This morning, it was freezing for a day at the end of March. The skies were all gray, and hefty winds kept blowing. It was hard to breathe on some stretches while walking home from the bakery, and the willow I pass regularly swung its branches all over the place.

After lunch, the sky cleared up and the sun came through. That lasted for a few hours.

In the early afternoon, all of a sudden, the gray was back—and hail began to rain down. Well, more sideways, to be honest, because the winds picked up again as well.

After 15 minutes, however, the hail turned into big, chunky flakes of snow. Those slowly swooped down to the earth for another 15 minutes or so.

Then, the sun returned. At 6 PM, I left the house for a walk and called a friend. I walked around for a good hour, and all was well. Just as we were about to hang up, a snowstorm broke loose. This time, the flakes were much finer, but they still hit hard. Fog turned the sky gray yet again, and you could barely see 100 meters ahead. I took cover in a grocery store, then ran home through the snow with my dinner in tow.

The morning felt like autumn. The early evening felt like spring. And the afternoon and later evening felt like winter. Three seasons, one day. Welcome to Germany.

Welcome to life, actually. Sometimes, you expect spring but get fall. Sometimes, fall turns out to be golden. A harsh winter could turn into a sudden summer, and even when the calendar says it’s supposed to be hot it could get rather frigid.

Usually, April is our month with crazy weather. This year, we got it in March already.

We see other people’s lives in seasons, and we start to rely on them. It might be true there’s a season for everything, but who can say which one is next? If we can get three in a day just for the weather, your turn might come sooner than you think.

My sister gave me a waffle iron for Christmas. It makes poké ball–shaped waffles, and I love it. There was only one challenge: I didn’t know how to make waffles! Thankfully, she also gave me a book with some waffle recipes.

On the first page, there was the most basic recipe. The batter only consists of butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and cream. That one, I made first. The next few times, however, I tried some of the book’s many cool variations. Cheesecake waffles. Honey-almond waffles. Chocolate chip waffles. It was fun, and they all turned out well enough.

One day, though, I realized: I still didn’t know how to make waffles. I couldn’t have gone back and whipped up a batch without checking the book again. Not even for the most basic kind. What were the ingredients again? And their ratios? I decided to only make those basic waffles for a while.

The next time I made plain waffles, I paid attention to the amounts. The time after that, I varied them slightly. “Can I adjust these so they’re dead-easy to remember? 100 grams of this, 200 grams of that…” As it turned out, I could.

Most recently, I doubled all of the original ingredients and got seven waffles out of one batch. I even learned you can keep the batter in the fridge for a while. And that you can freeze fresh waffles to preserve them, then reheat them in the toaster. That last theory will be tested later today.

No matter which skill you’re looking to build, the basics don’t change—but it’s still critical to not forget them. It could take years to absorb them to the point where you perform them without thinking and execute them at a high level with consistency. Even a batch of plain waffles will taste differently when prepared by a master.

It’s nearly impossible to spend too much time mastering the basics. Make sure you do before you set your sights on loftier goals—or fluffier waffles.

Elon Musk has a line he keeps repeating: “The future should look like the future.” It’s a reminder that if we don’t make our cars, products, and buildings look like the ones in the sci-fi movies we love and aspire to, no one else will. Functionality above everything, sure. But once it works, can we also make it exciting?

Elon believes this is part of the mission, and that’s why Tesla keeps coming up with funky designs no one else would even bother to try. “That’ll be expensive.” “It’s not efficient.” “That’s just extra work.” All of these criticisms are valid points—and yet, who wants to drive around in a toaster on wheels?

It’s not only about beautiful design, either. The point is to have fun along the way. That’s another continuous Musk-ism, by the way: “Life’s gotta be about more than just solving problems.” There was always little capacity for the fun stuff at big corporations. But every now and then, inspiration still shines through.

For the grand finale of Stranger Things, for example, Google hid an easter egg in its search: If you looked up the show and clicked a dice at the bottom of the screen, you unlocked an animation that turned your results upside down. There’s nothing to it. No deeper meaning. It’s simply a fun nod to a cultural sensation. And it’s enough to make me appreciate Google and Netflix a little more. Thanks for the giggle!

Chase your big mission. Be a pro. Take it seriously. But remember to make time for the fun stuff.

Having found what felt like the first deal in a regular shop in months, I ordered some Pokémon card packs to open for fun. It was a Thursday. Shops are busy these days, so I didn’t expect them to arrive until after the weekend. That was totally fine.

On Friday morning, I saw an email in my inbox: Your order will arrive today. Whoa! Really? How did they turn that around so fast? I was happy, of course. Maybe I’d get to open some boosters that very weekend after all.

I checked the package tracking. “A little over 20 stops before your delivery,” it said. Okay, cool. Parcels usually arrived only in the afternoon anyway. I decided I would finish work whenever the cards arrived, open a handful, then get ready. My partner were to eat dinner at a friend’s house.

When I checked again in the afternoon, the tracking had barely moved. “A little over 10 stops before your delivery.” Ack. Okay, that’s fine. I had something to finish at work regardless. But soon, we were nearing 5 PM, and still no parcel in sight. My plan began to crumble.

