On drift and intention

Some people drift through life without making many deliberate choices, and still end up in a good place. Others think carefully about every decision, stay in control, and still don't get where they hoped to go.

This breaks the simple story. The one that says intentionality leads to better outcomes.

I've lived both. The first half of my life was mostly passive. I did what others suggested and followed the obvious paths. I wasn't steering much. The current was carrying me, and it happened to be going somewhere reasonable.

The second half has been more intentional. I started making deliberate choices when I noticed the default path wasn't where I wanted to be. By the measures I now care about, it's working. By the measures I used to care about, it isn't.

A few things I keep coming back to.

Drift seems to work when you're aligned with a current. If your environment, your nature, and what's nearby all point in roughly the same direction, you can not-decide and still arrive somewhere fine. Intentionality starts to matter more when the current shifts, or when you realize it's taking you somewhere you don't want to go.

Intentionality isn't really about trying harder. It's about changing what you're optimizing for. Passive people tend to optimize for what's close, like approval, money, or the next obvious step. Intentional people often pick something further away or less visible. By conventional scoring, they can look like they're doing worse, even when they're doing exactly what they meant to.

Awareness also changes the weight of outcomes. When a passive person ends up middle-of-the-pack, it tends to feel like luck or circumstance. When an intentional person ends up in the same place, it can feel like a personal failure, even though the outcome is the same.

There's also a time problem. Drift can work for years and then stop. Intentionality can look like failure for years before it pays off. Judging either one at a single point probably misleads you.

I don't think this resolves into advice. Neither approach guarantees outcomes. What they really differ on is your relationship to your own life. Drift is lighter and gives you less control. Intention is heavier and gives you more agency, but agency isn't the same as success.