Protect the vessel carrying every future you are working toward.

Every future you are working toward is being carried by something physical, and that thing has a maintenance requirement. It is easy to spend years building toward something while quietly running down the only means of arriving there. Protecting it is not a distraction from ambition, it is the least glamorous part of the same project.

Look at what your ambition currently costs you physically and whether that cost is being repaid anywhere. If it is not, build in the repayment now. Nothing you are building survives without it.