I used to think I needed some grand strategic vision, some ambitious endgame to work backward from. Like if I could just declare, “Become President of the United States,” I’d know exactly what to do today to make that happen. But real life doesn’t work like that. At least not for me.
I have no idea what the 60th president’s life will look like leading up to that point. And honestly, I only have the vaguest sense of what a “good outcome” would even be in my own life: a paid-off house, a happy marriage, meaningful work, some travel. The kind of life most people want. But that vision doesn’t do much to guide my next step. It’s too broad, too far away.
So I’ve become a convert to the idea that life is best lived one day at a time.
That’s not the same as avoiding long-term planning. It just means recognizing that I have much more control over how I spend today than I do over what happens ten years from now. And that’s freeing (but also hard, especially when you’re not sure what you’re aiming for).
At one point, I almost titled this piece What to Do While You’re Waiting. Waiting for life to start. Waiting for clarity about your mission. Waiting to finally figure it all out.
That kind of waiting can last years. I’ve spent long stretches living with the assumption that whatever I was doing was just the prelude. The filler before my real life began.
That’s worth being afraid of.
The truth is, we don’t get to know the meaning of our story before we start writing it. We don’t get to preview the ending or even identify the main conflict. We just have to start walking and discover our destination along the way.
It’s messy. It might even be unfair. But life is not a board game with set rules or victory conditions. In fact, life doesn’t come with instructions at all. People argue about what the rules should be. Influencers try to sell you their vision of success (money, fame, growth) as if that’s the universal win condition.
But success isn’t universal. It’s personal. That’s freeing. And dangerous.
Freeing because it means you get to define it for yourself. Dangerous because it’s easy to rationalize drift and avoidance under the illusion that you’re “playing a different game.” I did that for years. I told myself I didn’t need much money. What I wanted was freedom. So I coasted. I stopped jumping through other people’s hoops, but I hadn’t yet built my own.
It’s easy to tear down other people’s definitions of success. Harder to create your own and live by it.
Eventually, I realized this. Even if every definition of success is flawed, that doesn’t mean you can live without one. You still need something to guide your days.
The beginning of wisdom for me was accepting that I could choose my own mission, knowing it might evolve. The point isn’t to predict the future. It’s to grow as a person, and let your actions align with that.
Does that leave a lot of uncertainty? Oh, absolutely. But that’s life.
So instead of obsessing over my purpose every morning, I’ve come to trust something simpler: stack good days.
Not perfectly. Not exhaustively. Just intentionally. I don’t wake up and re-evaluate my whole life’s purpose. That’s too much pressure. That’s time better spent pulling weeds or replying to an email.
Instead, I say a quiet prayer in the morning: “When I go to sleep tonight, let me be satisfied with how I spent my day.”
And at night, I ask:
- Did I take care of what matters?
- Did I show up for others? For myself? For my future self?
- Was I kind?
- Did I learn anything?
- Did I move my body, eat decent food, clean the house?
A day is too short to do everything. And that’s a blessing. It means you don’t have to arrive. You just have to keep going. Chip away at the right things. Be a little better than yesterday. But don’t strain yourself trying to solve life all at once.
Because most of the time, what matters most is just stacking one good day on top of another.