Life isn’t a straight line. It doesn’t unfold like a five-year plan or stick to the agenda in your head. It’s much more chaotic and entropic than that, thankfully.

I’ve started thinking of life as a kind of collection. A loosely curated, ever-growing archive of experiences. Some loud and unforgettable. Others quiet and completely ordinary until.. they aren’t.

Most of the good memories, I’ve found, comes from randomness. You bump into someone at an event you almost skipped. You end up in a different seat on the train and overhear a conversation that sparks an idea. A small detour becomes a great story. A stranger becomes a collaborator. Or a friend.

This is true in work, too. Especially when it comes to networking. The most valuable connections I’ve made haven’t been through well written LinkedIn messages or formal intros. They’ve come from chatting in corridors, asking a question at the end of a talk, or just being curious about what someone else is working on. You can’t plan those. You just have to show up, pay attention, and let things unfold.

The same goes for the rest of life. That accidental 10km run that started with “just a jog.” The café you walked into to escape the rain. The side project you started on a whim (got some really nice memories from some viniculture work I did during the early months of covid). They’re not strategic. They’re not part of the big master plan. But they end up shaping you, all the same.

So maybe the point isn’t to optimise every moment. Maybe it’s just to notice them. To collect, loosely. Let the randomness in. Say yes a little more often. See where things go. Life can be exciting!