Do I Want to Be Doing This Right Now?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goOju0f02eg

I’ve been thinking about a question that Thomas Droge shared with me on the latest episode of Midlife Remix. It’s deceptively simple: do I want to be doing this right now?

Not “should I be doing this?” Not “is this productive.” Just, do I want to be here, doing this thing, right now?

I think about how rarely I’ve asked myself that question during the busiest stretches of my career. I never stopped to ask whether any of it was what I’d choose if I were choosing fresh. The calendar was busy, and the machine kept going, but I mistook that activity for true purpose.

Thomas had that question forced on him in the most extreme way possible. He’s a Qigong master with more than three decades of practice, an integrative medicine doctor, and an executive coach. In 2021, on a Saturday morning before class, alone in his studio, he had a heart attack. He was six months from the exact age his father was when he died, and his grandfather before him.

He thought it was his back at first. Got on a physio ball, tried to stretch it out. Fifteen minutes in, he recognized what was actually happening, asked Siri for the nearest hospital, drove himself there doing Wim Hof breathing, and stumbled through the door with his car still running in the parking lot.

After the stent was placed and the crisis passed, something changed he hadn’t expected. His body shifted from six hours of sleep a night to eight, not by choice, but because his system demanded it. And that question, do I want to be doing this right now, settled into his daily life and never left. Watching Netflix, responding to emails, sitting in a meeting, just a pause long enough to notice whether he was there by choice or by default.

What came out of that honest reckoning surprised him. There was a lot he didn’t want to do anymore. And there were things he’d stopped allowing himself to want, like riding motorcycles. He went out and bought a fast one.

He also discovered something beneath all of it that he hadn’t examined. Thomas had spent decades shaping his identity around being the healer, the person who saves the day. He knew intellectually that he did the medicine, and the patient healed or they didn’t. But deeper than that, his self-worth was connected to other people’s outcomes. Fatherhood, providing, being a doctor, all of it was filtered through that same perspective.

I recognize that pattern because I’ve experienced it myself, and I see it constantly in the leaders I coach. The executive whose worth depends on being the person with the answer. The founder who can’t step back because the company is the only proof that they matter. The leader who fills every hour because slowing down would mean confronting what all the speed was covering up. The identity we created to succeed becomes the thing running the show, and we don’t see it because it looks like competence from the outside.

What changed for Thomas after the heart attack wasn’t his meditation or his Qigong. It was his willingness to need things, to lean on others, to let someone else save the day. He handed over his entire teaching lineage to the twelve teachers he trained and stepped away from medicine. Not because it was wrong, but because it no longer belonged to who he was.

He now works as Chief Mindfulness Officer at Tiffin, a fintech incubator, where he’s embedded in the day-to-day culture. He runs short centering practices at the start of every Monday's prioritization meeting. Not as a wellness initiative, because when a room full of people stops and breathes together for two to five minutes, everyone shows up differently for the actual work. He told me the most skeptical people in the room ended up being the ones who came back to him later to say how valuable it was.

He values working with leaders who go deep, anchoring each value to a person who embodies it, then writing pages about its meaning. This results in a mission statement and a single word that captures it. When confused or tense, check that word to see if you’re aligned. Track it six times daily until it becomes muscle memory. I use this with clients, and it’s often the turning point. Decision-making becomes clearer because you understand what you stand for.

What struck me most about Thomas’s approach is where it starts. Not just with strategy or mindset, but with the body. His principle is direct: if the problem is in your mind, go to your body. If the problem is in your body, go to your mind. Get those two into conversation, and you can access something deeper. Most leaders skip that entirely. They jump straight to the framework, the next hire, the next quarter. But Thomas was honest about what happens when you can’t hear yourself: your ability to accurately read anyone around you drops dramatically. You’re not just missing your own signals - you’re misreading your team and making confident decisions on incomplete information.

One last takeaway from our talk is Thomas's view of succession planning as personal, not just organizational. Creating an off-ramp isn't about abandoning what you've built, but about making space for what’s next for you and future generations. He applied this to parenting, continuing their meaningful activities while raising children. Now that their kids are in college, they’re still growing. 

The question remains the one Thomas asks himself every day. Do I want to be doing this right now? Not “should I” — that’s an obligation. Not “can I” — that’s a matter of capability. Do I want to? I’ve started asking myself this in everyday moments, and I’ve found that the honest answer is often more uncomfortable than I’d like to admit. But that discomfort is the whole point. It’s the gap between the life you live automatically and the one you’d genuinely choose.

This conversation is from a recent episode of Midlife Remix with Thomas Droge. Thomas is the Chief Mindfulness Officer at Tiffin and author the book The Leader Within: 14 foundational practices for leading a meaningful life on listening, values, and what holds up when practice meets reality.