Nicolas Boulenger - Welcome

It's a phrase I told myself one day when I was not at all doing what I should have been doing.

I was at a café, writing.

When I had "real" work to finish.

I felt guilty.

And that's when I told myself: "No: I am doing exactly what I should be doing."

First, because there's no point denying the truth: I was at the café. Not at the office. No use wishing for an alternative reality that doesn't exist.

But mostly because I don't know the future.

Is doing this work I don't want to do really the best path for me?

Or is it a conditioned reflex, drilled in at school? You have to push through. Work. Force yourself to do what you don't want to do.

Otherwise, you feel the disapproving gaze of teachers, family, society weighing on you.

Now that things are going better, I realize the café reflections were leading me in a much better direction – professionally and personally – than the work that bored me.

I had summed up this idea in a phrase I added to the note I read every morning:

The right action, taken at the right moment, matters more than weeks or months of work.

The goal isn't quantity. Nor suffering.

The goal is to seize the right opportunity when it comes.

And for that, you have to be there.

You have to be attentive, listening, present.

Which doesn't mean – I'll say it again – that I've removed effort from my life.

Quite the opposite. I wake up earlier. I work longer hours.

Even the tasks that bore me – accounting, housework, admin – get done on time and more easily than before.

I'd even say I still very much believe in the value of effort.

But in the sense of a gift.

You give your effort to yourself, to others, to the world.

Because, in a way, you love them.

But not out of obligation.

Never out of obligation.