Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future. — Steve Jobs

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

Author: Steve Jobs

Insight: There's something both thrilling and unsettling about this observation. Most of us move through ordinary days feeling like we're just following a routine—going to work, raising kids, scrolling through our phones. But Jobs is pointing at a truth that's easy to miss: the everyday choices we make ripple forward in ways we can't fully predict. When you decide to learn something new, call someone you've drifted from, or push back against how things have always been done, you're genuinely shaping what comes next. The counterintuitive part is that this isn't reserved for world-changing moments. You don't need to be launching a product or writing history to be influential. Teaching a struggling colleague a new skill, choosing honesty in a difficult conversation, or simply refusing to accept mediocrity in your own work—these are the threads future outcomes are woven from. Jobs was speaking about a specific moment at Apple, but the principle applies to anyone alert enough to notice it: you're always influencing something. The real question isn't whether you're having an impact. It's whether you're conscious of it. That awareness changes how you show up.

Source: Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs, p. 570, 2011