Eventually, I switched to doing some writing, and, at around 7 PM, we had to get ready. By that point, I knew where my package was going: nowhere. Sometimes, the delivery man’s truck is so full, he can’t get to everything. They just roll the delivery to the next day, of course. And at 8:30 PM, after we had already left the house, I got the message: “Sorry. We couldn’t deliver your parcel today.”

That notification, however, came with a twist: “We’ll try again on the next working day.” I had a mini heart attack. Monday!? Why not tomorrow? But I realized I didn’t know if they counted Saturdays or not, and, in any case, packages usually arrived, and mine was already on the truck. So, most likely, it would arrive the next day.

On Saturday morning, I adjusted my plan. I’d start my day, do some chores and some work, then open some cards in the afternoon. I checked the tracking, and, around 10 AM, there were already only 10 deliveries ahead of mine. I could see the car being in our neighborhood on the map.

I cooked breakfast, did laundry, and freed some glasses of their limescale stains. Around 1 PM, I figured the cards should arrive soon. Maybe I could wait, open some, then get to work? I reloaded the tracking page and…”live updates are currently not available.” Gaaaah!

That brings us to right now. It’s 3:30 PM. I have no clue where my cards are. I don’t know if they’ll arrive today. If not, it’ll be Monday at the earliest—and Monday was what I had originally expected all along.

Sometimes, I wonder: Is all this real-time information we receive nowadays really helping? Or does it actually make our lives harder? I remember ordering CDs from Finland in the early 2000s. I had no idea when they would arrive. It usually took weeks. But for all those weeks, I was looking forward to a new album from my favorite band. Nowadays, those weeks would probably be spent fretting about timelines, handovers at the border, and whether the delivery would ultimately happen before a weekend or not.

The more updates you get on the status of an event, the more you adjust your expectations. News jump from neutral to positive to negative and back again. Every time, you spend thoughts, emotions, and energy integrating the latest update into your plans. Meanwhile, if you had started with low expectations and maintained them, you could have ignored all the news and saved those finite commodities.

If the outcome is determined and not critical—like a parcel with a new toy eventually arriving—don’t get sucked into the social media version of an event. Not everything needs to happen through a feed you can refresh and follow. Set off with low—or no—expectations, and maintain them. You’ve got more important plans to work on, and whatever’s on its way to you can wait as well as you do.

The English language lacks a term that describes removing oneself emotionally from a situation in a positive way. “Indifference” signals a lack of care. “Neutrality” is too connected with logic. “Equanimity” isn’t terrible, but it can sound passive and seems more focused on resilience in bad times.

For better or for worse, “detachment” is the best word we have to describe this phenomenon, and even that is commonly associated with disconnection or aloofness. In a Zen context, “detachment” means letting go without giving up. Just because you relinquish your expectations about how the marketing campaign will be received does not mean you stop moving it forward.

Detachment is part of the zen formula we can use to manage our lives with poise and zest. It’s the good kind of armor: Not too rigid, yet it still offers protection.

Detachment allows you to play both offense and defense. When I’m working on a new book, I constantly need to remind myself that it’s okay to write bad drafts. That maintaining momentum and pushing a new project over the line is what counts. At my day job, detachment helps with not losing my head when initiatives go sideways. It also allows me to set boundaries. “Okay, enough for today. A job is still a job, and I’m not paid enough to worry.”

We might not invent the right word today, but our lack of descriptors cannot harm a good state of mind. Practice detachment.

One comforting lesson you learn from making and releasing art is that timing is to be trusted, not forced.

I went to Japan last August. I started writing an article about it on the plane back home. It’s still not released. Once I got done with my first draft, I realized I could improve it a lot by including photographs, and I still had to edit it properly regardless. Then, life happened, and I’ve only worked on it in increments since then. But it’s okay! I have my most important points down. I know what I want to say. And I’d like to think a good article about Japan will always be relevant, no matter whether I publish it in August, March, or December.

This does not mean you won’t put urgency behind your work. If I hadn’t started my article right on the way back from the trip, I probably never would have drafted it. When I push it over the finish line matters less than when I started it. There are other examples, too.

My friend Herbert recently suggested there may be a book in my experience around Pokémon card collecting. It wasn’t a book I had planned on writing, but it was one I could see a publisher being interested in. I’ve never even tried to find one before, so I figured why not create a proposal for it? If someone takes it, great! If not, then I haven’t lost anything. I’ll keep self-publishing my own books anyway. So I started working on the proposal immediately. But when exactly will I finish it? When will my friends who write proposals for a living agree it’s good enough to be sent somewhere? And even if it gets accepted, will the resulting book look remotely like what’s on the idea sheet? And when will it release? Right now, Pokémon cards are a popular hobby. That might not be the case in two years. There is so much timing I don’t control with a project like this. So why stress about it? I’ll simply do my best at the fastest pace I can muster—and then trust that whatever timing it ultimately ends up with will be exactly what it needs.

It applies beyond work, too. It’s never a bad time to visit a place you’ve always wanted to see, and no one decides on exactly which day their child will be born. It took me and some friends eight years to finally host our Simpsons marathon, but it was still a great night I’ll never forget.

