It is January 13th. Four days ago was Quitter’s Day.
You may not have heard of it by name, but you have felt it. Strava, the fitness tracking company, coined the term in 2019 after analyzing millions of users and discovering a pattern: by the second Friday of January, 80% of people who made New Year’s resolutions have already abandoned them. The gym parking lot is emptying. The journal sits unopened. The language app sends notifications into the void.
We blame willpower. We blame busy schedules. We blame a lack of discipline or lack intelligence. We fail because we have too many priorities.
That sentence should sound wrong.
For most of human history, it would have.
The word “priority” entered the English language in the 1400s. It came from the Latin prioritas, meaning “first in rank, order, or dignity.” For five hundred years, the word remained singular. There was no plural. There could not be. The very concept of multiple “first things” was a logical impossibility.
Then, sometime in the early 1900s, we did something linguistically audacious: we invented “priorities.”
Greg McKeown, in his book Essentialism, put it bluntly: “Illogically, we reasoned that by changing the word we could bend reality. Somehow we would now be able to have multiple ‘first’ things.”
We could not. We still cannot. And every January, the math catches up with us.
This is not an essay about goal-setting tactics. There are plenty of those, and most of them miss the point. The problem with New Year’s resolutions is not that we lack SMART goals or accountability partners. The problem is that we make a list of ten priorities and call it a plan.
Ten priorities is zero priorities. It is a wish list dressed up as intention.
I know this because I spent years living this way. I had professional priorities, health priorities, family priorities, community priorities. I had systems for managing my priorities and priorities for improving my systems. I was, by every external measure, successful. I was also exhausted, scattered, and perpetually behind on the things that mattered most.
A few years ago, I joined a company and proactively shared my priorities. I did something unusual: I ranked them. Not as categories to balance, but as a strict hierarchy.
Slot 1: Health. Not because I am virtuous but because I am practical. Without health, nothing else functions. I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis over a decade ago. That diagnosis clarified something that should have been obvious all along: health is not one priority among many. It is the foundation upon which every other priority depends. It is first because it must be first. Want to hold your kids to soothe them when they are crying? Need to run up the stairs to make the last minute meeting in the third floor conference room?
Slot 2: Family. This is what most people say they believe. Do we act that way? I have three children. I have been with Courtney for over thirty years. When I examined my calendar honestly, I found gaps between what I claimed to value and where my time actually went.
Slot 3: Community. This includes charity, my YPO commitments, and the ways I engage with the world beyond my immediate family. Service has always been part of who I am.
Slot 4: Work. Here is the critical part: Slot 4 is reserved for professional endeavors, but it can never under any circumstances permanently outrank the first three. Work can surge. Deadlines can demand attention. The hierarchy remains intact. Slot 4 is temporary. Slots 1 through 3 are not.
A word of caution: this is not an invitation to become a fanatic. Having health as Slot 1 does not mean you skip your daughter’s graduation to go to the gym. The framework is about long-term orientation not rigid absolutism. When slots conflict in the moment, wisdom still applies. But when you find yourself repeatedly sacrificing Slot 1 for Slot 4 (skipping workouts for meetings, delaying checkups for deadlines) the hierarchy tells you something is broken.
I recognize how privileged I am to structure my life this way. Not everyone has this flexibility. Privilege does not negate the principle. If anything, it obligates me to use that flexibility wisely rather than squander it pretending I can have multiple first things.
Work-life balance? I have written about this at length.
There is an old saying with uncertain origins but undeniable truth: “Show me your calendar and your checkbook, and I will tell you what you value.”
This is not what you say you value. Not what you wish you valued. What you actually value, revealed through the only two resources that never lie: time and money.
When I internalized this, I stopped making resolutions and started making decisions. My workouts, my physical therapy, and my medical treatments are not goals for this year. They are already on my calendar. Every single one for the entire year is scheduled. They are non-negotiable. Slot 1 is not an aspiration. It is an infrastructure.
This is what it means to have a priority instead of priorities. I do not hope it happens. I built a system that makes it unavoidable. I constructed guardrails to ensure I stay on the road.
Writing this down matters. When I articulated my slots framework (first to myself, then to my family, then to colleagues) it became a standard I could be held to. Others could point to it when I drifted. I could point to it when I needed to say no.
This is no different from what companies do when they define mission, vision, and core values. The act of writing creates accountability. It transforms a private intention into a public commitment. It makes the invisible visible.
Here is the thing about a true hierarchy: everything below the top eventually bends toward it. When health is genuinely first, family time becomes walks instead of sitting on the couch. Community involvement becomes coaching youth sports instead of just writing checks. Even work shifts. You start noticing which professional obligations drain you and which ones energize you. You no longer have the luxury of ignoring how your body responds.
Slot 1 is not just a priority. It is a filter. Everything else passes through it.
If you are reading this on January 13th, you are four days past Quitter’s Day. Maybe your resolutions are already struggling. Maybe you feel the familiar disappointment creeping in.
Here is what I want you to consider: you did not fail because you lack discipline. You failed because you were handed a flawed concept five hundred years in the making.
Priority was never meant to be plural.
So instead of making another list of priorities, make a decision. What is your priority? Not your top five. Not your top three. Your one.
Then put it on your calendar. Every instance. For the entire year.
That is not a resolution. That is a choice. And choices, unlike resolutions, do not quit.