The Order Matters

Back to writing - a reflection and a restart

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a lot of time supporting startups in my role at Google Cloud. I lead technical teams that work directly with companies across North America—ranging from early-stage to growth-stage, across a wide variety of industries and leadership styles. Some founders are just getting started, others are on their second or third venture. Each is solving difficult problems in a competitive environment, often with limited resources and constant pressure to deliver.

Working alongside them has given me a front-row seat to how businesses are built. But it’s also given me something else: a clearer view into how individuals structure their lives around what they’re building.

It’s easy to assume that with more autonomy—like what comes with founding a company—comes a better, more flexible life. That assumption isn’t necessarily wrong, but it’s not automatic either. What I’ve observed over time is that the benefits people associate with entrepreneurship—more time with family, greater focus on health, increased control of schedule—don’t come guaranteed with a new job or a new title.

In fact, they often don’t come at all.

And that has made me ask harder questions—not about what’s next, but about what’s true today.

For a long time, I held the assumption that certain life improvements would naturally follow a professional change. I thought that if I reached a particular stage, or launched a specific venture, or had more control over how I worked, then things like health, family time, and deep work would become easier to prioritize.

But over time—and especially in conversation with my family, self-reflection and my own faith-based answer-seeking channels —I’ve started to see the logic doesn’t hold up. It reverses the sequence. It puts the external change first and the internal change second.

But the order matters.

If I can’t prioritize what matters today—before the ideal circumstances show up—there’s no reason to believe I’ll do better under more pressure, more freedom, or more ambiguity. Delaying the change I know I need only reinforces habits that will be harder to unwind later.

So I’ve been adjusting my thinking.

Rather than waiting for a new chapter to justify new habits, I’m treating this current chapter as the proving ground. If I want to live with more discipline, more presence, and more alignment with what I value—I have to begin practicing that now. Within the constraints I already have. Within the role I’m in. With the time that’s available.

No future opportunity will create the patterns I haven’t built today.

This isn’t something I’ve mastered. It’s a shift I’ve started to make. A recalibration I’m still working through. But the realization itself has been valuable: that change doesn’t begin with new circumstances—it begins with small, consistent choices inside of the ones I already have.

One of those small choices is this: writing again.

It’s something I’ve wanted to return to for a long time. Not for visibility or output, but to think more clearly, to process what I’m learning, and to share reflections that might be useful to others walking a similar path. This is the first post I’ve written in years—and pressing publish feels like a small but meaningful step forward.

If anything in here resonates with you, I hope it encourages you to start something too—no big declarations, just one habit, one shift, one page at a time.