Of all the pillars that I outline in BFAP, hobbies & rest is probably the one that gets the least serious treatment, both in our culture and in how most people actually live.

Career, relationships, fitness, diet, finances, and spiritual habits all carry significance in our lives and are rightfully important. But hobbies and free time tend to get relegated to the time you have left over after everything else and often ends up becoming the space you fill with whatever requires the least effort.

That’s a problem because the hours outside of your obligations are not leftover time. They are some of the most telling hours in your week, and how you spend them shapes your mind, your energy, your creativity, your relationships, and your ability to show up well in every other area of your life. These hours are not a footnote, they are a pillar.

The question is not whether you have free time. You do, even if it does not feel like it. The question is whether you are using it intentionally or letting it get used up without thinking.

Six weeks ago, I started writing about intentional living. We’ve talked about purpose, time, drift, responsibility, constraints, and the difference between goals and meaning. And if you have been reading along, you may be feeling like you have a lot of work to do.

Seven pillars: Career, relationships, fitness, diet, finances, spiritual habits, and hobbies and rest (coming in the next post 🙂). Each of these are worthy of attention, and each of them quietly reminds you of the ways you are coming up short.

If you are like most people, the natural response to looking at all seven is to reach for a familiar word: balance.

I just need to find more balance.

It’s the language our culture uses to describe a life that is working well, but balance is actually the wrong goal.

There is a question that we should ask ourselves when you or I want to know what we actually believe versus what we say we believe. And that question is, “what do my habits reveal and does that align with what I say?”

Anyone can say faith is important to them. Anyone can identify as a spiritual person (or a Christian). Anyone can put a Bible verse in their Instagram bio or wear a cross around their neck. But the things you do, day after day, often when no one is watching, are the truest indication of what you believe.

And if I am being honest, this is the area where most of us (myself included at times) have the largest gap between what we profess versus how we live.

Most people I know would say that some form of spiritual life matters to them. Christians I know say it. People in my life who would more or less describe themselves as “spiritual but not religious” say it. Even some self-identified skeptics I know will admit that there is probably something to the idea that humans need more than just productivity hacks, knowledge, and entertainment to flourish.

But when you ask the deeper question about what their actual practices and disciplines look like, the picture gets muddy quite fast.

There are Christians who say Jesus is the most important thing in their lives, but who do not remember the last time they had a true devotion in the Word. There are the “spiritual but not religious” people who talk about pursuing a life with deeper meaning, but has not actually sat in silence for ten minutes because their thought life is too chaotic. And there is the skeptic who dismisses all of it but still feels a quiet ache they cannot name and tries to fill it with entertainment, scrolling, and the next dopamine hit.

The disconnect is not unique to one group. It is a feature of how most of us are living right now (or have lived during periods of our lives). We say we value depth, but we operate at the surface. We say we want meaning, but we never slow down long enough to find it. We say faith or spirituality is foundational, but we treat it as something we will get to later.

You’ve probably noticed that I have been using this statement of “your life is speaking” a lot in my writing and on my website. And what most people’s lives are saying about their spiritual practice is somewhere between “occasional” and “barely there at all.”

If that’s you, that gap is worth sitting with. Not to produce guilt, but clarity.

There is a realization that most high achievers eventually run into, and it usually arrives shortly after you get what you’ve wanted.

You worked for the promotion and you got it. You earned the degree and framed it. You hit the number in your bank account, the title, the milestone. And for a little while, it feels good.

But then a different question begins to percolate...then what?

The question is not "what's next" in the productive sense. It’s something emptier than that. A sense that the thing you just accomplished, the thing that was supposed to change how you felt, did not actually change very much at all.

If you have experienced this (hint…you likely have), you are not ungrateful and there isn’t something wrong with you. You are running into one of the most common and least discussed realities of goal-oriented living: most goals, even good ones, do not produce lasting meaning. They produce a moment, but those moments fade.

The question worth sitting with is why.

Money is one of the most important and tangible aspects in our lives, and yet it’s often the area of our lives most riddled with problems.

I’m not saying that everyone has money problems. But many of us have problems with money. We think about money constantly. We worry about it, chase it, spend it, argue about it. But very few people stop to ask a few fundamental questions: 

• Why do I spend, save, and give the way I do?

• What story is my spending telling about what I value?

• And most importantly, is the way I handle money shaping me into the person I want to become, or is it pulling me in a direction I didn’t choose?

Your spending is not neutral. It’s a mirror. And like every other area we have explored in this Pillar series, it will either reflect intentionality or it will reflect drift.

There is a sentence most of us have said at some point, and it usually starts with “if I just had more…”

• More time… 

• More money…

• More freedom from the obligations pulling at me from every direction…

Sometimes we think that if we just had more of that (time, money, freedom, etc.), then we would be able to live with more purpose.

And even though this is something we often say to ourselves, it’s misguided and inaccurate.

Not because time, money, and freedom are unimportant (they are…), but because the assumption underneath the statement is flawed. 

The assumption is that living a purposeful life needs ideal conditions, that intentional living is something you get to once we have fewer constraints.

But what if the constraints are not the obstacle? What if they are the very thing that helps to produce the clarity you’re looking for?