Life flows best when we apply force of will and sustain our momentum without bending out of shape to meet some imaginary deadline. Trust the timing, and you’ll always be exactly when and where you need to be.

When you have physical pain that takes a while to resolve, the best way to wait it out is to befriend it. A little twist in the morning, and, “Oh, hello! Yup, you’re still here. What will we get up to today?” Make the pain your companion. Take it with you, and simply accept its presence.

After a muscle injury, I try to slowly regain strength by exercising the relevant area a little more every day. The pain is there all through the rebuilding. Then, one morning, I wake up and find my friend is gone. That’s okay. And if not? If the pain overstays its welcome? Then you keep seeking help. But, most of the time, your “compainion” will bid you farewell on its own sooner or later.

Emotional pain is different, but that, too, can be a compainion. A bad breakup years ago which set you back in your personal development, for example. If you remember it today, sadness can still arise in the now. But the emotion is a momentary visitor. Ideally, you can face it, accept it, and let it go. Much like physical pain hurts less once you tolerate its presence, emotions tend to subside once we let them in.

Unlike a twisted ankle, however, old memories can trigger the same emotions repeatedly. After all, you’ll always have that memory. And each time, you’ll have to go through the same mindfulness exercise. So that the emotions, while a constant if occasional visitor throughout your life, don’t weigh you down.

There are a lot of ways to deal with pain. The one path that rarely works is running away. Appreciate your compainions—and trust they’ll play their part.

I went bowling and pulled a muscle. To have the injury checked out, I visited a doctor I hadn’t been to.

The guy was friendly and listened to my story. He felt the muscles near my ribs and asked questions. Eventually, he suggested I get an x-ray, which his staff took care of immediately. Once the pictures were ready, he looked at them, explained nothing was broken, and recommended the simplest of treatments: wait and see. Some tablets for the pain, some cream for the muscles, and that was it.

A week later, I returned for a check-in. My situation had improved, but I was far from running an obstacle course. I told him I could handle whatever pain was left easily and that I was trying to stretch a bit every day. He floated the idea that whatever felt natural, I could and should do. Just don’t try to bench 200—pounds or kg, for that matter. He asked if I wanted more meds, which I declined. The conclusion was basically a confident shrug. “Technically, this should work itself out.” More wait and see. Got it!

So now, I’m back to stretching, observing, and waiting. The question I have is: Was this a good doctor? Or a bad one? I have no idea yet. It’s too early to tell. And while, in theory, it’s always too early to tell, reality requires decisions. When will I try to get another check-up? In another week? Three weeks post-injury? And if so, would this guy have more to say? Or should I try another doctor? Did he suggest just the right treatment or not enough?

Outside of waiting at least one more week, I have no answers. And before that week is up, I know I also won’t find them. Because right now, I cannot tell and, as often, only time will. The trick is recognizing when that’s the case, and when you have the right dose of information to choose a path and move forward.

It’s just as any decent doctor would recommend: Keep checking in. You never know when muscles or ideas click back into place—but if you probe them once a week, month, or quarter, you’ll eventually find out. In the meantime, allow the question to continue floating in your mind: When can you tell?

Even in a world where cars fly, robots look and walk like humans, and brain implants allow people to control their computers with their minds, some truths don’t change. One is that writing down three things you’re grateful for every night is the best way to make gratitude a habit. How do I know? I’ve done it for almost 14 years.

You could come up with all kinds of gratitude practices, and people do. They create worksheets. They make lots of physical reminders or write long letters. They even record 90-minute podcasts about the topic just to talk about gratitude as a practice. Those are all great when you can swing them. But when life happens, and you want to stick to your daily routine, nothing beats sitting there for two minutes, thinking about your day, and writing down three particular items or events you care enough about to call out.

A positive side effect? Over time, you’ll spot patterns, even without a comprehensive data analysis. After many years, I eventually noticed the same points came up again and again—and those points actually made all the difference. Of course I’m grateful when I receive a big gift or praise at work for a launch done well. Who wouldn’t be? But choosing to focus on the sun being out, on finding time for a break, on my bakery reliably producing buttered pretzels, day-in and day-out, that’s gratitude for the long run. It’s gratidepth more so than gratiwidth, and, over time, it adds up.

More so than just providing a consistent level of gratitude every day, I’ve recently found I’m becoming more grateful for my staples as time goes on. It’s not just that I can always rely on them. It’s that this reliance creates history over time, and that leads to a deep, emotional connection. This applies to seeing the sunrise for the 2,000th time, of course, but it especially applies to people.

Sometimes, I sit there and think about how grateful I am for my partner being as present in my life as she is. The fact we get to live together under the same roof, share meals, and sleep in the same a bed each night can make me a bit teary. It may sound goofy, but it’s some of the deepest gratitude I feel—and it all goes back to that simple habit of writing down three things each night.

Gratitude in all forms is great. Sure, broaden your horizons. Squeeze your brain and find odd patterns to appreciate. But profound built over many years? That’s something special. You can’t fake it. It’s a uniquely grounding anchor in a world that changes faster than we can keep up with. I hope you’ll choose gratidepth.