The Things I Am Not Doing in 2026
I have spent most of my life measuring myself with scoreboards that were not mine.
Sales numbers. Baseball stats. Closed rings on my Apple Watch. For years, these external metrics made life simple. They told me exactly where I stood. As a lifelong SMART goals person, measurable, trackable outcomes were my comfort zone and the foundation of my success.
But here’s what those scoreboards never told me: who I was becoming.
Last week at hockey, I worked up a full sweat despite playing terribly. Fumbled dangles, missed nets, passes landing in my teammates’ feet. It was the kind of night where the effort was high, but the execution was comically low, especially to anyone who knows the sport.
And for a split second, I wondered if it “counted” because my Apple Watch wasn’t there to close a ring.
That moment made me laugh at myself. But it also revealed something I didn’t expect to see so clearly.
I realized I had been living on autopilot, measuring progress by metrics that had nothing to do with the life I actually want to build.
The Drift I Didn’t See Coming
I never had one dramatic burnout moment.
What I had was a series of days where I suddenly looked up and realized I wasn’t fully awake to my own life. I was operating efficiently and still winning, but on autopilot. Rushing, multitasking, carrying a low-level tension in my chest that I had normalized for years.
And here’s the strange part: it was working.
Professionally, I had been sleepwalking for years. The results were there. The scoreboard looked great. I was succeeding at a level most people never experience, and yet I knew my process wasn’t something I was proud of.
What made it tricky is that my bad process kept being rewarded. When the external indicators are all green, it’s very easy to miss the places where you’re drifting or shrinking or quietly disconnecting from yourself. I had been optimizing for outcomes, not alignment. For results, not presence.
In my last piece, I wrote about presence being the real gift—the ability to actually be with my family instead of half-somewhere else. This is the natural next step. If presence is the gift, removing friction is how I keep unwrapping it.
This year, I’m reversing course. I’m becoming more of a process-oriented person. Someone who measures the quality of the day by how I showed up, not just what got checked off.
Getting Rid of the Buzzing
About two and a half years ago, I made the conscious choice to get rid of my Apple Watch.
I didn’t want a constant string of notifications tapping my wrist or the subtle pressure of being measured every minute. I wanted fewer interruptions, fewer buzzes, fewer reminders of things that weren’t actually meaningful.
I switched to wearing real timepieces instead—mechanical watches that don’t ask anything of me. They simply tell the time. They let me be the one who decides how my day feels. (That’s a story for another piece, but the short version is this: a tool that doesn’t demand my attention is better than one that constantly tries to optimize me.)
But even after removing some of the noise, I still had to confront something deeper.
Those scoreboards—Apple rings, sales quotas, baseball stats—never told me who I was becoming. They told me I was productive. They told me I was moving. But they didn’t tell me if I was present. If I was aligned. If I was building something that mattered beyond the next quarter or the next closed deal.
That’s the shift I’m working through now.
Building an Internal Scoreboard
I’m learning to build an internal scoreboard, and truthfully: I don’t know all the categories yet.
But I know what I’m aiming for: presence, alignment, showing up well, being proud of how I lived the day. I’m learning to trust the feeling of a good day rather than its metrics.
Here’s what I’m testing as I figure this out:
Did I rush today, or did I move with intention? Not speed, intention. There’s a difference between moving fast because something matters and moving fast because you forgot how to slow down.
Was I fully present when it mattered? At dinner. At bedtime. During the moments my kids will remember. Did I give them my attention, or did I give them my proximity?
Did I make decisions that align with who I want to become? Not just who I am today, but the person I’m building toward. The father, the husband, the professional who’s grounded instead of grinding.
Would I be proud of this day if I replayed it tomorrow? Not the output. The way I showed up. The tone I set. The version of myself I brought to the table.
These aren’t perfect. They’re not even fully formed yet. But they’re mine. And that’s the point.
The things that matter most can’t be tracked in an app. They have to be felt. And I’m learning to trust that feeling more than the notification that says I closed a ring.
The Inheritance I Hope I Give My Kids
As an honest evaluation, I hope my kids inherit my drive. Just not my engine’s idle speed.
I want them to feel the satisfaction of working hard without the compulsion to rush through everything the way I used to. I want them to see that being proud of your work matters more than getting it done fast.
This one’s personal for me. I’ve struggled with that for most of my life and still do at times. It irritates me when I see it in myself, and just as much when I see it in others, because I know exactly what it feels like on the inside. That low-grade hum of urgency that has nothing to do with the actual deadline and everything to do with some invisible scoreboard you can’t even name.
I want my kids to understand that presence is a strength. That attention is a form of love.
If they walk into adulthood knowing how to slow down long enough to actually feel their own life, that will be the real inheritance. Not the wealth I build. Not the lessons I teach them about money, investing, or discipline. The ability to be awake for their own life.
That’s what I want to pass down.
Returning to Presence (Again and Again)
I still fall short all the time.
When I’m impatient or distracted at a school performance. When I’m rushing my kids through homework, the irony of teaching them not to rush while rushing them myself. When I catch myself half-listening because I’m already thinking three steps ahead.
In those moments, I tell myself what I’d tell a teammate after a bad play:
“Just like a bad at-bat, a drive ending up a street over from the fairway, or fumbling the puck on the rush: okay, that’s done. Let’s be better next time.”
Presence isn’t something I nail every time. Candidly, I still do a fairly poor job most days. It’s something I return to. Sometimes it takes thirty seconds. Sometimes it takes a day. The win isn’t perfection. The win is noticing I drifted and coming back sooner.
What I’ve learned is that presence changes the temperature of everything.
I show up more fully. My family feels me more. I’m not half in some mental tab while I’m with them. That alone shifts the entire dynamic of our home.
It doesn’t just make my life more enjoyable. It makes their childhood feel more held, more intentional, more loved.
Presence helps me offer my best self, not the leftover version that remains after rushing through the day. One of my mentors used to tell me that my greatness is in high demand, and I’ve started to believe that.
We all carry a quiet greatness inside us, often without realizing it. And if anything in my life deserves mine, it’s my family. They deserve the version of me that’s attentive, grounded, and proud of how I show up. Not whatever is left after I’ve spent myself everywhere else.
What I’m Not Doing in 2026
So in 2026, I’m not adding more.
I’m removing everything that quietly steals from me: the drift, the mindless inputs, the reflexive metrics, the invisible tension that pulls me out of my own life.
I’m not trying to perfect myself this year. I’m trying to be awake for my own life.
I’m trying to notice what steals from me quietly and choose what I want back.
Less drift. More intention.
Fewer scoreboards, I didn’t choose. More alignment, I can feel.
This year isn’t about doing more. It’s about doing my life on purpose.
A question I’m sitting with: What scoreboards are you measuring yourself against that you never actually chose? And what would change if you built your own?
Hit reply and let me know. I’m still figuring this out myself, and I’d love to hear what resonates—or what you’re working through on your own.
— Stephen