“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” - Peter Drucker

The older I get, the more I realize how many things that I used to care about, just don’t matter anymore.

Life is short, and the older we get, the faster time goes by.

In my 20s, I used to spend Sundays watching football.

Pizza. Hot wings. Beer. From 10am to 7pm. I loved it. Especially on a cold, windy and rainy day in Northern California. It was great.

And to be clear, I still love watching a great game.

But I can no longer justify spending all day, every week, for 20 weeks out the year, watching other people live out their dreams.

In my mid 30s I realized that I had to make some changes if I was serious about my goals.

If I didn’t become more intentional with my time, energy, and money, my dreams would stay just that; dreams.

So, I started making some changes.

I stopped watching so much football. I dropped out of my fantasy football leagues. I stopped watching the news. I stopped getting into arguments over politics. I stopped hanging out with people that didn’t align with the person I wanted to become.

As the stakes got bigger, I adjusted accordingly.

Big dreams require big actions and I have an XL vision for my life.

I can’t get there with size medium or small effort.

A few years ago, I read Vivid Vision.

It was intended to help businesses get clarity on their goals and priorities. I borrowed the concept and adapted it to fit my personal life. It helped me get crystal clear about what I wanted out of life.

I created a 4 page Google doc, written in the present tense, about what my life looks like in explicit detail. It was written 3 years into the future, across every area. Relationship. Health. Career. Spirituality. Finances. Many of those things have come true.

One of the key takeaways from the exercise was focusing on what matters and being super intentional about how I allocated my scarce resources; specifically my time, energy, money, and attention.

Everything that we want in life is basically some byproduct of those four things.

It also reminded me about a concept most of us learned in middle school that immediately came to mind: PEMDAS.

It’s an acronym that stands for Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction.

It's the non-negotiable order for solving any math equation.

Because the same exact numbers, arranged in the same exact equation, produce completely different answers depending on the order you solve them.

Try this one: 2 + 3 × 4.

If you go left to right — addition first — you get 5 × 4, which is 20. But if you follow PEMDAS and do the multiplication first, you get 2 + 12, which is 14.

Same numbers. Two completely different answers.

One of them is right. One of them is wrong.

I spent years living my life in the wrong order.

Prioritizing things that I shouldn’t. Working on building other people’s businesses instead of my own. Investing in the wrong relationships. Eating and drinking things that didn’t serve my body. Wasting time on activities that didn’t compound.

It’s no surprise that mis-prioritization didn’t produce the answer I wanted.

Take a look at the picture below.

Both jars have the exact same elements in them: rocks, pebbles and sand.

The jar on the left contains sand that was poured in first. Then pebbles. Then rocks.

As you can see, the rocks don’t fit completely into the jar on the left.

But the jar on the right is able to fit everything in. With room to spare.

The jar on the right has the exact same contents in it as the jar on the left.

What’s the difference? The order.

The jar on the left had the wrong order. The jar on the right got it right.

Order matters.

This metaphor applies directly to life.

In order for us to get the most out of life, we have to have to get the order right.

Here’s the order that I’ve committed to getting the most out of life.

The first thing is courage.

Maya Angelou said “Courage is the most important of all virtues because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”

She was right.

I used to think courage was just for big moments, high stakes, dramatic acts of bravery. But that only captures a small fraction of what courage is. Courage is simply the willingness to act in the face of fear. And fear can show up in different ways and different sizes. Ultimately, fear is just the anticipation of an unwanted feeling. That’s it.

All fears involve two things: something in the future that we don’t want to have happen.

My life changed once I realized that fear was far more prevalent than I realized. It helped me see the importance of courage. Not just big courage. But small, micro-courage. Not the infrequent, heroic forms of courage. But the small, subtle, and daily courage.

Second is health.

A healthy man wants a thousand things, but a sick man only wants one.

When your health is gone — whether that's your body breaking down, your mental state unraveling, or your emotional world collapsing — nothing else matters. You can have all the money in the world and all you want is to feel okay again. And it takes courage to obtain and maintain the highest levels of health.

Emotional health requires us to set boundaries and have uncomfortable conversations. Mental health requires us to interrogate and challenge our beliefs.
Physical health requires us to get sore and sweaty.

Third is relationships.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development is one of the longest-running studies on human happiness ever conducted. They followed hundreds of people for decades — tracking their careers, their finances, their health, their lives — and they asked what separates the people who thrived from the ones who didn't. The answer wasn't wealth. It wasn't fame. It wasn't achievement or status or how impressive their résumé looked.

It was the quality of their relationships.

Not the quantity. The quality. The depth of connection. The degree to which people felt genuinely known and genuinely loved.

I read that and thought about how much time I had spent building things — building businesses, building wealth, building a version of myself that looked successful from the outside — while quietly letting the relationships in my life go under-maintained. I was making withdrawals I wasn't making deposits for. And at some point the account runs out.

The relationship with yourself matters too. Maybe most of all. Because the quality of every relationship you have with another person is essentially a reflection of the relationship you have with yourself. Get that one right and everything else changes.

Fourth is fulfillment. And yes, I mean fourth.

I know that feels backward. You’re probably thinking, “shouldn't happiness be the goal?”

Yes and no.

First, fulfillment is more important than happiness.

Second, fulfillment isn't a starting point, it's an outcome. It's what naturally emerges when the first three things are in order. Have you ever met a person that’s fulfilled that had poor health and bad relationships? Neither have I. Fulfillment isn't something we chase. It's something we create the conditions for.

And fifth — finally — is money.

Money has no intrinsic value. A currency that can’t be traded for goods and services is worthless. The whole point of money is to exchange it. W only want it so we can use it to trade for the things of actual value. Higher quality shelter. Better food. Deeper Experiences. Better health. More time spent doing things you live with people you love. More options. More freedom to get the most out of life.

The problem is that so many of us spend our lives exchanging our lives for money and forget about this. We invert the whole thing and wonder why we feel empty even when the number in our account finally looks the way we thought it was supposed to.

Money is important. But it belongs at five — not because it's least important, but because it works in service of everything above it. When we put it first, it jeapordizes everything that matters. When you put it in its right place, it amplifies everything that matters.

This brings me back to our basic math equation: 2 + 3 × 4.

For years, I spent solving the equation out of order, pouring sand into a jar that had no room left for what mattered most, and wondering why I kept getting the wrong answer.

I’m so glad that I went back to middle school math and got it right.

The answer was never the problem.

The order was.

Here's your reflection for the week:

What are the most important things in your life? What order have you been placing them in. Be 100% honest. Not the order you believe they should be in. Not the order you'd write down if someone asked. The real order. The one your calendar and bank statements reflect. The one your body is telling you about right now. Write it down.

Here's your challenge for the week:

Pick the ONE area that is most out of order in your life right now and do one concrete thing to move it up. Not a plan. Not a note in your phone. One action. Have the conversation you've been avoiding. Make the appointment you've been putting off. Reach out to someone you've been too busy for. One thing.

With courage,

Jonathan