It had been a long week. I walked in the door at 6:37pm on a Friday evening in 2011. My family was sitting at the dinner table about to start in on dessert. I was late. I said I’d be home around 5:30 and I hadn’t bothered to call or text. I probably made the excuse to myself that I couldn’t have called because I was on an important phone call but the reality is I could have excused myself for a few moments to call my wife. Better yet, I could have cut the call short or rescheduled it or done a better job of planning ahead. I didn’t realize it at the time and it took me months to admit it, but I was absolutely choosing unnecessary work over my family on a consistent basis.

Even worse, by the time I walked in the door to my home on Friday evening I was completely exhausted – both mentally and physically. When I sat down at the table that evening I could see in my wife’s face that she was steaming mad but doing her best to keep her cool. Finally, she put on the best smile she could and said that everyone was excited to go listen to music at the outdoor mall in our community.

All I could think was, (sarcastically) “That’s just great. It’s been a long week and I just walked in the door and now she wants to go to the mall. There will be people I will have to talk with and smile at and right now I am definitely not in the mood to chit chat it up for the next three hours.” I didn’t say a word of that but my wife read it all over my face. She stood up, looked me square in the eyes and sternly imposed the most powerful words she’s ever said to me.

“We don’t want your leftovers!”

She wasn’t talking about my food. She was talking about me: about my excitement, my passion, and most importantly, my energy. She was so right! I was giving the best of who I was to everyone else except my family. I was bringing my A-game to my business day in and day out but by the time I got home the tank was usually so empty there was nothing left to give to the people I care for the most.

“We don’t want your leftovers!”

I’m not the only one.

This is a consistent struggle for most #HighAchievers I know. We became a #HighAchiever by being one in our academic or professional life but that in no way means that we will easily be one in our own home. Often the #HighAchiever finds that success comes much more easily at work. Therefore we strive for even more success in the arena we find it comes most naturally. We pour more of ourselves into that arena and more success results. All the while we don’t realize we’re only leaving table scraps for our family.

The wake up call usually hurts more.

Most #HighAchievers don’t have the joy of receiving nearly as pleasant of a wake up call as the one I experienced that Friday night in 2011. Often the wake up call comes in a much more painful form than the one provided to me. Following are just a few examples of the many wake up calls my #HighAchiever friends have experienced.

• Coming home to find your wife in the arms of another man – for the third time.
• Getting a special delivery at your office that requires you to sign for divorce papers in front of your colleagues.
• Coming home to find your son high on drugs.
• Realizing that your high schooler hasn’t been home in almost three months and you’re just now noticing.
• Coming home to a completely empty home only to learn your wife and children have moved to a different country.
• Receiving a phone call from your daughter that your wife has left the house with the gun and might have shot herself.
• Coming home to a dinner table where your husband is waiting to tell you he is leaving you.
• Getting a phone call that your wife has just been arrested for embezzling money from her employer because she didn’t know how to pay the bills without you.

These are real experiences that have happened to fine people that I care about deeply. I’m in no way claiming that every instance that happens like those above is a direct result of someone giving their family their “leftovers”. However, in these specific instances I am describing, each #HighAchiever admits strong regret that they put so much of their energy into their job and not enough into their family. If they could do it all over again, these High Achievers would make different choices. In each case, they would choose to give their family more of their A-game, energy, time, devotion, dedication than they did.

Personal Impact

I described a few of the ways this enlightenment has helped me to make solid changes in my daily patterns in my post titled 116 Weeks Until My Super Hero Status is Revoked. The changes you need to make will be different but here are a few that worked for me:

1. I limited myself to only working on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings unless there was a deal on the line worth at least one month of revenue where the meeting could only take place on a different evening. By making this change it provided room for the truly big deals that I couldn’t afford to miss out on but put reasonable expectations in place for my family.
2. I made the days I would be working late consistent. By narrowing it to Tuesday and Wednesday my family knew those would be the best nights for consistent activities away from the home.
3. We bunched our children’s activities accordingly. The nights I’m gone are intentionally the nights when activities like piano lessons, children’s choir, sports practices, and the like are scheduled. We specifically try to bunch them into the days we already know I will be gone.
4. I changed when I take a break from my ADD meds. (see the 116 Weeks post)
5. On my non late days I stopped scheduling meetings that began after 3:00pm/15:00. This provides me with a much higher probability that I’ll actually leave the office on time.
6. I deliberately lightened my stress load for Friday afternoons. Knowing I’m heading into a weekend where I want energy for my family, I do my best to avoid high stress activities on Friday afternoons. I do my best to push those to Mondays instead so that I can start the week off and get them off my plate early on.
7. I scheduled more vacation days. See the post in #VacationHacks titled How You’re Budgeting for Vacation the Wrong Way for further insight here.
8. I had a candid conversation with my staff about this issue. I was very open with them and shared, “I need your help in protecting my family.” It has been amazing to see how everyone on the team has embraced this battle as their own and has fought hard to help me implement the items I’ve described above.
9. I checked in with my wife to see if I was living up to the changes I thought I was implementing. At a few points along the way she has had to remind me that I’ve been coming home later than the expectations I’ve set. It’s a necessary gut check. It’s never easy to hear it but I’m thankful for it because I honestly don’t realize it when work starts creeping in on my sacred family time.
10. My family became far more forgiving when the unexpected occurred. As a result of the changes I’ve described, my family members are now much more forgiving when things don’t go as planned. It’s bound to happen from time to time for any #HighAchiever who isn’t paid for a 9 to 5 job. Now that my family is more forgiving, I’m also much quicker to call home to adjust expectations on those days. Because expectations are adjusted, my family is even more forgiving. This is a great example of the #VirtuousCycle. (more to come in future posts on this topic)
11. And finally, my wife became an expert at identifying the times I truly do need some time to recharge my batteries. There are times I know she would much rather go out and be social but she’ll call for a family pizza and movie night at home knowing that I just need some time to recover.

By the way, those changes at work didn’t hurt my productivity the way I thought they would. Rather, my productivity has done nothing but continue to increase. This is a great example of the When Less is More at Work concept that we’ll explore in an upcoming post.

Have you ever met anyone that regretted spending more time with their family or loved ones? I have yet to encounter such a person. But we’ve all met a whole lot of #HighAchievers that made all of the wrong moves at home. Check out the upcoming post titled How to Become a Rockstar in Your Home for further insight into building a successful family without sacrificing your career ambitions.

Comment Below:

• Is your family getting your leftovers?
• What changes have you considered or implemented to protect your family?
• Care to share your wake up call? Please protect the privacy of others if you do.

Bio for The Anonymous Donor

Executive and owner of a successful international business, a father of 3 children under age 15 (one with special needs), married more than 10 years to my college sweetheart, a multi-millionaire, a former professor, an avid reader, completed my graduate training at Harvard Business School (#HBS), and approach life as a follower of Christ. Passionate about helping other #HighAchievers to build stronger families and careers.

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