The Grammys happened this week. They happen every year, but this year felt different. This year, Bad Bunny’s story cut through the noise.
Ten years ago, he was bagging groceries. Last Sunday, he was holding a Grammy.
Ten years.
I needed that reminder more than I realized. I’ve been consumed lately—consumed by my timeline, my milestones, my metrics. Obsessed with where I should be versus where I am. Calculating the gap, feeling its weight, letting it dictate my days.
But Bad Bunny’s decade is a different kind of math. It’s a reminder that your life has its own plans, operating on a timeline that doesn’t care about your quarterly reviews or your five-year projections. The trajectory isn’t yours to control.
The only things you actually control? Your effort today. Your presence right now.
That’s it. That’s the whole list.
The Problem with Time
Here’s what I’ve been getting wrong: I’ve been measuring transformation with a stopwatch when I need a calendar—checking for fruit when I should be tending roots.
The past is gone. There’s no point living there, replaying the mistakes, tallying the regrets. Learn from it, extract the lesson, and move on. It’s a fixed dataset, useful for pattern recognition, useless for anything else.
The future is equally out of reach. You can worry about what’s coming, plan for it, or obsess over it. But worrying is just suffering twice. The future is a probability cloud you can influence but never command.
What remains is today. This week. This hour. The present is the only point where force can actually be applied.
So the strategy becomes simple:
Show up. Do the work. Be present. Let it compound.
Maybe it takes a year. Maybe it takes ten. You never know, so you keep showing up.
The Japanese Methods
I’ve been trying to practice two Japanese concepts lately: Kaizen and Ikigai.
Kaizen: The 1% Rule
Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese. It’s the philosophy that small, daily improvements compound into massive change over time.
The core idea: Don’t try to transform overnight. Just get 1% better today than you were yesterday.
In practice:
Don’t aim to write a book—write one paragraph today
Don’t overhaul your fitness—add one pushup to yesterday’s count
Don’t reinvent your career—learn one new skill this week
Kaizen rejects the dramatic transformation narrative. Instead, it trusts that tiny, consistent improvements stack invisibly until one day you turn around and realize you’ve climbed a mountain.
The question Kaizen asks: “What can I improve by 1% today?”
Ikigai: Your Reason for Being
Ikigai is the intersection of four questions:
What do you love?
What are you good at?
What does the world need?
What can you be paid for?
Where all four overlap—that’s your ikigai. Your reason for getting out of bed.
Why it matters: You can Kaizen yourself up the wrong mountain very efficiently. You can improve 1% daily at something you hate, something the world doesn’t need, or something that slowly kills your soul.
Ikigai is your compass. It ensures your daily improvements are pointing you toward a life worth living, not just a life that looks productive.
The question Ikigai asks: “Am I climbing the right mountain?”
What I’m Reading
Crushing It! — Gary Vaynerchuk(Finished)
I recommend this if you’re building something on the side and need a reminder to keep going. The most valuable part isn’t the tactics—it’s the stories. Real people who kept showing up, long before it looked impressive.
Grit — Angela Duckworth (Currently reading)
A quieter, deeper read about perseverance, effort, and what it actually takes to stay in something long enough for it to matter.
What Else Dropped This Week
Off Script
Jessica Williams of Shopify on How Culture, Community & Psychology Shape the Brands We Trust
Aparna Piramal on Ambition, Mental Health & Crafting a Life That Fits
Under the Hood
The Rise and Fall of Sprinkles: What Brand Builders Must Learn from a 20-Year Journey
The $16 Salad Problem: What Sweetgreen’s Rise and Fall Teaches Us About Building a Real Business
Skin Deep
On My Reading Desk
7 Game-Changing Business Lessons Every Entrepreneur Can Learn From the Super Bowl
Starbucks’s CEO announced a huge change to win back customers
Bob Iger just left his Disney successor a disaster in the making
The hidden risk of building a leadership team with people you know
Note to My Future Self
The hardest part isn’t the philosophy. It’s the surrender.
What I’m asking of myself—what Bad Bunny’s story is asking—is to give up the comforting fiction that I can control outcomes through planning. To choose faith in process over certainty of result.
That’s genuinely difficult, especially when the culture worships measurable progress and quarterly returns. When everyone around you is optimizing, projecting, and forecasting.
But maybe that’s the point. Maybe the people who compound into something meaningful are the ones who can trust the process enough to stop checking the score every five minutes.
Who can make showing up today enough, even when they can’t see tomorrow’s results?
That’s the game. That’s the whole practice.
Your past is gone. Your future is unknowable. Your present is waiting.
So keep showing up.
Be bold. Be real. Be Anomalous.
— Sai Menon
New Debrief is out every Friday