Live in the moment, they say. Plan for the future, they say. The mindset people adopt can influence how they evaluate options and make choices, making a huge difference in the quality of life they experience. For example, a student at A Pace is walking down John Street and decides to grab a snack, perhaps focusing on finding something tasty, until they pass a gym or a health food store. On one hand, this person might think about the present and decide to eat a Twinkie to satisfy their hunger, but on the other hand, this person might wait to eat something healthy to avoid getting the "freshman 15." I have had many instances in my life where I spent a lot of time weighing two conflicting points of view. In many cases, this has left me feeling ambivalent, because instinctively I would prefer to be both peaceful and productive. I want to feel awake and centered in the here and now, while continuing to push myself. As I said before, excess in anything is a bad thing, the same goes for planning. There's too much planning. People are often paralyzed by endless efforts to perfect their plan, trying to ensure that there is no possibility of error. They forget that nothing in life is perfect and that even the most detailed plan remains hypothetical, nothing is constant. They waste their time perfecting their plans while doing nothing to implement them. It's better to get up and start doing something than to spend your present daydreaming about the future. The future will always be unknowable and uncertain; if we are obsessed with the future, we will miss out on the pleasures and possibilities of the world.