One thing I've noticed over the years is that many people spend a tremendous amount of energy trying to make good decisions while spending very little time deciding what those decisions are ultimately meant to accomplish.
That may sound strange at first because most of us would say we know exactly what we're working toward. We have goals, plans, responsibilities, and plenty of things we want to achieve. But when you start exploring those goals more deeply, something interesting often happens. People can usually tell you what they're trying to do. They're often much less certain about why they're trying to do it.
I've seen this show up in a lot of different situations. Sometimes it's a family wrestling with questions about spending, saving, working longer, or slowing down. Sometimes it's someone approaching retirement and wondering whether they have enough. Sometimes it's a business owner trying to decide whether to keep growing. On the surface, those don't appear to have much in common. The more I've worked with people, though, the more I think they often point back to the same challenge.
Many of us begin with strategy before we've established direction.
We naturally gravitate toward the tangible things. The business plan. The investment strategy. The retirement projection. The spreadsheet. Those things feel productive because they give us something measurable to work on. What I've found, though, is that strategy becomes much easier when it's attached to a destination.
Without that destination, even good decisions can create frustration. Every opportunity has to be evaluated independently. Every tradeoff feels heavier than it should. Every new possibility becomes another puzzle to solve.
A few years ago, I probably would have described this as a financial planning issue. Today, I think it's more accurate to describe it as a sequencing issue.
Many of the questions people bring to planning conversations are important questions. How much should I save? Can I retire? Should I grow the business? Should I sell? Should I work another five years? None of those questions are wrong. In fact, they're often exactly the questions people should be asking.
I simply think they become easier to answer after a different question has been addressed first.
What are you trying to build?
Not what you're trying to buy. Not what you're trying to earn. Not what you're trying to accumulate.
What are you trying to build?
What kind of life would make all of those other decisions worthwhile?
That question doesn't require a perfectly detailed answer. In my experience, most people don't have one, and the future is far too uncertain to expect it. What it does require is enough clarity to establish direction. Enough clarity to know whether an opportunity is moving you closer to the life you want or further away from it. Enough clarity to know whether growth is serving a purpose or becoming the purpose.
That's why I continue coming back to the same idea:
Build your life first. Then build everything else to support it.