Ryan Deiss was crushing it professionally while missing his kids' events. He fixed it with three calendar defaults: leaving at 5:30pm every day, saying no to meetings without a written agenda, and taking a 30-day family vacation annually. Boundaries didn't kill his output. They made it matter.
So 10 years ago I had three companies on the Inc. 500 list. Sounds cool. But I was also missing my kids soccer games, I was missing dance recitals, I was late for every family dinner. I was crushing it on the outside and I was absolutely miserable on the inside. And I knew something had to change. By default, I had no vacations on my calendar. I said yes to every meeting. I stayed at the office until I couldn't stay awake any longer. And I said no to playing golf with my own son. So, entrepreneurial parents, I'm talking to you. Do you know your defaults? What are they? Because look, if your calendar doesn't reflect your priorities, they're not your priorities. So just start by asking what are your defaults? Then change them to reflect your priorities if they don't. So here are three defaults that I changed and I'll tell you the third one was the most important one. So on my calendar at 5:30pm Every day, I have a 30 minute event called Workday shutdown. And when that time comes, I wrap up whatever I'm doing and I go home. And would you believe it, I end up getting the same amount of work done every day as when I was staying up at the office until basically midnight every single night. Second, my default answer to meetings is no. And it is no unless I have a write up of what's supposed to get done at that meeting. You would not believe how many meetings can actually be emails if you demand an agenda ahead of time. Third, we have a 30 day family vacation on the calendar and every single year. Now, some years it's an extravagant trip to Europe and some years it's lean. We're just going to drive out to a national park somewhere. There have been many years where the 30 day vacation approached and I just thought, look, there is no way that we're going to be able to do this. There's just so much going on. How am I going to be able to take 30 days off? Guess what? I took the time off. And the world just kept on spinning. And we are still here today. And you will be too. Business parents, choose your defaults, know your defaults, it'll make all the difference.