Everyone is on a diet. Whether you count macros, follow a plan, or just eat whatever is in front of you, you have a diet. The question is not whether you have a diet, the question is whether the one you have is intentional.

But somewhere along the way, diet stopped being about nourishment and became something else entirely. 

It became an identity.

You are not just someone who eats a certain way. You are mediterranean, keto, vegan, carnivore, paleo, atkins, low-carb, high-protein, or some other type of eater from a myriad of different other word substitutes.

The way you eat has become a label, a tribe, and for some people, something dangerously close to a personality.

The moment your diet becomes your identity, you have a problem, because now any challenge to how you eat feels like a challenge to who you are. And that makes it nearly impossible to think clearly about food.

If you’ve read the last few essays, you have probably started to feel something. If you haven’t read those, I encourage you to go back to Core 01 and start from there.

But if you have read them, maybe it’s tension, maybe it’s clarity, or maybe it’s the uncomfortable recognition that some part of your life has been running on autopilot longer than you realized.

And if you are like most people, the natural response to that recognition is something like: I need to take control of my life.

It sounds empowering. It sounds like progress. But it is actually one of the biggest obstacles to living with intention.

Because control is not the same thing as responsibility. And confusing the two will keep you stuck in ways you might not expect.

There are two dominant stories about fitness, and both of them miss the point.

The first is the performance narrative. Transformation photos. No days off. The gym as a shrine and the body as the project. This world is full of discipline, and I respect that. But when you strip it down, the motivation is often the same: I want to look a certain way. That can carry you for a while, but it is a fragile foundation. Aesthetic goals shift as you age. Motivation fades when life gets complicated. And if you are honest, there is a vanity thread woven through it that most people will not name out loud.

The second story is quiet resignation. "I know I should work out, but..." Fill in the blank (too busy, too tired, do not know where to start, etc.). The people in this camp are not lazy across the board. Most of them are disciplined in other areas of their life. But fitness has drifted to the bottom of the list because nothing is forcing it to be a higher priority. The consequences of skipping a workout do not show up today. They show up in five years, when your energy is gone and your body can no longer support the life you are trying to live.

Here is what both groups have in common: both have people in them that don’t connect fitness to anything bigger than themselves.

And that is a problem. Because when your reason for working out begins and ends with you, the foundation is thinner than you think.

Nobody wakes up one morning and decides to drift through life.

It doesn't happen all at once. It's not dramatic. There's no single moment where you or I consciously choose to stop being intentional and just coast.

Drift is quieter than that. It feels easy, like not being so rigid about everything, like going with the flow.

And for a while, it feels fine. 

Until one day you look up and realize you're somewhere you didn't choose. And you're not sure how you got there.

The people closest to you don't experience your intentions, they experience your actions.

You can tell yourself you're patient, but your spouse knows the truth when you snap over something small. 

You can say family is your priority, but your kids know how often you're actually present versus just physically there.

You can claim to be a good friend, but your friends know how often you really show up when it matters.

Your relationships don't reflect who you think you are, they reflect who you actually are, day after day, in the small moments when no one's keeping score.

And that's uncomfortable because relationships are the truest mirror we have.

We’re really good at lying to ourselves about what matters.

We say family is our top priority, that our health is important, that we want deeper friendships, a richer spiritual life, and meaningful work.

And we believe it when we say it.

But if someone pulled your calendar from last week (or the last month), your screen time report, how and where your hours actually went, what would they conclude about your priorities? Would it match what you say?

If you’re being honest, lots of the time, it doesn’t. And that gap between what we claim matters and what our time reveals is one of the most uncomfortable truths we can face.

Because unlike our intentions, how we spend our time doesn’t lie.

"Later" is the most expensive word in the English language.

We say it constantly. About everything.

• I'll get serious about my health later.

• I'll invest in my marriage later.

• I'll prioritize my spiritual life later.

• I'll have that hard conversation at work later.

• I'll start that thing I've been thinking about for years later.

It sounds reasonable, like you're being thoughtful, waiting for the right time, making sure conditions are ideal before you commit.

But here's the truth: "later" rarely comes.

And while you're waiting for “later” to arrive, you're still living, just on autopilot instead of with intention.

We've been sold a story about work that sounds inspiring but often leaves us stuck.

The story goes like this: if you're not passionate about your job, you're settling. You should be searching for that perfect role where your talents, interests, and purpose align seamlessly because that’s where real fulfillment comes from. 

It's a nice idea, but it's also a bit delusional.

What if the job you have right now, the one that feels ordinary or not quite right, is already a place where meaning can exist?

Not someday. Right now.

Most of us talk about purpose like it's a treasure hunt.

We search. We wait. We assume it's out there somewhere, hidden (but discoverable), and that the right career move, life circumstance, or moment of clarity will finally reveal it. 

Like many of you, I've lived this way for years. Waiting for my grand purpose to announce itself. Assuming clarity would arrive before I had to commit to anything. That confidence about my purpose would show up first, and consistency on that path would follow naturally.

In actuality, it’s never worked that way.

What I've come to realize, slowly and (at times) uncomfortably, is that purpose was never missing. I just wasn't looking for it in the right way.