What’s Your Best Today?

Motivational gurus love to tell you that you need to “give your absolute best, every single day!” They make it sound like you’re supposed to run a marathon before breakfast, launch three companies by lunch, and start a non-profit in the afternoon. But what does “your best” even mean?

Actually, that’s the very question you must answer — a task you must face every day — and since it’s a tough one, the gurus usually don’t bother explaining.

On some days, your best will indeed be running a marathon or starting a company. Most of the time, however, your best will simply mean a few hours of focused work in the same direction you worked towards yesterday. And sometimes, your best is sending a single email, then crawling back to bed and nursing your cold.

The hard part of giving your best is not doing the work. It is to face your inner demons, look around, and ask: “How many of you can I slay today?” — and then to come up with an honest answer. Once you have that, your course is set. You’ll still need some support along the way, but once your potential is straightened out, blossoming into it will almost feel like rolling downhill.

So, what is your best today? Don’t be afraid to give an honest answer, and then do what it takes to see it through.

One Spark Is Enough

Artis Leon Ivey Jr. spent 59 years on Earth. Many now say that was too short, but those years still add up to over 20,000 days. To you, and me, and millions of people around the world, only one of those days mattered, but it took Ivey all 20,000 of them for that one day to unfold. That day was August 1st, 1995 — the day Coolio released “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

Nearly 30 years after its release, you’ll still recognize this tune in a Hollywood movie trailer. And another one. And another one. You’ll see video games making their footage look ten times cooler thanks to this song. You’ll find people making all kinds of remixes for events they’re excited about. And if an inspiring Elon Musk video ever knocks your socks off, chances are, it’s Gangsta’s Paradise playing in the background.

At over one billion video views, five million single-sales, and millions of listens around the world every month, Gangsta’s Paradise is the one and perhaps only artifact most of us will remember about Coolio. We won’t know his real name; we won’t know that he died from an accidental drug overdose; we won’t know that the song was basically a straight-up cover of Stevie Wonder’s “Pastime Paradise” — because none of those details matter.

Future generations will hear that familiar melody, bob their heads, and soak up the lyrics. They’ll get carried away by the tune, and they’ll listen again. And again. And again. Slowly but surely, it will take hold. It will carve out a tiny cavity in their lives, nest into it, and stay there forever. And that is enough.

Making art is the greatest game we play. It combines serious, important work with the fun of grabbing a baseball bat and hitting a few shots — and one home run can make a dent in the universe. Make more art. One spark is enough.

Even Magic Has Limits

When Simon hears about the Arcane Seal of Mordenkainen protecting the vault he and his fellow thieves are trying to break into, the wizard is about to hang up his magic robe. “Oh, pity. If the vault has Mordenkainen’s Seal, we’re not getting in. It’s impenetrable.”

“Can’t you just open it with magic?” his comrades ask him. “Okay, here we go. I hate how everyone thinks that you can solve any problem with magic. There are limits. This isn’t some bedtime story. This is the real world.”

The irony, of course, is that this is very much a bedtime story — because the above scene comes straight out of Dungeons & Dragons. But even in bedtime stories, magic has limits. Actually, why? Why can’t magic solve everything? Why can’t Harry just make Voldemort disappear? Why can’t Gandalf defeat Sauron with a single spell? And why can’t Simon open that vault without whining about it? Well, for one because then there wouldn’t be a tale to tell, but for another because, in magic as in life, nothing can solve everything. There is no universal remedy.

If you give a beggar ten million dollars, he’ll have to change a lot more than just his appearance. His mind is still his mind, and if he doesn’t adjust it to his new circumstances, he’ll soon be a beggar once more. In order for magic to truly capture us, it needs to have that same quality. It must leave some part of the challenge to us — and that’s why Simon must also adjust. To the Helm of Disjunction, that is. The one magical tool that can kind of, sort of get him into that vault — but only if the gang manages to find it. And he masters it. Which of course requires mastering himself.

In life as in magic, nothing can solve everything, but something can solve anything. There’s always another way, another tool, another detour one can take. Perhaps not to reach the same outcome. But to reach a satisfying, similar, sometimes entirely different but even better one? Somewhere out there, that path exists for any situation, and it almost always starts with changing something inside ourselves. Choosing to look for that path, to continue when all spells are at their end, that is real magic — and thankfully, that’s a kind of wizardry available even to mere mortals like us.

