Tina Seelig: Balancing Priorities

You can do it all, just not at the same time. This is something I learned from a dear friend of mine. It's one of those issues that especially comes up when you're a new parent and you had your very full life before and all of a sudden this new person lands in your life and you're trying to figure out how can you do it all plus be a good parent. And in fact, what I would say on that note is it forces you to be very creative. It forces you to think about your priorities and it often forces you to make some very creative— come up with some creative solutions to try to balance all these things. But in general, it's important to figure out what your priorities are and change them regularly. You need to evaluate your life and say, here at this point when I'm a student at Stanford, here are the 3 things that are most critical to me and I'm going to do those really well. I know so many people who you take on so much that what ends up happening is the balls start falling off the table. They start dropping balls. They don't deliver anymore. They— and it is a terrible thing. It is much better to say no to someone, that you can't do something, and take it off your plate, take it out of your hands so that you can keep the balls that you have in the air.