Where is the goal?

My five-year-old daughter, Simone, just started playing soccer in a league in Berkeley. If you've watched five-year-olds play, you know the scene. All eleven kids cluster around the ball. Sometimes a kid steals it from her own teammate. Nobody's looking up. Nobody knows exactly where the goal is. They're just moving, fast, toward whatever's in front of them.

The cluster in action.

The grown-ups giggle at this scene, but I can't help but feel we, myself included, are moving through the world much the same way right now.

The pace at the moment is different than it was even a year ago. It feels overwhelming. I feel it. My friends, other parents, and colleagues say they feel it too. AI can help us produce more, so the expectation has quietly shifted to producing more, faster, ALL the time. For my job, I help people practice upcoming important conversations, and most of these conversations have to do with trying to influence the other person to slow down and think about the big picture.

I know this pull well, because I've historically been the go-go-go person myself, the one who says yes to the next thing before checking whether it makes sense. More than once, a colleague has stopped me mid-sprint and asked something simple, like what we were actually trying to win. While I didn't love the interruption at that moment, it was always what I needed to hear.

So it begs the question: what is the goal of all this rushing?

I always tell my kids, you can't control what other people do, but you can control how you react. And I guess that's the best we can do right now.

What does that sound like day to day?

You're in a meeting where the pressure feels on. Or you get that late night email that seems like you have to respond right then.

First, a breath, and a question to yourself: is this actually life or death, or does it just feel that way because everyone's moving fast?

Then, you might say out loud:

"I hear we want to move fast here. Have we talked about what this looks like long term?"

A few other ways in, depending on the room:

"Can you help me understand what success looks like here?"

"How do we make this a win for everyone?"

"X might help us go faster now, but it might slow us down later if we don't get it right."

Having the courage to say this is harder than reading an AI draft out loud before you hit send. It means being the one who asks about the goal while everyone else is already running the play, and that can feel slow in a moment built for speed. Still, a team that knows the goal usually beats a team that's just running.

I know, too, that if you're the one always asking what the goal is, it can start to wear on people, and you don't want to be that person. So sometimes it might just be for yourself, nothing you say out loud: Five minutes without your phone, a walk around the block, watching your kid chase a ball she has no real intention of kicking toward the goal.

Maybe seeing the field, before adding to the scramble, is the real skill right now.

Where is the goal in the work you're doing this week?