I am a planner. It’s how I make sense of my crazy life. If you look at my calendar, you’ll find that most of my weekend plans are scheduled at least a month out and other events, particularly vacations. It helps me keep control of things and maximize my precious spare time.
It’s got lots of pros, but I’d be lying if I said there weren’t decidedly some cons. I frequently end up feeling like I rush from activity to activity and am more or less ruled by my to-do list and other, seemingly endless productivity systems. I keep many different calendars, endless lists and reminders and pages of notes.
So lately, I’ve been thinking about Felix Felicis.
Wait, what?
Hang in there with me. I’m going somewhere with this. In case you don’t know, Felix Felicis is a magical potion from the Harry Potter series. It first appears in Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince when Professor Slughorn gives it away as a prize for brewing the best potion on the first day of class. He describes it as, “Desperately tricky to make, and disastrous to get wrong. However, if brewed correctly, as this has been, you will find that all your endeavours tend to succeed … at least until the effects wear off.”
Harry ends up using his bottle of “liquid luck” to retrieve a very important memory from the aforementioned Slughorn. But the way in which the luck unfolds is actually quite interesting. Rather than being able to simply walk into Slughorn’s office, Felix leads Harry through a series of seemingly inconsequential whims, revealing the plan only one step at a time, that ultimately coalesce into the perfect circumstances to achieve his goal where his more direct means or plan had failed.
There is something very lovely about this … the idea that taking the next right step, repeatedly, leads you to where you want to go … whether or not you know exactly where this is. There’s something comforting about this. Yo you don’t have to know the whole picture, the big picture, you just have to make one decision or take one opportunity and then another and see what happens.
Lots of things in my life have been leading me this direction, lately. I recently drove home from Durango, CO after a long weekend there with the family. As Matt was suffereing big time from what we would learn later that day was pneumonia, the driving fell to me. This isn’t typical. Usually, because I spend many hours each week commuting and he doesn’t, he does the long drives on the weekend.
We decided to leave super early to beat a snowstorm heading in and so I drove for the first couple of hours in pitch black not really being able to see more than a hundred yards in front of me. I had to continuously monitor weather conditions and watch for deer (they were everywhere!) and while it wasn’t my favorite thing I’ve done lately, it was completely manageable as I just focused on the road I could see and keeping everyone safe.
I also recently read Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam. In her book, which mostly talks about how to make yourself feel like you have all the time in the world, talks specifically about the strategy of doing small right things over and over to achieve an outcome you want. Want to run every day? Make the commitment so ridiculously doable (1 mile, even half a mile) that you would feel silly for not doing it.
And then, I stumbled across a podcast. It is literally called The Next Right Thing. It’s actually in the Christianity Category and that isn’t something that I’m regularly drawn to. I gave this a listen on the whim, purely based on the title and it is so great. It’s based entirely on this notion and small steps you can take to help you take that next right step. Additionally, the host, Emily and her whole manner are super soothing and just nice.
I’d like to have some great point to all this … a way to wrap it up in a little bow that looks neat and pretty. But really, I’m just ruminating on this idea and looking to take the next right step every day.