I am always working. I can’t help it. I learn something new and compelling and want to pursue it. I find an opportunity — an idea — and the wheels start turning. They turn and turn. Even my rest is for work. Maybe purpose is a better word. Work can sound limiting, forced, less open to spontaneity and play. I mean those things, too. And when I say opportunity I’m referring to everything from building cardboard forts to managing a business to making videos. The wheels…they never stop.

Like most people, I design my days by necessity and preference, aware I’ll be pulled in multiple directions and while open to randomness I prefer keeping on schedule. There’s work to be done, after all. Lions to tame.

If anyone is going to make a dent in whatever they care about most, if they’re going to deliver greatness — wrestle those lions to the ground or tell stories that must be told or make what must be made — they’ll need to address the compression of time head-on and without hesitation. They’ll need to Do It Now.

It’s not a competition, this Do It Now thing. And it’s not that everything can — or should — be done at this moment, simultaneously and/or with reckless abandon. Patience remains a virtue (in certain instances) and down time is healthy. And external forces and resource limitations must be taken into account. All true. This is about the far larger force, the hunger, the unrelenting need to make it count —and the ensuing action it provokes.

The ability to do anything now is a gift. Not one of those grab-bag gifts where you have no idea what’s inside and pray it’s not a fruitcake. Nothing tangible. This gift is the opportunity to Do; an opportunity that in return offers learning and growth and if we’re lucky, a chance to stretch what’s possible. The more I learn, the more emphasis I place on Do It Now, the more meaningful it is.

I’ve gotta run (literally; it’s time to step away from my screens and get back outside). But first, a thumbnail definition of what Do It Now means:

Your best. You know what that is, or what it might be. Don’t stop ‘til you get there. And be honest along the way.

What’s necessary. You don’t need to like it, you just need to get it done. So go. Now.

That thing you want to start. Your opportunity cost is only going up.

That thing you want to stop. Same as above. Can the excuses.

What you have just enough time to accomplish. And might as well because by tomorrow you’ll probably wish you had done it.

It is not:

Maintain the status quo. Or if it is, consider blazing a trail in the opposite direction. Blazing: like, fast.

Wait until later. Wait for what? Permission? An invitation?

Sometime in the future. Meaning when..? Because why exactly? OK, if you can live with that.

When all the lights are green. News flash: they’ll never all be green. They’ll also never all be red (I hope).