The Order of What Matters

I was talking to my brother today about all kinds of crazy startup stuff, and how things can get stressful. He said he has a list he comes back to in this order:

Family
Health
Customers
Team
Investors
Other stuff

He said he does a mental rundown of this list to see if things are going OK. If the first few items are off, nothing else will really matter much anyway. If you’ve got the first few in a good spot, then move down to the next one, then the next. Don’t worry about the bottom as much as the top, and move from most to least important. On rare occasions, the list might click all the way down. Most of the time it won’t, but if you can keep those top three in a good spot, the rest is manageable.

I’m going to use this.