I rarely write about personal things on this blog, but a confluence of events caused me to change what I wanted to write about this morning: my family situation, a podcast and a blog post. I wanted to diverge a bit from writing about leadership in the business world and focus on THE most important relationship – marriage.

Debbie (my wife) and our children are away this weekend, and I miss them when they’re gone. The solitude has given me lots of time to reflect on how much I love being with my family, and how important my marriage is in every aspect of my life. Nothing is more important to me than Debbie, and my children are a close second. I believe (and hope) that you have similar relationships in your life.

While running this morning I listened (for the 3^rd time) to a podcast about the business of marriage. In this short podcast, my friend Dr. Paul and his guest give great insight into the importance of the marriage relationship. I highly recommend you take the time to listen. (He has lots of great podcasts on his Live on Purpose Radio site.)

The third thing was reading today’s blog post by Michael Hyatt that asks the question what are you doing to protect your marriage? He gives three actions he takes to protect his own marriage, and I recommend you read them. Even if you’re not married his information will help you. Take the time to read.

I really hope you’ll spend time looking into the resources I’ve linked here. There’s so much more to life than work. I realize you may not be married or maybe you’re marriage isn’t ideal, but if you’ll set goals and work hard, you’ll find true happiness in this most important relationship.

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The Product Management Perspective: Sometimes product managers become “married” to their products. It’s happened to me a time or two in my career. It’s not worth it. If you’re focused more on your work and products than you are to the people most important in your life, take a step back, reevaluate and make some changes.