails and phone calls as possible – making things happen. I’d get downstairs in the Gold Ballroom for our 5:00 pm sales meeting kick-off, where we would live for the next 3.5 days. Over those next 3.5 days, I’d be in that room from 7:30 pm until 5:30 pm, crushing work with the rest of my colleagues.
If we would get a bathroom break at any point, I would be on my phone or the computer or talking to my boss or another manager about the business – making things happen.
At night, when we would be done in the Gold Ballroom at 5:30 pm, I would usually run up to the room, do more emails and work phone calls, and return by 6:30 pm for our team dinner. Over the next 3 hours, we would eat an amazing meal, drink wine, and talk about business.
Then, after dinner, the go-getters would usually end up at the bar. We’d have another few drinks, discuss business, and make it happen, solving all of the company and industry problems and challenges.
At about midnight, everyone would be heading to their rooms. I’d get to my room, crush some work emails for another hour or so, and then get some sleep. You know, making it happen.
Repeat this schedule for the next few days, and that’s what my week looked like. I was making it happen.
At the end of the week, I’d pull into the house at 6:00 pm, just in time for dinner, and I was tapped out. Out of gas. I was worn out from the week, worn out from the late nights and worn out from being insanely engaged every minute of the day. I was worn out from too much rich food and rich wine. I was just worn out.
So what did my wife and the kids get over the next few days? Very little. A tired husband and an exhausted dad. When my wife would give me some pushback on this, I used to argue and brag: “When I’m home, I am HOME. I don’t play golf, I don’t go out with the guys, I don’t have a boat, I am HERE.” In other words, what a great husband I was, what a great dad I was and what a great provider I was. But I wasn’t. I was out of gas. I didn’t have balance.
We convince ourselves we are doing this for our families, that we are trying to give them a better life – for our wife and kids. We are constantly on our smartphones, checking every ding at the dinner table, thinking, “This could be an important work email. I better check that.” But the reality for me – and I think for us – is that our priorities are out of whack. When we are working hard for the weekend but have nothing left to give to the family on the weekend, our priorities are out of whack. When you move your family multiple times in less than five years because these promotions are going to help your family, maybe your priorities are out of whack. When you are driving to a meeting, talking on your phone through Bluetooth to a customer, steering your car with your knees because you are capturing all of these notes on your laptop, maybe your priorities are out of whack. When you say you are doing this all for your family – but you (I) don’t have 2 minutes to check in with your wife and tell her that you love her, your priorities, my priorities, are out of whack.
I will take it one step further. It’s not just our priorities that are out of whack. Our values are out of whack. Because if we are being totally honest, if I am being totally honest, all of this “crushing at work” for my family is way more about me crushing it at work for me. I put value in an identity based on titles at work, reputation, materialism, and comfort. I was valuing all sorts of other things more than I truly valued my marriage and my kids. Here’s the bottom line, our activities are influenced by what we prioritize, and what we prioritize is influenced by what we value.
The visual below walks through the 5 CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE and is a great way to audit how you are doing in the critical areas of your life. If I had to grade myself with 100% honesty, back then, in my “Florida Business” example, I would have had an A- for the TEAM and the ORGANIZATION. The other three circles – SELF, FAMILY, and COMMUNITY – would have been close to a failing grade…probably a D-. That’s not being entirely honest. I’m sure I wasn’t that much of a superstar at work with my team or the higher-level organization. If I was a kind of a zero at home with my family, logic would dictate that I had to be negatively leaking out on my team at work.
You can’t be a zero at home and a hero at work. You are kidding yourself if you think that (and I did for a long time).
This is less about balance, and more about having intentionality to live out the right values – and from this, we prioritize the things that are most important by having all of this show up in the right activities. If we don’t do this, we are accidental in our leadership and our influence. We will be swept away by the tide of culture and subcultures, and we start getting subpar grades on what is most important to us. We need to be intentional with ourselves and our family first. And there is a great argument that can be made that when you crush the most important needs of taking care of yourself and your family, this will flow out into your other spheres of influence and you will crush it at work – and in your community.
I turned that ship around with a lot of grace, mostly from my wife and kids – and a lot of helpful counseling and prayer. I am now a very intentional leader and influencer with myself, my family, my work, and my community.
In a future article, I’ll unpack some practical things I did to turn the ship around, with the hope that it can be helpful for you too. In the meantime, ask yourself these questions in the spirit of doing a self-audit on how well you are managing your priorities:
What do you value more – work or family/friends?
How does this line up with your priorities and your activities?
How would your wife and kids answer this for you?