On Becoming
Becoming is a powerful commitment — and a trap. You can spend a life chasing the person you're supposed to become while never fully inhabiting the one you already are. Boaz argues that growth and presence aren't opposites: you practice becoming so you can be more fully, now.
What this edition is about
Commitment to growth is one of the most reliable engines a person can install. It is also, Boaz argues, one of the easiest to run past its useful limit. Chase the next version of yourself long enough and you can arrive at the end of a decade having never occupied any version of yourself at all.
The edition refuses the usual either/or. Presence is not the opposite of ambition, and settling is not the price of contentment. The reframe: you practice becoming in order to be more fully present now, not in order to postpone your life until the improved model ships.
Read it as a correction for high performers who treat their current self as a rough draft.
- Perpetual becoming can quietly replace living rather than enable it.
- Presence and growth are not opposites — one is what the other is for.
- Treating your current self as a draft makes every arrival feel provisional.
- The test: can you name something you're building and still be here while you build it?
High performers who are always improving and rarely satisfied.
This page is a summary. The full edition — with the stories and the detail — lives on Substack.
Read “On Becoming”On this edition
No — but ambition without presence is a treadmill. If every version of you is a placeholder for the next one, no achievement ever lands, and the wins stack up without changing how the days feel. Build the future and inhabit the present. They're the same practice, not competing ones.
Look at how long a win lasts. If success gets logged and immediately replaced by the next target — if you can't remember the last time an accomplishment actually landed — you're not growing, you're deferring. That's the signal to slow down long enough to receive what you already built.