Business as the Fifth Priority
Protect spirit, relationships, children, and health before work
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~ongoing to results
- Steps
- 6
- Confidence
- 99%
Business as the Fifth Priority is Greenfield's ordered operating system: God or spiritual life first, spouse second, children third, health fourth, and business fifth. People without a spouse or children can place community, neighbors, and friends in the relationship positions. The mechanism is scheduling: gratitude, prayer, family connection, and exercise happen before email, content, or revenue work can consume the day. This accepts slower financial progress in exchange for preserving health and relationships throughout the journey. Greenfield argues that business has no natural stopping point—there is always another email, task, opportunity, or dollar—so values that exist only as intentions will lose. Making them morning rituals and recurring touchpoints turns the priority order into behavior and leaves business as the fulfilling icing rather than the whole cake.
Origin
Greenfield says he intentionally built his business more slowly after seeing peers achieve financial freedom while losing health or family connection.
Core principles
- 01Money can be rebuilt but time and health cannot
- 02Business expands to consume every unprotected hour
- 03Relationships and health make business success worth having
- 04Schedule higher priorities before opening the workday
- 05Accept slower business growth to avoid preventable personal collapse
How to run it
- 1
Order what matters
Write a strict hierarchy for spirit, close relationships, dependents or community, health, and work. Resolve the order before the inbox presents competing demands.
Pro tip Use the order to break ties when two activities feel urgent.
Watch out An unordered list of equal priorities will not constrain work.
- 2
Start with spirit
Begin the day with the spiritual or reflective practice that anchors your values, such as prayer, gratitude journaling, meditation, or reading. Keep it before digital work.
Pro tip Prepare the journal or reading the night before.
Watch out Do not let the practice become another performance metric.
- 3
Create relationship touchpoints
Schedule daily connection with a spouse, children, family, or community. Greenfield uses a morning family huddle and evening family time.
Pro tip Use a recurring ritual that does not depend on finding spare time.
Watch out Physical presence while checking work messages does not create the intended connection.
- 4
Do the health work
Exercise and care for the body before entering the business day. Treat this as the entrepreneur's real hard task rather than assuming email is the frog.
Pro tip Use a minimum version for low-energy days rather than dropping the priority.
Watch out Avoid turning health into punishing overtraining.
- 5
Bound the business
Open work only after the higher priorities have received deliberate attention. Accept that the inbox and opportunity list will remain incomplete.
Pro tip Define an end-of-day boundary before beginning.
Watch out Zero inbox is not a stable definition of done.
- 6
Audit the trade-offs
Review whether growth is degrading health, intimacy, family connection, or spiritual life. Slow the business before a neglected area becomes a recovery project.
Pro tip Ask the people affected, not only yourself.
Watch out Revenue growth can conceal accumulating personal debt.
In the wild
Greenfield says entrepreneurs often enjoy the dopamine of email and checklists. For them, the difficult first work is prayer, journaling, family time, and training, so he completes those before entering his office.
→ The activities most likely to be displaced receive the first protected hours.
Greenfield contrasts his slower business growth with peers who made more money sooner but later faced illness, weight gain, divorce, or estrangement. His ordering aims to maintain the assets they later have to rebuild.
→ Health and family are preserved while the business compounds more slowly.
Common mistakes
Calling work the hard thing
For many founders, work is the attractive default; the genuinely difficult actions are the personal priorities work displaces.
Waiting for financial freedom
Postponing health and relationships until after success can leave someone unable to enjoy or repair them later.
Expecting work to finish itself
An endless inbox cannot create the stopping rule needed to protect higher priorities.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and ambitious professionals whose inbox and business opportunities routinely displace personal priorities.
Not ideal for
Short emergencies where temporary reordering is unavoidable and explicitly time-bounded.
From the transcript
“I've intentionally built my business much more slowly because my business is my fifth order of priority in life.”
“your business will eat you alive.”
“habits, rituals, and routines set up starting the morning that allow you to care for your spirit and care for your body and care for…”
From the episode
Ben Greenfield: Build a Thriving Business Without Sacrificing Your Health
Ben Greenfield