I say this often:

Your calendar is like a jar full of water. If it's 16 ounces, you can only fit 16 ounces. The 17th ounce will spill out all over the place.

Sounds simple, but the reality is that everything you do has a cost.

I'm not talking about financial costs. I'm talking about the costs of focus, time, and attention.

Two Big Things

Jason Cohen (2x unicorn founder and one of my favorite writers) has an epic post on this: (you can have two Big Things, but not three)

We clearly believe the same thing about the finite limits of one's life

TLDR, you can excel at two "Big Things" - which means that the rest are going to fall somewhere between "pretty okay" and "categorically neglected".

It feels kinda depressing for a minute - seeing our self-indulgent dreams of being great at everything get destroyed by the boundaries of reality.

But it's the truth - and that truth leaves one question in its wake:

WTF are we supposed to do about it?

Prioritization And Impermanence

When I sat down to consider how I deal with these inherent limitations of life, these were the two words that came to mind.

I don't have a magic "framework" or "process" around this - just these two core beliefs that help me reconcile things when I feel like I'm out of balance.

Prioritization

This is always my first stop - I ponder a few questions:

1. Do I actually know (with crystal clarity) what my priorities are? And more importantly, have I set a threshold for results where I'll allow myself to re-assess the priority?

2. Am I saying "no" enough? It's easy to convince yourself that you're saying no at an appropriate rate, but if you can't actually list off a half dozen things that you've said "no" to recently...you might have some work to do.

3. Does my calendar reflect my priorities? I learned this one from Dan: "If you show me your calendar, I'll show you your priorities".

There's no magic in these questions - they just serve as a forcing function to make me take a hard look at whether or not I know what my priorities are, to see if I'm actually protecting them, and if I'm giving them enough time and attention to actually make progress.

The problem is, even if you have all this prioritzation stuff dialed in, you still might not love what it's telling you - which brings me to the second belief:

Impermanence

Here's a tweet from Hormozi to set the table:

This sums it up pretty well.

He probably didn't invent the frame of life being made up of seasons, but he and Leila are where I first heard it - and I find myself coming back to it often.

I think that people stress themselves out about what "right" is supposed to be like. What is the right work-life balance, what is the "right" amount of hours or revenue or profit or days or years or team members or whatever 😡

It. Doesn't. Matter.

Why? Because…

Nothing Is Forever

Sometimes you'll be in a season of "grinding" - if you're running a company, it happens. But if you are living in accordance with a belief that whatever you're working on deserves to be a priority, and you have a goal after which you'll re-evaluate things, it might just be that you're doing what's required.

For a season.

Look, I nearly burned myself to the ground running my first company UpLaunch - for a variety of reasons. I was inexperienced, making mistakes, winning through brute force, pulling all-nighters, not exercising, not sleeping, not being a particularly attentive husband, and being a very exhausted dad.

By the time I sold that business, I was on the edge of burnout. It was a tough season. Despite the fact that we "won" by having a legitimately successful exit, it came at a high cost.

The next season was spending about 15 months working at the company that acquired us. I wasn't a shitbag, I worked hard...but it wasn't the obsession-level-to-my-own-detriment level of work that I did pre-acquisition. I started sleeping, working out, doing more with my family...it was a season of recovery.

Bottom line...nothing is permanent. One day, you'll be dead - it's just the reality of things. You get to make the rules, you get to decide who you want to be and where that person puts their time and effort and focus.

There is no right - there's only "right for you".

The message I want to leave you with is that the only "wrong" thing you can do is not making these decisions on purpose. Live by design, not by default.

But above all...just live your truth. Go into it eyes wide open, knowing that you ultimately have control...and things will usually work out alright.

MV