The Best Kind of Recipe

One of the most fun parts of getting to know my girlfriend over the years is to see her food creations after being more exposed to German cuisine.

No matter where you’re raised, there are thousands of invisible rules you don’t even realize you adhere to. “This spread you’re only supposed to eat with butter. This jam doesn’t go with that cheese.”

When someone breaks those rules right in front of you — simply because they don’t know they exist — it’s a nice reminder: Actually, you can do whatever you want. You can add butter where it usually doesn’t go, and you can leave out the milk if you don’t like it.

The best recipes are the ones we invent, not the ones we follow.

You Only See the Grill

I’m not sure I’ve ever spent this much money in such a short amount of time. Increased rent, buying a bed, sofa, dining table — furnishing adds up fast. Of course, there are also the treats one might afford themselves after finally graduating to a new lifestyle. I haven’t owned a TV in 13 years, but now, I definitely want a big one. And since she loves BBQing, my girlfriend also bought us a new grill.

“My god,” I sometimes think when sharing these genuinely exciting updates with friends. “They must think I’m indulgent.” I’m even more hesitant to share such purchases online. Friends and family usually have an okay understanding of why we do things. They know our backstory, and it’s easy for them to be happy for us. But if and when you perform for an audience, well, they only see the grill. “That’s an expensive BBQ! Why does he brag about that? Meanwhile, I just lost my job!”

It’s much harder to have empathy when you only know the result, not the path someone took to get there. What makes friends happy for us might make strangers envious. When I tell you about my new BBQ, you can’t feel the ten years of hard work to get there. You don’t see the long hours, fiddling with tax calculations, or even the painful assembly process of the thing. All you see is the outcome: a shiny new grill, ready for some delicious steak action.

Of course, we are all the audience at some point or other. You only see my grill, and I only see my favorite car Youtuber’s garage. That’s normal. The effort worth making is to try and have empathy regardless. To try to at least imagine the long road it took to get there. That way, we’ll feel a little less envious, and a little more like a friend.

Don’t overshare when context is lacking, and don’t judge a book when you’ve only read one page.

Small Gestures

When I see a lonely speck on a big surface, I wipe it away. When there’s a stack of papers lying loosely on a table, I align them and put them into one of the corners. Some call this OCD, others call it “an eye for detail.” I’ve inherited this trait from my mom who, over 30 years of running a wonderful home, has made tens of thousands of small gestures part of the fabric that makes said home so wonderful.

Often invisible but never insignificant, it has taken me just as long to fully appreciate these gestures, and it’ll probably take me a lifetime to truly comprehend how much meaning they can add to other people’s lives. As a child, you barely notice your tied shoes, full lunch box, or dust-free toilet seat. Your job is to run, to eat, and to poop. You’re so busy soaking up the world and everything that’s in it, you have no time — nor the wits — to comprehend your caretakers paving your way. But every day, they do, and without them, you’d stumble, go hungry, or get stomach cramps.

Small gestures are most strongly felt once they are absent, and if we are lucky, we first might feel those gaps as teenagers, if only by means of our friends constantly asking us for a piece from our lunchbox — for they arrive at school without one every day, and we never go hungry. Next, you might try performing small gestures for someone you fancy, and if those go unnoticed, that too holds a lesson: At least every now and then, it’s nice, essential even, to feel acknowledged. As time wears on, you might realize small gestures open a lot of doors at work — or get scolded for not going the extra mile. You may collect bonus points on your exams for sharing knowledge none of the questions asked for, and slowly but surely, the insight trickles in: the little things are not so little at all.

The importance of details first hit me in a big way when I became self-employed. It was impossible to stand out by just “doing the work.” There were thousands of people doing it! All of the credit you wanted to earn was waiting in the extra hours — the screenshots you added to your blog post, the additional design options you provided, the second check-in with your client they didn’t pay for. Now that I am, for the first time, managing a home that houses more than just me, I’m slowly coming full circle. “Thank you for clearing out the dishwasher,” my girlfriend might say, and I’ll realize I’m not sure I said those words to my mom even once — yet she always thanks me or my dad when we do it. But there’s more than one way of contributing to family, and I’m also learning that we — the folk of small gestures — ultimately don’t do them just for the sake of others. We do them for ourselves.

