What matters: circles of priorities.

A perspective beyond Maslow’s “hierarchy”.

Without getting into too much detail, most of us are familiar enough with Maslow’s so-called “hierarchy of needs”.

The basic idea is that we must take care of our basic needs before we can move on to “more advanced” stuff like morality, creativity and the like.

This framework is useful for highlighting stuff that should be mandatory — things that might even be included in a “Declaration of Human Rights”.

However, as I navigate through life, this framework doesn’t help much with prioritization — what matters day-to-day and how to spend my time.

A new framework: circles of priorities.

This idea is rough, but the gist is maybe a way of framing priorities in life is to think about circles that build on one another.

1/a) At the core of the circle is You.

The concept here is that if you don’t take care of your own physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health, you can’t proceed from the center.

Now, of course being self-centered is no way to roll, but much like on the plane you have to put your air mask on first in case of emergency, if you don’t take care of yourself, at some point you literally won’t be around to do anything else.

1/b) Just after you / tied for first is Family.

Sometimes, one should put your family ahead of your own health in the immediate term, and we all do this sometimes. Perhaps because I’m about to be a father for the first time, I’ve been thinking a lot more about this lately. Taking care of my baby girl and my wife are really all that matters to me in this next phase. Of course, as you’ll see shortly, it doesn’t stop there, but creating this foundation is essential.

2) Next up is nurturing Relationships.

When I look at friends I admire, they share a common trait of doing a great job of maintaining relationships with those that are close to them. The concept here is one I’ve been thinking a lot about lately, and it is the foundation for #Bloom — an idea I’ll be writing about here on Medium sometime soon — but the gist is that it is very important to put energy into relationships in order to allow them to blossom. And like the organic processes they are, the evolution of relationships isn’t an analytical thing.

The closest metaphor I can think of here is one of growing a plant. You start with planting a seed, and over time you water the plant to let it grow.

Similarly, with relationships, meeting someone and having a great initial conversation is simply the seed. From that point one must put more energy into the relationship to nurture it and let it grow.

3) Beyond relationships comes everything else.

After relationships comes all the other stuff like career, community participation, interests and other projects.

Of course many of these activities overlap with either your health (think: running club) or family (think: working with your spouse) and of course relationships (every activity of your life involves other people).

What I mean is that the focus of how you spend your energy and attention should likely shift in this direction only after taking care of the first three.