You are reading the FRACAT Blog Archive (also known as "FRACAT 1.0") for all posts prior to October 29th, 2007.
How I Unscrewed My Proirities
I’m guessing that, had you asked me during most of my working life, I would have answered like most American man. My priorities would have ranked:
1. God
2. My Family
3. My Career
4. Me
However, also like most American men, if you had looked at what I was actually doing my priorities would probably have looked like this:
1. My Career
2. Me
3. My Family
4. God
I’m sure most of you are the same. How much time do you spend at work? How much time do you spend with your kids (if you’ve got ‘em)? How much of the time you should be spending with your kids are you spending on work?
I should say that I’ve improved my priorities, but they’re still in the process of being straightened out.
But the key is that I can’t live the way God wants me to until I start to move my priorities to align with what He says. And neither can you.
HOW DID I KNOW MY PRIORITIES WERE OFF?
As I did the typical “working my way up the ladder” thing, I found that I was spending more time working on work, more time out of town, and less time with my family. In fact, even though I was making more money, my effective hourly rate was dropping because of the amount of time I spent on work.
When this revelation came to me, I started paying attention to the lives of the people around me. In conversations about kids and spouses, I noticed that EVERY SINGLE Vice President or above at the companies where I worked had been divorced at least once.
When I asked why, the inevitable answer was that he spent a lot of time, energy, and effort at work so that his family could have the nice things and lifestyle to which they had grown accustomed. Ultimately, they became accustomed to not having him home, too, so they divorced.
I may not be good at math, but even I can solve this math problem: “100% of vice presidents at your company are divorced, 95% of them because of the hours that they have to spend at work. If you become a vice president, what are the odds that you will be divorced?”
THERE ISN’T MUCH FAMILY TIME TO BE HAD
My oldest daughter is turning 9 soon and it occurred to me that we will soon be halfway done with our time with her. And yes, she will be moving away to college at 18(ish). And no, she will not be coming back to live with us until she’s 36 (Or 26. Or 19.)
So, I could choose to spend more time with her while she’s here or I could spend more time working so that she can spend less time with me, but at least she’d be in nicer clothes.
It was this same calculation that I did when I decided (after the last company I had worked for got bought and laid off a third of the company) to work for myself. I took a big pay cut to do so, but I get to spend more time with my kids while I have ‘em and I’m not living on the road any more.
That is the way that I interpret God’s priorities to apply to me.
WHAT I’M NOT SAYING
I’m not saying that you have to quit your job to please God. I’m not saying that you have to be attached to your kids at the hip. And I’m not saying that to pursue corporate success is “anti-God”.
What I am saying is that God gave you your kids and absolutely wants you to raise them. So, if you find yourself sending your kids to school to learn, to church to hear about God, away to activities during any other spare time they might have, and spending 30 minutes in the morning and an hour at night with them before bed, you might want to consider whether you are raising your kids.
There’s plenty of time to pursue business success throughout your life. But your Family Time is preciously limited.
Photo by: Aussie Gall
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