If you really thought, “I’m sure she’ll be happy if I do this,” every time you wipe your girlfriend’s nightstand clean, yet nine out of ten times, she won’t say a word, you wouldn’t maintain this habit for long. No. The only way to arrive early at pickup time, get up to make breakfast, or refill the rinse aid in your dishwasher time and again, year after year, is to live and breathe the philosophy of the detail-oriented. To believe. To know, deep in your heart, that all of those tiny efforts will one day add up, even if you might not be there to see it — and that even where they don’t, they’ll still give you that warm, satisfying feeling of having done your very best.

Whether you’re a loving parent, dedicated caretaker, or other-conscious artist or entrepreneur, I want you to know: Your small gestures matter. All of those swapped toilet rolls, tiny gifts, and extra chapter breakdowns on your slides have not, are not, will not be made in vain. Not everyone will always see you, but in the long run, the people from whom it matters most most certainly will. But even if the road is lonely and praise is scarce, there’ll always be that sense of contentment when you go to bed at night: You’ve done your part. Your spark is out there, and it is glowing as strongly as it can.

Believe in small gestures.

Still Got It

I can’t freestyle like I used to. My hip rotators begin to hurt the moment I even think about doing some of the football tricks I once pulled off with ease. But that doesn’t mean I can’t freestyle anymore at all. After years of inactivity, a few days ago, I bought some soccer shoes and a ball. So far, I went out twice and tried some moves. Just for the feeling. It’s nice to see the basics are still there.

Will I ever get back to the golden days? Eight out of ten orthopedists would say it’s unlikely. Aside from the required training, which I lack the time for to begin with, the lower half of my body would not thank me for wandering too far down memory lane. But a little exercise and nostalgia? Both of those can go a long way.

There’s a great How I Met Your Mother episode called “Unfinished,” in which the characters find themselves confronted with the tough reality that they are no longer the people they once aspired to be. Even if Lily still keeps her karate instructor’s number in her phone years after she took her last class, she is not “someone who trains karate” — but as long as she holds on to the number as a token, she still gets to feel like she is.

“Labels expire,” Derek Sivers says. “Be honest about what’s past and what’s present. Retiring outdated titles lets you admit what you’re really doing now. And if you don’t like the idea of losing your title, then do something about it!”

In the end, each of the gang members must let go of a romantic but extinct identity — or double down on it and re-earn their title. No matter which option they choose, however, they all find a sense of peace from their decision. Marshall is no longer in a funk band, but he can still sing to himself while he vacuums his apartment. Ted did not become an architect to build corporate headquarters, but if he takes on the Goliath National Bank project, at least he’ll get to create a skyscraper. And Lily? Well, let’s just say there was an oddly tall student in the next young adults’ karate class.

It’s true that we must keep earning our titles, but if we retain little artifacts from identities long past, we can still enjoy the people we once were, even if we can no longer fully access them. Don’t take your labels so seriously, but don’t underestimate the confidence and happiness boost from a little bit of reminiscing either. Your grasp around your once-favorite habit might no longer be as strong as it was, but you’ve still got it — and that’s as great a reason to look forward to tomorrow as it is one to celebrate yesterday.

Tolerance Is a Superpower

I just spent an hour being the big spoon without getting any shut-eye. The cuddling is always nice, but the position is not the most comfortable. Since my girlfriend slept like a rock, however, I decided to muscle through. In fact, I turned not moving into a game: How long can I tolerate this position without disrupting her sleep? I managed to stay still all the way until she woke up on her own.

After she’d had a severe concussion that forced her to maintain bed rest for weeks, Jane McGonigal did something similar: She turned her illness into a game. Instead of being depressed at her immobility, McGonigal became “Jane the Concussion Slayer.” She fought bad guys, like bright lights, and collected power ups, like taking short walks, until she recovered. She named her game “SuperBetter,” and it eventually became not just a bestselling book but also an app helping over a million people with their mental health (disclosure: I invested in their crowdfunding campaign).

Whether it’s meditation, being the big spoon, or sitting in your chair for extended periods of time, it’s easy enough to understand the value of tolerance when it comes to physical discomfort, but the more I thought about it as I was lying perfectly still, the more I realized: Tolerance applies to almost everything in life. Even when you’re asked to do something instead of nothing, you’ll still need to tolerate that activity until it’s done.

