Go Where the Puck Is

I grew up in a hockey-loving family, so when I was younger I got used to hearing Wayne Gretzky's famous quote:

"Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been."

This can be good advice in certain situations, but I've come to think that in most cases it's probably a bad approach—especially when applied to life and work. Often, it's better to go where the puck is.

What do I mean by this?

A lot of people (myself included, sometimes) get ahead of themselves and spend so much time thinking about the next thing / trying to find "white space" they fail to do the things required to advance. If you're always thinking about your next move, you aren't maximizing the output from your current move (which is bad for everyone).

In school and in video games, we're taught that completing discrete tasks is the way to level up. That's not how performance works in most contexts where good work is hard to quantify. But, ultimately, you get better at something by doing the thing, not by thinking about other things you could do in the future.

There are some obvious caveats here, but I think this is generally right in a lot of situations.