Permission to Put It Down for a Minute
We’ve been doing some deep work around here lately.
Mission. Passion. Purpose. Anchoring yourself to your why. Understanding what drives you and what legacy you want to leave behind.
That work matters. It’s some of the most important work you can do.
It’s also – A lot.
So this week, I want to offer something a little different. Not a framework. Not a worksheet. Not a prompt that asks you to dig deeper into who you are and what you’re here to do.
A reminder.
Stop and smell the roses.
Someone Said Something That Stayed With Me
Years ago, someone told me something I haven’t forgotten.
“I work to live. I don’t live to work.”
Simple. Direct. And in the world we’re navigating right now — a world that glorifies the grind, rewards busyness, and has quietly convinced a lot of us that our productivity is our worth — it’s also quietly radical.
Because the modern world would prefer the latter. It would prefer you live to work. It would prefer your first thought in the morning and your last thought at night be about output, about optimization, about what you haven’t done yet.
And somewhere along the way, a lot of us said okay. We picked up the pace. We answered the email at 10pm. We skipped the lunch break. We rescheduled the vacation. We said “when things slow down” so many times that we stopped believing things ever would.
But here’s what I’ve noticed: things don’t slow down on their own. You have to slow them down. And if you don’t, the life you’re working so hard to build keeps happening somewhere just outside your peripheral vision while you’re too busy to see it.
The Life That’s Waiting
What does your version of stopping to smell the roses actually look like?
For me, it’s the moments I protect fiercely — even when the calendar is full and the to-do list is long. It’s getting out on the water on a paddleboard when the morning is still quiet. It’s a long walk with my dog where I’m not listening to a podcast or solving a problem, just walking. It’s a volleyball game on the grass or the beach where the only thing that matters for the next two hours is the game. It’s time with my community — the neighbors, the people who make where I live feel like home.
Those things don’t feel like productivity. They don’t generate a deliverable or move a project forward. But they do something nothing else does: they fill the tank back up.
And a person running on empty isn’t their best self at work, in relationships, or in any of the mission-driven work we’ve been talking about. You can’t pour from a cup that’s been dry for months.
Do the Thing You’ve Never Done
Can I challenge you with something?
Think about the thing you’ve been putting off. Not because you don’t want to do it — but because you keep deciding it’s not the right time. The trip you haven’t booked. The class you haven’t signed up for. The restaurant you’ve been meaning to try. The phone call to the person you miss. The hike you keep saying you’ll do when the weather is right or the schedule clears or life cooperates.
Here’s the truth: the schedule rarely clears on its own. Life cooperating is not a precondition for living.
The right time is usually now. Or at least, closer to now than we give ourselves credit for.
Do the thing you’ve never done. Take the walk in the middle of the day — not because you’ve earned it, but because you deserve to experience the world in the middle of an afternoon. Say yes to the invitation you’d normally decline because you’re tired. Go somewhere new. Try something that has nothing to do with your career or your goals or your growth plan.
Just live for a minute.
The People We Mean to Make Time For
Here’s one that hits a little closer to home.
Think about the people in your life who matter most to you. The ones you say you want to spend more time with. The ones you mean to call, mean to visit, mean to show up for.
When’s the last time you actually did?
Life moves fast. People get busy. And before you know it, the people who matter most become the people you’re always planning to get to — and never quite do. Not because you don’t love them. Because the urgent keeps crowding out the important, and the people we love most are patient enough to keep waiting.
They shouldn’t always have to wait.
Make the plan. Keep the plan. Show up not as the productive, optimized, output-generating version of yourself, but as the friend, the family member, the person who chose to be present.
That’s not time away from your life. That is your life.
Recharge Is Part of the Work
I want to reframe something before we close.
Rest, play, presence, adventure — these aren’t indulgences you have to earn. They’re not rewards for finishing the list or reaching the goal. They’re not selfish, and they’re not a waste of time.
They are part of the work.
The version of you that is rested, connected, and experiencing actual joy is a better thinker, a better leader, a better friend, a better everything. The creative idea that’s been eluding you doesn’t always come at the desk — it comes on the walk. The clarity you’ve been trying to force doesn’t arrive under pressure — it arrives in the quiet. The resilience you need to keep doing hard things doesn’t build itself — it builds in the spaces where you allow yourself to just be a human being for a while.
You defined your mission. You know your passion. You named your purpose.
Now go live the life that those things are in service of. Because a mission without a life behind it is just a statement. The whole point of knowing your why is so that your actual days — not just your work days, but your real, full, human days — can be shaped by it.
Your Only Assignment This Week
No worksheet. No framework. No reflection prompts.
Just one question:
What’s one thing you’ve been meaning to do — for yourself, for someone you love, or just because it sounds like living — that you keep putting off?
Do that thing this week. Or at least, take the first step toward it.
The roses are there. They’ve been there the whole time.
Stop. Smell them.
What does slowing down look like for you — and what’s your biggest obstacle to actually doing it? I’d love to hear it in the comments.