tolstoy

To choose one domain or form of life to steward and ask each day what was done to serve its development.

Choose one domain, community, or form of life you care about: literacy, bees, old trees, forgotten people, ancient stories, a neighborhood, a craft. Commit to its long-term development as your central stewardship. Each day, ask one question: "What did I do today to serve the development of this one thing I have chosen?" Record the answer. If the answer is "nothing," the next day's first task is to correct that.

In an April 1847 diary, Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, wrote that "the purpose of our human existence is to afford a maximum of help towards the universal development of everything that exists." His own life enacted this at varying scales: he built schools for peasant children, wrote literacy primers, reformed his estate's labor practices, and restructured his daily work around causes he believed would advance development in others. Tolstoy understood that the scale of the chosen focus matters less than the consistency of the commitment. A garden tended for 30 years is as valid a stewardship as a national education reform.

After twenty years of scattered interests, she tolstoyed by choosing literacy as her single domain and restructuring her career, volunteer hours, and reading around that one commitment.