The world has a way of deciding for you if you don’t decide for yourself. By the time the first week of January ends, the “New Year, New Me” energy is already starting to collide with the gravity of old habits. Most people are currently drifting, but they don’t realize it. They are merely reacting to the energy around, planning their year using someone else’s definition of success, and getting set to move at a pace that suffocates their potential.
In my years of active practice as a physiotherapist, I saw what happened to a body that stopped moving with intention: atrophy. The muscles didn’t just stay the same. They wasted away. Human life follows the same biological law. If you aren’t proactively moving toward a defined purpose, you aren’t just standing still; you are drifting backward.
At Definitions by Adebajo, we believe there is a thin line between drifting and living. Drifting is easy. It’s the default. Living is a discipline. Learning how to live intentionally in 2026 is the blueprint for that discipline.
Why Autopilot is the Enemy
Drifting is the path of least resistance. In physics, it is termed entropy and refers to the natural decline into disorder. In human life, we call it Autopilot.
We often think we are making choices when we are actually just responding to stimuli.
Research from the University of Surrey suggests that about 65% of our daily actions are habitual, meaning we aren’t deciding to do them. Instead, our brains are simply running a script while we follow on autopilot.
When you live on autopilot, you experience what the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl called the Existential Vacuum.
Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning ( a book I’m currently re-reading), argued that the “will to meaning” is the primary drive of human life. Without intentional living, we fill that vacuum with distraction, comparison, and “relative success.”
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” — Viktor Frankl
The Framework for Intentional Living
If drifting is the result of structural weakness in our daily choices, then living intentionally in 2026 requires a new kind of support. To move from reactive to proactive, we must anchor our lives on three foundational pillars.
1. Defined Stewardship
To understand how to live intentionally in 2026, we must first redefine how we view our resources. Most productivity advice focuses on Efficiency, the art of doing things fast. But efficiency is a trap if you are moving in the wrong direction.
The Efficiency Trap vs. The Effectiveness Edge
Imagine a physiotherapist helping a patient regain the ability to walk. Efficiency would be doing 50 leg lifts in record time.
However, if those leg lifts are performed with the wrong posture or wrong leg, the patient isn’t getting closer to walking. Instead, they are actually causing long-term joint damage.
Effectiveness is doing the right 10 leg lifts with perfect form.
In your life, efficiency is about clearing your inbox. Effectiveness (Stewardship) is about questioning why those emails are there in the first place and if they serve your life’s mission.
Stewardship is the belief that your time, talent, and energy are not just assets to be managed for speed, but gifts to be grown for impact.
Why does this distinction matter so much for living intentionally? Because of finitude. If you live to be 80, you have roughly 4,000 weeks on this planet.
When you focus on efficiency, you try to cram more obligations into those weeks. You treat time like a suitcase you are trying to zip shut. But when you switch to intentional living, you realize that 4,000 weeks is too short to spend drifting.
Investing vs. Spending
This realization leads to an important lesson for anyone who wants to learn how to live intentionally in 2026: Stop spending time on obligations. Instead, start investing it in principles.
- Spending is a transaction. You give an hour of your life to a meeting you don’t care about, and that hour is gone forever.
- Investing is a transformation. You give an hour to deep work, prayer, or mentoring a younger creative. That hour compounds. It creates a return in the form of a finished manuscript, a deeper peace, or a stronger community.
2. Critical Discernment
What you know doesn’t matter as much as how much of what you know is relevant to your path. Consequently, in an age of infinite information, the most valuable skill isn’t knowing. It’s filtering. Critical discernment is the ability to weigh societal expectations against your core values.
The Conflict of Metrics
Consider the Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study on human happiness. The current director, Dr. Robert Waldinger, notes that the clearest message from the study is this: “Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.”
Despite this hard data, society’s default settings tell us that success is found in status, salary, and solo achievements.
Discernment is the courage to look at the data, look at your life, and choose the relationships over the rat race, even when it makes you different. It is the act of refusing a good opportunity that would destroy a great life.
3. Incremental Excellence
At Definitions by Adebajo, we don’t chase overnight transformations. We chase the daily 1% improvement.
From Goals to Systems
We often obsess over Goals. We say, “I want to write a book” or “I want to be more productive.” But James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, offers a vital correction: “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
To understand how to live intentionally in 2026, think of it this way:
- Goals are the destination. They are the What. They are static. They only provide satisfaction after you reach them.
- Systems are the paths you take on the journey. They are the How. They are the daily study block, the evening reflection, and the consistent outreach.
Falling in Love with the System
Living intentionally means moving your focus from the trophy to the training. When you fall in love with the system, you stop obsessing over the finish line. The finish line (the published book or the degree) becomes an inevitable byproduct of a well-designed system.
The Cost of a Life Unlived
Is there even a need to live intentionally in 2026? Absolutely. That’s because those who are drifting often do not realize it until they get to the end of the road.
Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware spent years recording the most frequent regrets of the dying. The top regret was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
Intentional living is the preventative medicine for this regret. It is the act of deciding today that you will not be a stranger to your own potential.
The 4-Step Action Plan to Architect Your 2026
To maximize 2026, you need an operational plan for how to live intentionally in 2026. Here is what I recommend;
1. Perform an Audit
Go through your calendar. Mark every item with an ‘S’ (Stewardship) or a ‘D’ (Drift).
- Stewardship: Tasks that grow your talents or serve your community.
- Drift: Tasks done purely for social approval or because you didn’t know how to say “no.”
2. Master Your Ultradian Physics
Stop fighting your brain’s natural cycles. As we explored in our article on the Ultradian Rhythm, your brain is designed to work in 90-minute pulses. Dedicate your first 90-minute “High Phase” to your highest form of contribution.
3. Build a “Not-To-Do” List
Originality requires space. You cannot produce meaningful work if your mental hard drive is full of clutter. Identify 3 norms you will stop following this month.
4. Engage in Deep Community
Individual willpower is a weak muscle. To sustain intentional living in 2026, you need a scaffold. This is the core mission of The Builders’ Hub. You need one such community, too, where substance is more valuable than appearance. And who, like the Inklings, can push it to go further and do better.
One Step Further
You were created for more than a life on autopilot. You were made to make things happen, and the way forward is not about being busy. It’s about being present and proactive. It’s about deciding that you will no longer be a passenger in your own life.
You are the author of your story, but if you don’t pick up the pen, the world will write it for you.
Take one step today. Define one value. Subtract one distraction. One step further, one step better.
What is one area of your life where you have been drifting lately? Let’s talk about how to start defining it in the comments below.
