Prioritizing yourself isn't selfish. It's the prerequisite.

Monday morning, a lot on my plate, but it's manageable. I've set quite a few goals for the week.

For my day-job there is a lot on the plate at the moment. Running a side business, writing and posting on social media every day come on top of that.

All manageable, especially since I have learned how I can maintain my energy and regulate myself - and that has a lot to do with how I start the day and planned margin.

But this week has different plans.

An incident here, an HR topic there, a project needing some intervention, an unplanned but urgent doctor’s appointment. You could call it the normal life of a director.

The problem here isn't that this stuff is happening; the problem is what happens next.

Everything screaming for attention has a person behind it, except my morning. Except the part of my day that helps me to do my job best.

And my morning is the thing I give up most easily — to save the rest of the week, which also has names and faces attached to it.

If I do this consistently, I am not only harming myself:

I show up to my team running on empty, and they get a worse version of me than the one I could have been. They carry that home to the teams they manage, people who never knew my morning existed but inherit the cost of me skipping it. My writing goes flat because there is nothing left to draw from. And the person who gets the most depleted version of me is the one who deserves the fullest: the one I go home to.

And that's the learning I have to relive over and over again. Prioritizing myself and my energy is not selfish. It's the prerequisite for showing up the way the people who count on me deserve.

Check your calendar tomorrow morning, how much time do you actually demand for yourself? To think, to reflect, to take a deep breath.