{"id":1612,"date":"2014-08-28T10:16:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-28T16:16:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=1612"},"modified":"2014-08-22T10:26:45","modified_gmt":"2014-08-22T16:26:45","slug":"priorities-and-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1612","title":{"rendered":"Priorities and Focus"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"ben
Photo by TCDisrupt<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I enjoyed Ben Horowitz’s ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’<\/a>.\u00a0 It was an in depth view of the lonely life of a CEO going through hard hard times.\u00a0 I was only recently out of school when the dotcom bust<\/a> happened, but I still remember layoffs–the company where I worked was going to be huge! “offices in Singapore and London!” until it wasn’t–which happened the week before Thanksgiving.<\/p>\n

I cannot imagine what it was like to be in upper management in those times.<\/p>\n

Must have been pretty wretched.<\/p>\n

My favorite part of the book, though, is this section<\/a>:<\/p>\n

One very hot day my father came over for a visit. We could not afford air-conditioning, and all three children were crying as my father and I sat there sweating in the 105-degree heat.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

My father turned to me and said, \u201cSon, do you know what\u2019s cheap?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Since I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about, I replied, \u201cNo, what?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cFlowers. Flowers are really cheap. But do you know what\u2019s expensive?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Again, I replied, \u201cNo, what?\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He said, \u201cDivorce.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Something about that joke, which was not really a joke, made me realize that I had run out of time. Up until that point, I had not really made any serious choices. I felt like I had unlimited bandwidth and could do everything in life that I wanted to do simultaneously. But his joke made it suddenly clear that by continuing on the course I was on, I might lose my family. By doing everything, I would fail at the most important thing. It was the first time that I forced myself to look at the world through priorities that were not purely my own. I thought that I could pursue my career, all my interests, and build my family. More important, I always thought about myself first. When you are part of a family or part of a group, that kind of thinking can get you into trouble, and I was in deep trouble. In my mind, I was confident that I was a good person and not selfish, but my actions said otherwise. I had to stop being a boy and become a man. I had to put first things first. I had to consider the people who I cared about most before considering myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a beautiful vignette.<\/p>\n

As a father with a lot of interests, this really resonated with me. Kids (or, I imagine, other major challenges such as a sick relative) take so much time that they force you to re-evaluate everything and think about your priorities and life focus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I enjoyed Ben Horowitz’s ‘The Hard Thing about Hard Things’.\u00a0 It was an in depth view of the lonely life of a CEO going through hard hard times.\u00a0 I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,59],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-lifehack"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1612"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1620,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1612\/revisions\/1620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}