How fast I can finish my next big post is a question of how long I’m willing to sit with it each day. Yesterday, I quit around lunch time. Can I work on it until the afternoon today? Are you willing to tolerate boring research papers? Will you stare at the blank canvas until inspiration strikes? Or do you fidget and hop to Twitter as soon as the first inkling of self-doubt appears?

Tolerance enables focus, and, in the long run, focus is the only thing that works. That’s why it’s a superpower, and if you look deep inside yourself, perhaps in a moment of stillness — forced or otherwise — you might be surprised at how much of it is already there.

Go and Prepare and Do It

Having grown up on and around boats, when she was 13, Laura Dekker decided she would sail around the world — all on her own. Her parents supported the idea, but the Dutch courts didn’t, and so it was only a year later, at 14, that she finally got the go-ahead. More than 500 days after setting off, at the age of 16, Laura and her two-master, the Guppy, arrived back home safe and sound, making her the youngest person ever to solo-circumnavigate the globe.

Now in her 20s, Laura still gets interviewed on a regular basis about the experience. In one conversation, she is asked what helped her “feel ready” for the adventure. “Now that I’m older, I do realize the process is different for children vs. adults. That’s the beautiful thing about children. They have something adults have lost. A curiosity. A spark.”

Back then, Laura didn’t really think about her decision. She didn’t think about “being ready.” She just felt like going on this adventure, so she said she wanted to, and then she did. “As a child, you think very simple — and it is very simple, in fact. You just go and prepare and do it. It’s not that difficult.”

Most of the obstacles children face when trying to do something special are the stones we as adults put in their way. For Laura, it was a court order. For most kids, it’ll be their parents. Once we’re grown up, we lay those same stones into our own path. But the truth is, life still can be simple. You just go and prepare and do it. Your hurdles will be different ones, some inner, some outer, but if there’s something you care about doing, as soon as you set foot on the path, you’ll be on your way.

“This feeling of ‘when I’m ready,’ deep in your heart you know it, and all the rest of it is just making excuses,” Laura says. Don’t let those excuses bury your dreams. Remember your inner child. Channel your simple thinking. And then, whatever your version of a sailing trip around the world is, go and prepare and do it.

What Makes a Hero

If you could travel back in time to change the past in your favor, would you do it? What a question! Of course you would! Who wouldn’t want the right lottery numbers when the jackpot is high, a winning stock tip just before the bull run, or a second chance to ask their crush out properly this time?

When we phrase it in terms of what’s in it for us, free time travel seems like a no-brainer. But what about the other people? What about the consequences of our “adjustments?” If Marvel has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t mess with time without turning the world upside down — not even a little bit.

Perhaps your lottery win takes it away from someone who really needs it, and then that person’s daughter becomes first an orphan, then a politician, and, eventually, a dictator throwing an entire country into misery. What if our sudden insider knowledge of the market triggers an SEC investigation — not into us but into the company — and then what was supposed to be a billion-dollar business employing thousands of people and helping millions goes bankrupt before it can ever flourish? And your crush? Maybe they would go out with you, fall in love with you, even marry you — but if that marriage ends in a bitter divorce seven years later, I doubt either of you will think the time tinkering was worth it in the end.

In Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the stage play set 19 years after the original saga ends, the main characters — the children of Harry, Draco Malfoy, Ron, and Hermione — are forced to grapple with such moral dilemmas in real-time (pun intended). So is everyone’s darling, “The Boy Who Lived” himself.

Faced with a chance to undo the tragedy that has haunted him all his life, Harry must decide: “Am I going to try and stop Voldemort? Or will I just sit here and let the last 26 years unfold exactly as they have?” We, the audience, already know the right answer — and so does Harry’s son: “There is something you could do — to stop him. But you won’t.” And to that, even the most hesitant of friends, Draco Malfoy, can only respond with two words: “That’s heroic.”

Sometimes, the bravest thing we can do is to do nothing at all. To let the past be the past and not rush to undo mistakes which, for all we know, ultimately set us on the right path. The next time someone offers you free time travel, think long and hard before meddling with the clock. Chances are, you need neither superpowers nor magic — only to look ahead and keep walking the road that’s in front of you. That’s heroic, and in the real world, it’s the everyday heroes who save the day.