Priorities

One of the first things I try to get across to new team members, whether transfers from other departments, new hires, or interns, is the concept of priorities.  We all have them, we all operate based on them, and few of us can find a correlation between the two.

For example, many people today will say that the environment is a priority - and then, in the same breath, tell you about their planned plane trip to another country.  They don't think that their pleasure is a priority over the environment, but they act that way.  Is it hypocritical? Sure.  But we're all hypocritical, so we can't exactly fault them for it.

This is not a rant about the environment.  This is an essay about priorities.  Specifically, discerning what your priorities are, what you'd like them to be, and keeping them in mind at all times.  And knowing when your priorities have been changed on you so that when you break your priorities, you know that you're doing so, and you know why you are doing so.

When I first joined IBM (yes, I work for them, no I don't speak for them, you know the drill - I'm a software dev, not a spokesman), I had a mentor of sorts named Jay Lennox.  I can never express how grateful I am for his advice and mentorship, even though there was no official mentor relationship there.  He gave freely of his advice, much of which will likely show up here over time.  But the first piece of that that I will share is his simple statement on priorities.  It's something I had always known, but never put into words.  And once I had the words, it also became easier to follow.

"You can work to live, or live to work."  It's such a short and simple philosophy, but also so critical, especially in an age where everything operates at top speed, where your employment seems to define who you are, but also where we are expected to put in crazy hours.  You can so easily find yourself sucked into a vortex of ever-lengthening work hours, or you can put a stop to it, put in your allotted time, and go home, and do other things.  Like date, marry, have kids, play with your kids ... or whatever it is that is your passion.  Even if that's writing open-source software.

This doesn't mean that when your boss asks you to be on call over a weekend, or straight out work the weekend, that you say no.  It means that you find that compromise.  And if that means you might give up a promotion here and there, well, you have to remember what your priorities are: is it to become a high-level manager, or to play with your kids?  If that's the tradeoff you have to make (either giving up the management position, or giving up on having kids), then that's the tradeoff you make.

I have regular conversations with my manager about our work-life balance.  Very regular conversations.  We're always looking to adjust things to provide better balance over the long term.  That's not to say I'm not well off that way as I've been working from home since 2002.  But, as management and direction changes, things can skew the wrong way, and we need to remember our priorities to try to drag things back.