The School of Greatness - 669 Respect Your Priorities with Michael Hyatt

Episode Date: July 20, 2018

“WHEN WE HAVE PRIORITIES WE CAN DISTINGUISH BETWEEN THE URGENT AND THE IMPORTANT.” A lot of times in life we do what we feel is urgent. We will go so far as to put off what we really need to do in order to take care of urgent things. Often we even put it ahead of taking care of ourselves. It’s really unfortunate because if you don’t take care of yourself you can’t take care of the urgent. You can’t work from a hospital bed. That’s why you need to have priorities. Priorities will guide you in life’s decisions and keep you on track. Most importantly, priorities will give you the confidence to say no. They help you identify what’s truly needed in your life, versus what someone else feels is important. On this episode of 5 Minute Friday, I wanted to dive into the importance of setting priorities and sticking to them. There’s no one I know who practices this better than Michael Hyatt. Michael is a social media marketing wizard and has worked for one of the biggest publishing companies. Learn his insights on staying true to what’s necessary, on Episode 669. In This Episode You Will Learn: The essence of leadership (00:55) How Michael discovered his priorities (1:38) What gave Michael clarity (3:20) The difference between urgent and important (4:11)

This is 5-Minute Friday! Welcome everyone to this special episode with my dear friend Michael Hyatt. He's a New York Times best-selling author. He's the former chairman and CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers. And he has a blog that gets over a million unique visitors a month. And he's also an expert in the field of social media. His blog is ranked by Google in the top one half percent of all blogs with more than one million page views a month. And Forbes magazine named him one of the top 10 online marketing experts to follow and one of the top 50 social media influencers.

And Michael is one of those guys that just spews integrity and everything he creates is of the highest value. I always tell people, you know, the most important person in the world is yourself. Yeah. And if you're neglecting all of your needs first and giving to everyone else but not to you, you're not gonna go to serve more people that's the key what you just said was because to me the essence of leadership is service yes I want to serve my wife I want to serve my kids and my sons-in-law and my grandkids I want to serve the people that work for me yeah but if I'm sick I can't do anything yeah if my marriage is blown up I can't do that if my business is in

trouble or I'm financially spinning out of control I can't do that. If my business is in trouble or I'm financially spinning out of control, I can't do that. So these priorities are really important to identify. Now, it really helps in kind of the warp and woof of life when you have to make some really tough decisions. Another example. In 2009, I was the CEO of Thomas Nelson. We were in the middle of the recession. It was brutal. Thomas Nelson is a publishing company?

It's a publishing company. At the time, it was the seventh largest publishing company in the middle of the recession. It was brutal. Thomas Nelson is a publishing company. It's a publishing company. At the time, it was the seventh largest publishing company in the U.S. It was acquired by HarperCollins, now a division of HarperCollins. And we were in the middle of the recession. It was hand-to-hand combat, and we were working like crazy just trying to keep the ship afloat. And I was tired. I was wrung out. I wasn't spending as much time with my wife as I know I needed to or with my family.

And so I told the board, I said, I've got to have a vacation, guys. Otherwise, I'm just going to burn out. They said, great, do it. So we decided we're going to go to Colorado, deep in the Rockies, and just unplug and unwind. And we love Colorado. Did you go snowboarding or skiing, or were you just more hanging out, hiking? Yeah, at this time it was the winter. So we were at a friend's cabin really deep in the woods. But we kind of like fantasized about this for weeks and weeks and

weeks. So we're flying to Denver. We're going to drive up into the mountains and we had to stop in Dallas, change planes. And I made the mistake of checking my email. There was a message from the chairman of my board and he said, hey, change of plans. I need you back in Nashville on Monday. He said, we're coming in. He said, we've got some issues that we need to resolve.

I mean, my heart saw. And I just thought, so I handed my phone to Gail and I let her read it. And of course, she was crestfallen also. But to her credit, she said, honey, look, I know this is tough. You do whatever you need to do.

I'll totally support it. I mean, she's always been like that. She was great. So I remember my priorities, you know, me, then Gail, and then the kids. And then the job. And then the job. Yeah. So I took a deep breath.

Wasn't easy. But my priorities gave me courage. That's the key thing. And clarity. And clarity and courage. And when you have that, you can say no to the non-essentials so that you can say yes to what's most important. So I wrote back to the chairman and I said, hey, I understand. I really wish you'd postpone this meeting. I said, if you can't, my team will be there to assist you. I'm going to Colorado, as we discussed. See you when I get back. So I left.

So I got back. I didn't check my email, but I got back from the end of that trip. And I checked with my CFO when I got back. I said, hey, did the guys come in? You know, they came in from New York. And he said, yeah. I said, what was the meeting about? He said, I don't know, but we totally could have handled it by email.

Oh, my gosh. It was like a nothing No big deal. And I almost scuttled a much needed vacation. But see, when we have priorities, we can distinguish between the urgent and the important. And sometimes the urgent shows up like it's important, but it rarely is. But you got to get clear on your priorities. So we literally in the life plan, have you come up with your life accounts and then arrange them in order and they'll change based on the seasons in your life. Sure, sure. Right?

So you don't have one year when you're 30 is going to be different. Yeah. So this is a living document. It's a living document. You're going to tweak it for the rest of your life. I was even working on mine today coming out.