I am blogging everyday (or nearly everyday) on The Daily Stoic.

Friday - How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything

Live in the moment. How you do anything is how you do everything. Constantly stuck in the past and the future will define us. Instead we’re meant to live in the current moment. I think we can set where we want to be. The five year plan. It’s good to set that not live in that future moment. This is something I’ve lost in the last couple of years. I had a direction of where I wanted to go and lived mostly in that moment. Now that I’ve gotten here I don’t have something to look to. I started living in the past. How was I like that and I’m not now.

Living in the moment is not something I tend to do. I tend to think about getting to the weekend or getting to later in the evening and the kids are in bed and I can do what I want. I’m going to work on living more in the current moment. Focusing on what needs to be done in that moment. We can make plans we shouldn’t let them consume us.

Yesterday - Learn, Practice, Train

Practice makes perfect. Like sports or military we have to practice to get better at something. Even guys who have been in the league or military for 20 years continue to learn, practice, and train. For athletes they have to learn how to deal with slower reaction times. For military people they have to learn in higher and higher leadership roles. This is something I’ve started to realize with my career. I got to a senior position in IT. Then I got promoted to manager. I’m back at the bottom of the rung. I’ve got a whole new skilset I need to learn, practice, and train. This comforts me because it gives me new direction in my life.

Today - Quality Over Quantity

There are too many books to read for us to get to all them. We should choose quality over the amount of books we read. I love what Ryan Holiday recommends. Ask people you admire for the book that changed their life. I love that notion of finding out what really provided impact to people. I like to read and my Amazon shopping list is filled with lots of books that have been recommended to me. I don’t know if I’ll get to even those in my lifetime. I think it’s also worth realizing that if I’m not connecting with a book to bail on it. One book that I’ve heard tons of people recommend is the 80/20 Principle by Richard Koch I stopped reading about half-way through. I got the principle, I just wasn’t connecting with the writing so I stopped.