How many times have you had a disaster happen when you were doing a small thing? You were just going to the store down the street and forgot your license, which would have been nice to have when the cops stopped you for rolling through that stop sign. You were only going to be a minute so you left your car unlocked and your computer was stolen. You were just doing one more set in your workout when you broke something. “But I was just . . .”, you say in exasperation.
Banish those words from your vocabulary and your life. When you say to yourself you are “just” doing something, you approach that task with less than your full allotment of awareness. When you are “only” doing “one more” you are not fully engaged. When you mentally check out, even a little, you’re losing a big part of your attentiveness. There’s a poker pro who advises to never play one more round or even one more hand because you are then not playing with your full attention. I experienced this myself — one night I played the best poker of my life for three hours, then decided I would play one more round. I played like an idiot and lost everything in three hands. On another occasion I was “almost home” when a cop stopped me for driving too slow. That whole 45 minute “field sobriety test” could have been avoided had I driven full speed all the way home and not let off the gas, mentally as well as physically, 1/4 mile from my exit.
There are no loopholes for “just” and “only”. If something goes wrong it doesn’t matter that you were just a mile away from home. The world will not cut you any slack. You won’t get a do-over based on the fact that you were just going to be a minute. That minute, that second, that instant is all it takes for disaster to strike. You will still need surgery to fix your leg even if you were only zoning out “for a minute”. Yes, it was about one minute for me. I realized I was being an idiot and started paying attention but a moment too late. I left my car open exactly once in seven years, “just for a minute” and came back to find my computer gone. Another time I went off the road just to turn around and got stuck. Two days and $136 later I was finally on my way.
Everything you do is potentially dangerous. It all requires your full attention. As Yoda might say, Do, or do not. There is no Just.