No one ever said “I wish I’d spent more time in stop and go traffic.”

A couple years ago, my life consisted of getting up early in an attempt to avoid an awful commute that still took me an hour, working all day, then spending an hour or 90-minutes driving home to spend an hour or two with my daughter before she had to go to bed. Really, quite a normal experience, isn’t it? But, it didn’t feel quite right.

Let’s do the math here:

60 minutes driving to work
+
90 minutes driving home
= 150 minutes driving in traffic.

120 minutes < 150 minutes

daughter < commute

No. Something broken. Something was very broken.

So, I made a change. My family and I moved to somewhere with no traffic, and I worked remotely. I usually spent an hour with daughter in the morning getting ready for school, then picked her up from school and spent 30 minutes or so with her before I stuck her on her homework and I focused back on work, then four hours with her after work and before she went to bed.

My new math:

60 minutes in the morning
+
30 minutes in the afternoon
+
240 minutes in the evening
=
330 minutes with my child.

330 minutes > 120 minutes

daughter > commute

Yes. Good. Right.

Priorities should drive the decisions that we make. Time is the most precious commodity we have and so taking a look at how we are using it is critical to the life that each of us ends up leading. We can’t always control everything, but we can make decisions that can lead to change.

Today, I take the next step on this journey. Although I love my work and I have been amazingly lucky to have the broad impact that I’ve had, I have chosen to leave my job and spend the next 6 months on a “Sabbatical”, to focus on my family and be fully present in my life. I hope to do a great deal of self-reflection too, and spend some time sharing my thoughts and experiences. If you are interested in how this all unfolds, follow my journey on this blog… if it’s worth the time.