Is It Ever Okay to Put Work Before Family?
Jon has spent ten years telling men to put family first. For the last two months he worked dawn to dinner, some weeks seven days straight, and on this walk he says that was okay. His answer is not a contradiction of everything he has taught, it is the other half of it: there are seasons when a man should go all in, as long as he names the season out loud and lets it end.
When it’s okay to go all in
Jon reaches for the oldest version of the idea first.
“There are times when we need to go hunt, when the bison are coming through and we need to go harvest the crops when it’s time.”
A surfer takes off work when the waves are finally glassy. A farmer works sunrise to sunset when the crop has to come in before it spoils. Jon’s own version this season: his wife and son were traveling for six weeks, Front Row Dads was mid reorganization with a book, five new events and a 10th anniversary coming, and a close friend staying in his house happened to be the kind of business mind who could talk ideas through with him all day. He skipped his morning practice and went straight to his computer, and for this one season, he thinks that was the right call.
The rule that keeps it from becoming a lifestyle
A friend named Kyle told Jon over breakfast that he is staying in the city away from his own house right now, grinding around the clock with a business partner to capture a rare opportunity, because he and his wife agreed it was worth it.
“He had a conversation with his wife and said, this is a rare opportunity… And his wife was like, go get it.”
What makes that healthy instead of a warning sign, in Jon’s telling, is that it has an end date and the people at home know it is coming.
“When it’s intentional… this will be for a season. It’s going to have a start and a stop. And we communicate with our families and our spouses and our children, and we let them know what’s happening.”
Without that, he says, a busy season just turns into the next busy season, and a man wakes up one day having lived years that way.
Let your kids watch you climb the mountain
Jon pushes back on the instinct to hide the hustle from your family.
“I think it’s great for the kids to see dad go do something, to go climb that mountain, right? To go work in the fields all day long.”
He points to a friend in his men’s group who is building a side project with his own two kids right now, fully energized by it, and not worried that the intensity will not last forever. It does not need to. The ask is smaller than it sounds: name the season, say when it ends, and keep brothers around who will tell you when to stop.
“Who are the guys that will help contain you if it spirals out of control, or bring you back into focus, or bring you back into rest.”
Listen to the full walk with Jon on the podcast, where he talks through his own season and asks what season you might be in right now.
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