Priorities

The videos watched this week from Jan Newman, Wences Casares, and Steve Blank were really interesting and insightful. These videos caused me to think a lot about the idea of priorities in life. If we are focused on things that don’t really matter we won’t find true happiness. Jan Newman talked about how people try and cram and keep everything in their lives even as life gets very busy. This is when we have to looking at what really matters. In my life I strive to focus my time between 5:30pm and about 7:30pm on my family on weekdays. It doesn’t matter how much I have to do, if I cannot have that time with them then is what I’m doing really that important? Obviously it doesn’t always work out, but I try and compensate at other times if this occurs, and at times it also means much later nights but that’s okay. The Mentor Session this week hit on the idea of one reason for becoming an entrepreneur is to be able to manage your schedule more so than when you have a structured job. While I do think this can be a benefit it is not a guarantee and the book admits that this does take some time. This can be scary because I know of families that have crumbled apart due to the stress and long hours that are being focused on the work aspect of life while the family importance was left behind. In a business we need to be thinking about our priorities as well. The Mentor Session talked about how when people have money as their main goal they are not as successful. A question I need to ask myself when considering a business venture would be, why do I really want this business to be successful? That question can have more than one answer, but if those answers only focus on things like money then it probably isn’t a good path to take.