What is your priority?

By Daniel Francis

I recently heard a story that got me thinking. The gist of the story is a banker was on vacation in the Caribbean and tasted the most delicious fish he had ever tasted from a local fisherman.

Amazed by the quality of the fish, the banker urged the fisherman to buy another boat, get more staff, and once profits skyrocketed, build a factory. The banker told the fisherman that he would be rich and be able to spend all the time he wanted with his family as a result. To which the fisherman replied, “But I already do that.”

The banker in this story reminds me of many people. Not the business acumen but the paucity behind why we do anything.

I see many lost souls out there, grinding for grinding sake, busy for busy sake. There is no rhyme nor reason for why they are doing what they are doing but they are working themselves to the bone to the point where burnout is a norm. There is a severe burnout culture that I have noticed, and I want to encourage individuals who fit this profile to ask themselves the reason they are pushing themselves so hard and what is important in their life.

We cannot shirk the importance of money. Let’s be real. Most of our goals are tied to the access we have to sufficient funds. That being said, money is not the end-all and be-all.

It is so easy to get caught up in the ‘work machine’ that we forget that we must also prioritise the different areas of our life.

A speech from Coca-Cola ex-CEO Brian Dyson comes to mind. In a portion of the speech, he likens life to a game in which we are juggling five balls. These balls represent work, family, health, friends, and spirit. All the balls are made of glass except for one which is made of rubber—the ball representing work.

He went on to say that life is a balancing act where we are juggling all these balls but what we tend to do is overly prioritise the work ball, which causes us to drop the other balls from time to time. When we drop the family, health, friends, and spirit balls because they are made of glass, they crack and are altered permanently.

It all comes back to what is important to you. Is there balance in your life? Are you working yourself to death while all the other areas of your life suffer?

God blessed us with free will and it is with that free will we decide how we live our lives. We must make an extra effort to be more intentional about what we do and why we do it.

We need to be more like the fisherman in the story who understood that he wanted to live his life where he could prioritise time spent with his family and not let himself get caught up in the treadmill of work where he may lose sight of that priority.

Be clear on what are your priorities in life and don’t lose yourself to something that pulls you away from those priorities.

Daniel Francis is a millennial helping other millennials. He is a two-time author of the books The Millennial Mind and The Millennial Experience, and an entrepreneur. Over the past four years, he has served as a Personal Development Coach whose work targets Millennials and helps them tap into their full potential. He is also a Self-publishing coach and has guided hundreds on self-publishing their book successfully.

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Email: themillennialmind2020@gmail.com

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