Rethinking Priorities
What I read: After His Heart Attack, a British Man’s Rules for Living Take Off on LinkedIn by Maria Cramer. Published in the New York Times on April 21, 2021.
Sometimes you read something and you suddenly find yourself reflexively nodding your head in agreement. This was one of those articles. It’s an account of Jonathan Frostick, a Regulatory IT Delivery Lead in London, who posted to LinkedIn from his hospital bed after a heart attack.
Here is the text that Frostick posted to his LinkedIn profile.
Here is the accompanying photo Frostick posted of himself in the hospital.
I have never had a near-death experience. When I learned that I was HIV+ in the mid-1980s there was a short period of time when I thought perhaps my life was over in the near term. I kept thriving. Then my first partner died a few years later from AIDS and again my thoughts returned to wondering if my days were numbered. They were not. I’m still here. I’m incredibly healthy. Thank you modern medical science.
So, yes. I have confronted my own mortality and stared it in the face. But I have never had one of those near-death experiences during which you realize your life could have been over in an instant.
Wisdom is, in part, being able to take other people’s experiences and learn from them. When I read the article, it hit me rather hard, but not because my corporate gig is arduous or inhumanely aggressive. In fact, I work for a great company in a work environment that doesn’t just pay lip service to treating employees as people with important lives outside of the workday. (If my boss or my boss’s boss is reading this, thank you for treating me so well and with respect.)
I have tried to not identify so strongly with my day-to-day corporate job that my work and me became one and the same. I know many do, but I have escaped that fate. Sadly, many do not.
Beyond compensation and professional status, a job provides social rewards, like praise from colleagues and supervisors, that can become addictive, said Glen Kreiner, a professor of management at the University of Utah.
People become so protective of the identity a job creates for them that they will work long, arduous hours, without pausing to consider if they are happy or fulfilled, to protect it, Professor Kreiner said.
“We as humans tend to be mindless instead of mindful,” he said. “When we’re in a mindless state, we’re on autopilot.”
Professor Kreiner added: “Sometimes, that’s why it takes a catastrophe like this to break us out of autopilot.”
While my corporate job is not oppressive in terms of workload or culture, it’s my personal life that can be a runaway train of constant drive. Between my writing, extensive community work, self-education projects, and other activities that seem at times to occupy every waking moment I’m not dedicating to my company, I occasionally feel like Frostick that my life priorities are a bit out of whack. Lots of what I do brings me joy. Lots of what I do I know is driven by what my inner taskmaster pushes me to do to remain “productive.” (Are you getting as tired of that word productive as I am?)
The article and the LinkedIn post made me take a pause to think about my own life. This is not entirely uncommon for me. I’ve had these reality-check moments at various times during my life. This was another. Ignoring such life signals is dangerous. They happen for a reason. This one apparently intended for me to pull the brake, slow down, and think about my priorities. Again. Perhaps this is the normal cycle for anyone with an ounce of self-reflection capabilities.
I’m not going to list my own reprioritizations. Truthfully, I’m still working those out. It’s an iterative process and I’m old enough to know that it never really ends. If you stop learning from life’s lessons, be they rough and tumble hard knocks or secondhand insights from another’s experiences, that’s not good. Eleanor Roosevelt once said,
In the long run, we shape our lives, and we shape ourselves. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our own responsibility.
I encourage you to think about your own life priorities. Are you happy? Are you fulfilled? Do you attach too much of your identity and self-worth to your job? Are you the reason someone else smiles? Ask yourself these and any questions that help you decide if you’re living your life and spending your time the best ways possible. Frostick asked,
“Who am I? It’s like a riddle my mind cannot solve,” he wrote. “I have no idea who I am anymore. This is going to take some time … Can you answer who you are?”
Can you answer who you are? I’m still trying, and it’s worth the effort.