I spend a lot of time thinking about what comes next. There are trips Tom and I want to take, things we want to do to the house, work I want to do with Handcrafted Adventure and Four Robbins, and changes I’m making with my health. Some of those things have dates attached to them. Others are still somewhere between an idea and a plan. I like having things to work toward, and I like knowing there’s something ahead that I’m building, planning, or looking forward to.
The problem is that most of life happens before any of those things are finished. It happens on a Wednesday when I go to work, come home, figure out dinner, and watch something with Tom. It happens when we take the dogs for a walk, spend Saturday working in the yard, or decide to go somewhere because the weather is too nice to stay home. Those days can look like the space between the important things. They aren’t.
There Is Almost Always Something in Progress
For a long time, I think I expected certain parts of life to eventually feel finished. We’d get the house the way we wanted it. I’d reach the health goals I was working toward. I’d figure out exactly what Handcrafted Adventure was becoming. We’d know what we wanted retirement to look like. The next trip would be planned. Then there would be some version of life where fewer things were unresolved.
I’m increasingly convinced that version doesn’t exist. We stopped trying to finish the yard this year for a similar reason. We finish one project and notice another. We answer one question and the answer creates three more. Something that worked well for a while stops fitting. Something we weren’t considering suddenly becomes interesting. Even good changes create unfinished business.
I still make plans, probably more than most people. I just don’t want to treat all the time between making a plan and reaching it as something to hurry through.
Some Things Are Supposed to Take a While
There are things I want that I can’t finish this week. Getting healthier and stronger, building Handcrafted Adventure and Four Robbins, saving money, and figuring out what Tom and I want the next several years to look like all take time. That’s normal — a plan can be working even when you’re nowhere near the end of it.
I think that’s easy to forget because we’re used to measuring things by completion. We finished the project. Took the trip. Reached the goal. Made the decision. The middle is harder to describe: you went to work, made dinner, did the workout, saved some money, worked on the house for a couple of hours, made one decision and left another for later. Nothing was finished. But that may be exactly what progress looks like that week — it all stacks, even the days that don’t look like much on their own.
The Ordinary Week Still Has to Work
This is where I’ve started paying more attention. If something is going to take six months, a year, or five years, the way I pursue it matters because I’m going to be living inside that plan for a long time. If better health requires a routine I can’t realistically maintain, that matters. If building a business leaves me constantly trying to squeeze more work into days that are already full, that matters too.
A good plan has to work inside an ordinary week. That doesn’t mean every week will be balanced — sometimes work gets busy, sometimes a project needs a push, sometimes there’s a deadline and other things get less attention for a while. That’s life. I’m more interested in what becomes normal. If the plan only works when you regularly ask more of your time, energy, or attention than you can keep giving, the problem may be the way the plan is built.
You Can Build Something and Live at the Same Time
I still want long-term goals and projects that take months. Some of the best things I’ve done required effort for a payoff I couldn’t see yet. But those things have to coexist with Tuesday.
That might mean working toward a big trip while taking a day trip this month. Improving your health while doing things your body can already handle. Saving for something important while leaving a little money for something enjoyable along the way. Working hard on a project without automatically giving it every free Saturday until it’s finished. The balance won’t look the same every week — sometimes the thing you’re building will need more of you. It just shouldn’t get your entire life by default.
Look at the Plan You’re Living Right Now
Think about something you’re working toward that will take a while — maybe you’re trying to get healthier, change careers, save money, fix up your house, grow a business, retire, move, or plan something that’s still a long way off.
Don’t ask whether you should stop wanting it. Ask what pursuing it is requiring from your life right now. What does it take from an ordinary week? What does it leave room for? Can you keep living this way long enough to reach the thing you’re working toward? And if the answer is no, does the goal need to change — or does the way you’re pursuing it need to change?
You don’t need perfect balance. I don’t think that exists either. But the middle has to be livable.
The Middle Counts
Anything worth building usually has a pretty big middle — weeks when you’re making progress but aren’t finished, months when you’re doing the work without much to show for it yet, ordinary days when the future you’re working toward is still somewhere ahead.
Those days aren’t time you have to get through before the plan pays off. They’re part of what the plan costs. And if a goal is going to take a meaningful piece of your life to reach, I think it’s worth asking whether you like the life you’re living while you get there — because that’s part of the plan too.
If this is the kind of thing you like thinking about on a Friday, The Weekly Reset is one grounded perspective and one small action, sent every Friday morning — plus the Reset Kit, eleven tools to help you get unstuck.