December 20

You cannot control what happens tomorrow. Or in ten minutes. You can’t control what your manager or client will say about your latest work. You especially can’t control the reception that work might have in the broader marketplace.

What you can control is how you engage the work right now.

Or more importantly, you can control how you do whatever it is you’re doing right now.

If you are writing, be writing. If you are designing, be designing. If you are in a meeting with someone, focus solely on being with them at this moment.

Train yourself to be fully and completely immersed in what you are doing at the moment, and it will become a habit. You will—over time—develop the muscle of complete and utter presence. In any given moment, now is all that matters.

We waste far too much time worrying that something “out there” might be more important than what’s in front of us. And as a result, we fail to bring our full faculty to the very thing we are doing. We are being robbed not just of our effectiveness but of our very lives.

How you do anything is how you do everything. Whatever you are doing right after reading this entry, focus on doing it with utmost presence and excellence. We will all be the beneficiaries of your diligence.

Focus on what’s in front of you,right now.

What will you devote your complete attention to next?