Thinking about who you’ll be in ten years is useful. Living there instead of here isn’t.

Picturing the person you want to become is how you choose a direction, and it is worth doing. The failure mode is subtle: the future becomes the place you actually live, and the present turns into a waiting room you resent. Ten years from now arrives one ordinary Tuesday at a time, and the Tuesdays are where the person gets built.

Keep the long picture, then pick the single thing it asks of you this week. One practice, one chapter, one conversation. Do that, and let the rest of the decade stay where it is.