Daily Practice ·
The vacant lot and the skyscraper practice: today, look higher than the day asks you to
A brief exercise to widen your view of what you do: ask yourself who else you can serve, what bigger problem is in front of you, and what part you haven't seen yet.
By Pedro J. Pérez
Almost every day we're asked for small things: hand this in, sort that out, answer the message. And we do them, close out the day, and haven't lifted our eyes from the ground. That's how the months pass. There's nothing wrong with tending to the immediate, but when we only look at the empty lot, we end up believing that's all there is.
Thinking big isn't imagining yourself rich or promising yourself a spectacular future. It's something simpler and more demanding: looking at what you already have in your hands and asking yourself what fits there that you haven't seen yet. Where others see a barren plot, someone imagines the height it could reach. That way of looking doesn't depend on talent; it depends on where you decide to put your eyes for a while.
Today you're going to spend fifteen minutes on that. No materials, no audience, no promises. Just you, a piece of paper, and a question we almost never ask ourselves calmly.
The practice Duration: 15 minutes
Choose one single thing you already do
Sit down with a piece of paper and write down what takes up most of your days: your work, your studies, caring for someone, the task you repeat every week. Don't look for the brightest or the most important one in the world; look for the one that's truly in your life. Spend two minutes naming it precisely, with its schedules and its concrete gestures.
Ask who it serves today
Below, make two columns. In the first, note who what you do reaches now: specific people, with names if you can. In the second, write who it could reach if you took one more step, even if you don't know how yet. It doesn't have to be a crowd; it's enough to see one or two new faces. Take five minutes and don't censor yourself as you write.
Look for the underlying problem
Look at what you've written and ask yourself what real need is behind it. It's almost never the task itself, but the worry that keeps the person receiving it awake at night: making it to the end of the month, feeling accompanied, understanding something that's blocking them. Write that bigger problem in one sentence. If it's hard, imagine you're asking the person in front of you and listen to their answer.
Add what you haven't seen yet
Now, for three minutes, note three things you aren't doing today that would fit within what you already do: a different way of explaining, a schedule that frees someone up, a way of bringing together two things you already have. Don't evaluate them yet. Novelty is almost never a dazzling invention; it's usually something ordinary placed in an order no one had tried.
Choose one small gesture for this week
Of those three, mark the one you can start without permission or a budget. Write exactly what you'll do, with whom, and on what day. Make it so small you can't fail: a call, a new phrase in the way you attend to people, a change of order. Keep the paper where you can see it. Tall buildings don't go up all at once, but they don't begin without someone laying the first stone either.
To reflect on today
At the end of the day, ask yourself: who have I served today with what I do, and what part of what I have in front of me have I not yet looked at from high enough?
To finish
The greatness of a life is rarely measured by what one accumulates, but by the breadth of what one takes in with one's gaze. Widening that gaze a little each day changes what you do, and also the one who does it. Today it's enough to have lifted your eyes from the ground.