I used to measure my days by how much I crossed off.
Flights confirmed. Reservations locked. The right car waiting at the right door. By any honest count, I was good at my job —
productive in the way the world rewards, all motion and completion.
But there was a night in
Kyoto
that changed how I think about all of it.
My employer was at dinner. I had two free hours, a rare gap in a schedule that usually swallows me whole. I sat by the window of a small room and, out of habit, opened my laptop. I started reorganising the next week's itinerary — a week that was already, more or less, done.
Outside, it had started to rain. Soft, quiet rain on old tiles. I noticed it the way you notice something you're not really looking at. And then I went back to the screen.
I was in one of the most beautiful cities I'd ever visit, and I was rearranging a spreadsheet.
It took me years to understand what I lost in moments like that. Not time — I had the time. What I lost was presence. The rain was there. The stillness was there. I was the one who wasn't.
Productivity, I've come to think, is about the future. It's always leaning forward, tidying what hasn't happened yet, guarding against what might go wrong. And my whole role is built on that instinct —
anticipate, prepare, never be caught off guard. It's a useful way to move through forty destinations. It's a poor way to actually be in any of them.
Presence is different. Presence has no output.
You can't file it, forward it, or tick it off a list. It asks only that you stop and let the moment reach you before you've already moved on to managing the next one.
I notice the gap most in the people I work around. My employer, for all the pressures of his life, can sit at a table and simply be at it. He tastes the food. He watches the room. Meanwhile I'm three steps ahead, wondering if the driver knows about the road closure. He is present. I am productive.
And I'm no longer sure which of us is travelling more.
There's a quiet lie in constant busyness. It feels like living. All that motion convinces you that you're making the most of things. But you can circle the globe and still not have been anywhere, if you were only ever managing the trip and never inside it.
I don't say this as someone who has fixed it. Some days the checklist still wins. The reflex to be useful runs deep, and there's real comfort in it —
a full list feels safer than an open moment. An open moment asks something of you. It asks you to just be there, with no task to hide behind.
But I'm learning, slowly, to leave small pockets unmanaged. To let a walk be only a walk. To eat without my phone face-up beside the plate. To let rain be rain, and to sit with it, even when there's a spreadsheet I could be tidying instead.
Being productive got me to forty countries. Being present is the only thing that will let me remember them.
The work will always be there. It's very patient, the work — it waits, it never truly ends. The moment doesn't wait. That's the whole difference. And these days, when the two pull against each other, I try to choose the one that won't come around again.
If this resonates, you may also want to read
The Skill of Presence: Being Fully Where You Are.
