--- title: Gay Gaddis: How to Plan Family and Career description: Gay Gaddis, founder and CEO of T3, shares how she mapped out her career and family goals years in advance in order to succeed. canonical: https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/ author: Gay Gaddis article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-01-24T15:52:28.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T09:05:58.405Z og:title: I Achieved All My Family and Career Goals Because I Planned Decades Ahead og:description: Advice from a successful CEO with three kids and a happy marriage og:url: https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfcfbaded00d70615/6988f94bfb4eac782689569c/gay-gaddis-career-goals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 6480 og:image:height: 3645 og:image:alt: Businesswoman doing a lecture in auditorium og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: I Achieved All My Family and Career Goals Because I Planned Decades Ahead twitter:description: Advice from a successful CEO with three kids and a happy marriage twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfcfbaded00d70615/6988f94bfb4eac782689569c/gay-gaddis-career-goals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # I Achieved All My Family and Career Goals Because I Planned Decades Ahead > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Worth Your Time: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Worth Your Time is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. A weekly guide to what to watch, read, and more. Worth Your Time is a curated guide to the culture worth knowing, from the biggest conversations of the moment to the books, shows, ideas and discoveries worth your attention. Culture editor Eliza Berman taps TIME's collective taste and perspective to surface what is worth watching, reading, talking about and sharing, and why. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture recommendation newsletter, edited by culture editor Eliza Berman. Each week it surfaces the books, shows, films and ideas TIME's editors think are worth your attention, and explains why. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Does TIME have a culture newsletter? Yes. Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published weekly. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-worth-2026q3/newsletters?i=c2183e53-7be2-434a-9121-6a9c0dfc923f&cr=time-nl-worth-2026q3-v1) by [Gay Gaddis](https://time.com/author/gay-gaddis/) ## Gay Gaddis Jan 24, 2018 3:52 PM UTC  Large group of business people at lecture in New York style auditorium Large group of business people at lecture in New York style auditorium Getty Images by [Gay Gaddis](https://time.com/author/gay-gaddis/) ## Gay Gaddis Jan 24, 2018 3:52 PM UTC As CEO of digital innovation agency T3, I have worked alongside hundreds of working mothers. Twenty-five years ago I started “T3 & Under,” a company program encouraging parents to bring their babies to work after their leave. Since then, we’ve welcomed almost 100 infants into our office, and this past summer two “T3 & Under” babies returned as young adult interns. In my career, this is the program I am most proud of. Among these new moms and dads, I see great focus on their [families and their careers](http://motto.time.com/4314384/career-success-push-be-pushed/). However, too often — as busy parents — they’re so focused on short-term needs that they forget to consider the long game. Life has many uncertainties, but its major stages are predictable. If you’re planning to have children at a certain age, or have them already, you know when they’ll start preschool, when they’ll be teens and when they’ll go off to college or work. How to plan ahead? Get a big roll of paper and map it out. Put everyone’s ages down at the major milestones, like a 10-year anniversary or your last student loan payment or mortgage payment. Next, focus on the kids and what opportunities and life experiences you want to provide for them. How does it all fit in? When would they best benefit from a cross-country road trip or a visit to relatives who live abroad? How will you afford to create these experiences? Think of you. What else do you want for yourself? Beyond your family, what do you love? What do you [want to accomplish](http://motto.time.com/4472819/how-to-achieve-goals/)? How do you want to distinguish yourself? What are the [financial realities](http://motto.time.com/4340485/money-questions-before-wedding/) you face? Can you support your children through college and save enough for retirement? What do you want to learn? What expertise and life skills do you want to develop to share and teach? Determine your most urgent priorities and map out how you can achieve them step by step while your kids are still in the house. Then create a milestone on the year your last child leaves home and begin to sketch out what you want to do with the rest of your life. You’ll have many years in front of you. Now, bring in your partner if you have one. This is where the exercise gets messy and exciting. Explain your timeline as a working draft, incomplete without their input. Add their feedback along the timeline. Don’t rush — this could take time and start some major discussions. Face your realities and constraints. Write them down, and if there are conflicts, circle them in red and agree to resolve them. It’s just as important to record your aspirations. Do this together with candor and open hearts, until you’re both satisfied. If it takes a year to get it all down, that’s fine. The dialogue is what’s important. My husband and I did this years ago. We have three children, and during our timeline exercise we knew the day that our youngest child would leave for college. I knew I didn’t throw everything I possibly could into T3 when our kids were at home. I split my time as wisely and realistically as I could. My philosophy was if I could get back to a client in one day, rather than immediately, everything would still be fine. Rarely did I miss an evening dinner or reading [_Goodnight Moon_ ](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0694003611/ref=as%5Fli%5Fqf%5Fasin%5Fil%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=time037-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=0694003611&linkId=6fe7a727a9f0032e97262b54df525507)and that was the right choice for me. But once the screen door hit my youngest on the behind as he walked out, my husband and I set out to achieve our longer-term goal of raising the heat at T3 and growing it from a regional to a national agency. We expanded our management team and added analytics, social media, and mobile to our wheelhouse. I also threw myself into meeting anyone and everyone who could help us grow the business. The strategy was to get me in front of as many companies that could hire T3 as possible. I boarded planes and spent many nights away from home. And it worked. When you’re ready, introduce your timeline to your children. Tell them it can’t be complete without their input. Explain that you want to set clear goals and design your life — and your kids will start to think ahead, too. [_Gay Gaddis_](https://protect-us.mimecast.com/s/yb8aCW616ohZ7Ky7Cx5a1c?domain=gaygaddis.com) _is CEO and Founder of T3—The Think Tank. She is the author of_ [Cowgirl Power: How to Kick Ass in Business and Life](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1478948213/ref=as%5Fli%5Fqf%5Fasin%5Fil%5Ftl?ie=UTF8&tag=time037-20&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1478948213&linkId=ce565aa339b0dfaa78223febc856562f)[_._](https://www.amazon.com/Cowgirl-Power-Kick-Business-Life/dp/1478948213/?tag=mottocom-20) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/"},"headline":"I Achieved All My Family and Career Goals Because I Planned Decades Ahead","datePublished":"2018-01-24T15:52:28.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T09:05:58.405Z","description":"Advice from a successful CEO with three kids and a happy marriage","url":"https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/","keywords":["motto","work life balance","career advancement"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfcfbaded00d70615/6988f94bfb4eac782689569c/gay-gaddis-career-goals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Gay Gaddis","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/gay-gaddis/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfcfbaded00d70615/6988f94bfb4eac782689569c/gay-gaddis-career-goals.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Businesswoman doing a lecture in auditorium","caption":"Businesswoman doing a lecture in auditorium","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/motto/","name":"motto"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/5116243/gay-gaddis-planning-family-career/","name":"I Achieved All My Family and Career Goals Because I Planned Decades Ahead"}}]}] ```