What Are You Doing Now? ⏲️

When I reflected on my 2023, I noticed what an amazing year it had been. I reflected on building my website, on writing, on star gazing, on travelling and so much more.

My takeaway was this: Without looking back, we sometimes forget how beautiful life can be.

However, there was another takeaway. Beautiful as my end of the year reflection was, I was not entirely happy. It didn't give me a full picture of my year.

Something was missing.

What was missing?

Browse through the photos you took in the past month. You will probably see a lot of cool things that you did. But does it really show you what you preoccupied your mind with?

That's the thing I was missing.

Of course, my photos helped me remember the hikes I went on, the stand-up paddling I did and the stars I gazed upon.

But they didn't remind me of:

• My mission to watch all Tom Hanks movies.
• The time I immersed myself into Judaism, when I realized I knew so little about it.
• The weeks when I have watched "Gordon Ramsay Uncharted", where the renowned cook travels around the world and does his hilarious Gordon Ramsay thing.
• The phase when I played "No Man's Sky" on my Nintendo Switch and explored uninhabited planets in space.

These were once priorities in my life. Priorities I had left undocumented. As such, they had disappeared from my memory.

The now page

The idea of the now page is to have a dedicated page on your website that shows what you're doing at this time of your life.

Or to say it in Derek Siver's words:

My /now page is a public declaration of priorities. So it's a nice reminder for myself.

— Derek Sivers, The /now page movement

Derek came up with the concept of the now page. Today, many personal websites have one. Just like there's an /about page or a /contact page, /now pages became very common.

So a website with a link that says “now” goes to a page that tells you what this person is focused on at this point in their life. For short, we call it a “now page”.

— nownownow.com

When I learned this, I knew what time it was. It was time to document priorities.

When is "now"?

Before I started, I reached out to Derek.

I asked him, how often he updated his now page. Was it something he did once a month? Once a week?

When does one now end and another now begin?

I update it whenever my priorities change. So it can be weekly or even monthly.

— Derek

It took me a while to understand this completely.

Documenting nows

When I started with my now page, I felt energized.

For weeks, it said this (among other things):

Watching The Boy and the Heron, Hayao Miyazaki's comeback movie from retirement, inspired me to watch all Studio Ghibli movies.

— My now page in the beginning of February

And so, for weeks, I immersed myself into Ghibli movies. For weeks, I felt focused. I was really motivated to stick to it. The public declaration helped.

When I was halfway through, something happened. Suddenly I lost my focus. For days, I couldn't find the time to continue with the movies. Still, I felt too proud to give in.

But slowly, I realized: my priorities were changing. And it hurt for a moment. But why would I lie to myself? That's when I updated my /now page.

And that's when all of a sudden, Derek's words made sense. Priorities change. Now pages change.

What are you doing now?

I love the idea of the now page:

• It allows me to be more focused on my priorities.
• It lets me reflect on what I preoccupy my mind with.
• It's a moment in time I can share with my friends.
• It adds more personality to my personal website.
• It shows where I am right now (more on that in an upcoming post).

And last but not least: It will give me a fuller picture in the next end of the year reflection.

There's no time like now. 🍦