A few days ago, I wrote about going to the library and coming home with a ridiculous number of books. The Happiness Track by Emma Seppälä was one of them.

The book explores a pretty simple idea: we tend to associate success with pushing harder, doing more, constantly thinking about the next goal and sacrificing the present for something we hope to achieve in the future. Instead, Seppälä looks at research on happiness, resilience, creativity and wellbeing, and asks whether some of the habits we associate with success might actually be getting in the way of it.

One chapter in particular caught my attention: Stop Chasing the Future.

The point isn’t that we shouldn’t have goals or plan for the future. Of course we should. It’s about what happens when we’re so focused on the next thing that the present becomes nothing more than a way of getting there. You finish one thing and immediately move on to the next. Then the next. And the next. There is always another goal waiting.

I recognised myself in that.

ULY KHAOS is a huge project. There are so many different things inside it and, consequently, an absolutely ridiculous amount of things to do. I’ve been building it for almost two years, including periods when I was ill and doing what I could from bed. At the time, I kept thinking that if I could use that time to build something, then when I eventually learned to manage my health better, I wouldn’t have to start from zero.

And I care enormously about this project. I want it to work.

But when something is this big, it’s very easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer amount of things that still need to be done. Something you genuinely love doing can suddenly start looking like another item on an endless to-do list.

Reading this book gave me a reminder I apparently needed: I’m already doing the things I wanted to do.

I’m learning jewellery because I wanted to learn jewellery. I’m making clothes because I love making clothes. I’m writing because I want to write. I’m experimenting with music because music is one of the things I love most. These aren’t just tasks I need to complete so that one day ULY KHAOS can finally exist.

This is ULY KHAOS.

So I decided to actually try what the book was suggesting. Not to stop planning. Not to have fewer ideas — that would probably require an entirely different book. Not to care less about where this project is going. Just to remember to enjoy what I’m doing while I’m building it.

And, surprisingly, such a small reminder has made a real difference. I’m still doing the work. The to-do list is still enormous. My brain is still producing ideas considerably faster than I can possibly execute them. But I’m enjoying the process more.

I still care about the destination. I just don’t want to be so busy trying to get there that I miss the very thing I spent the last two years building.

Maybe that’s the part I hadn’t thought about enough. We spend so much time asking ourselves whether what we’re building will succeed that we forget to ask ourselves whether we’re enjoying building it.

I don’t know exactly where ULY KHAOS will take me. I obviously hope it takes me somewhere good. But I know one thing: I don’t want to arrive there one day, look back, and realise I forgot to enjoy getting there.

Because if I’m building the life I want, I don’t want to wait until it’s finished to start enjoying it.