A potter brings his clay into centre on the potter’s wheel, and then he gives it whatever shape he wishes.*
(M. C. Richards)

We’ve all been handed a lump of clay to make something out of. It’s called life.

How we shape it is up to us.

We’re all capable of making something very fine and elegant from our clay.

Cal Newport suggests four ways of getting down to the deep work of what we want to do with our life that matters:**

Monastic: Disappearing and isolating to get on with what we want to do over a very long period of time, even a lifetime;
Bimodal: Earning the money we need to live on or feed our work in one mode and disappearing into multiple-days of deep work on what is most important in the other mode;
Rhythmic: Creating a rhythm of habits for the day in order to work on what is important whilst also meeting the other calls on our lives;
Journalistic: Snatching the opportunities to present themselves for deep work, able to enter quickly and be focused.

It feels like a mix of the rhythmic and journalistic that works for me and I’d guess the same for you: the former reinforcing the latter. The important thing is, there’s a way available to all of us to get on with that deep work of sharing the clay into something very fine indeed, before it hardens.

(*From M. C. Richards’ Centering.)
(**From Cal Newport’s Deep Work.)