The Compound Effect of Drifting

Quiet Clarity is a 2x/week newsletter and podcast for people who want to build a life of presence, depth, and deliberate intention.

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You ever feel like life’s just… happening?

It’s not a crisis. It’s just drifting.

Some Netflix, a few parties and a lot of “going with the flow.”

It feels normal, but something’s off.

A quiet ache builds.

Because life compounds, even when you're not paying attention.

Every scroll, skipped habit, wrong crowd… it stacks.

Then one day you wake up and think:
When did I choose this?

So how do you stop drifting… and actually choose the life you want to live?

I was a huge partier back in high school.

I’d always be looking forward to the next big thing going on.

For most of my life, that’s what kept me excited.

I thought that looking forward to the next weekend was the cool thing about life.

And the rest of my life, I’d just be drifting through, thinking it was neutral and just a part of life.

And man was I wrong.

Because what if drifting wasn't neutral?

What if every unintentional day was actually building something I'd regret?

Annie Dillard once wrote: "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."

Such a simple sentence.

But it changed everything for me when I really understood it.

Dillard was a writer who understood something most of us miss.

She spent years observing life - really observing it.

Living alone by Tinker Creek, watching the seasons change, noticing how time actually moves.

And she realized that we keep waiting for our "real" life to begin.

We think life is the big moments.

The promotions. The relationships. The achievements.

But Dillard saw the truth: life is Tuesday afternoon.

Life is what you did from 2-3pm yesterday.

Life is how you spent this morning.

She wrote: "A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days."

But here's what's wild - she wasn't talking about productivity.

She was talking about intention.

About how every unintentional hour becomes an unintentional day.

Every unintentional day becomes an unintentional year.

And before you know it, you've lived an unintentional life.

Dillard believed that the way we spend our ordinary moments is practice for how we'll spend our whole existence.

Each Netflix binge isn't just killing an evening.

It's teaching you how to live.

Each morning you drift into isn't just a lazy start.

It's building the blueprint for your life.

She put it bluntly: "A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper."

And the same is true for life.

Wait for the perfect moment to start living intentionally?

You'll die having never lived at all.

Every moment of drift is a brick in a prison you're building for yourself.

I'd been waiting for life to happen TO me instead of building it myself.

This hit me like a punch to the gut.

Just like Dillard spending her days by Tinker Creek, intentionally observing instead of drifting, I realized I needed to start building.

Not tomorrow. Not when conditions were perfect.

But in the ordinary moments.

Things eventually started to change, because I was sick of feeling hollow inside and acting like everything was fine.

So I started going to bed 30 minutes earlier.

Woke up with a bit more clarity.

Used that clarity to build a business.

Used that to write and launch a podcast.

Used that to create a life of meaning.

No one thing was life-changing.

But together, they stacked together.

Just like Dillard said - how we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

And I was finally spending mine intentionally.

And yes, it will take a while to get to your dream life.

But the process itself was fun. Hard for sure, but enjoyable.

And if you start to live each day like you’re building something meaningful, then that is worth more than all the dopamine in the world.