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There Is No Such Thing as an Average Day
NEXTletter is your practice for shaping what’s next. More than a newsletter, it’s a space to pause, reflect, and experiment. Every other Friday, you’ll get one question, two perspectives, and one experiment — to help you create the future you most want to live in.
Frederik Pferdt
December 19, 2025
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A few weeks ago, I was walking up a hill with a coachee during a Future Coaching session. To our left, headstones marked the slope of a small cemetery. The afternoon light was that particular autumn gold that makes everything feel both beautiful and temporary.
I asked a simple question: "How is it going?"
He paused mid-stride, looking at the path ahead rather than at me.
"Honestly? Just Alltag."
In German, Alltag means the average day. The routine. The familiar rhythm. The kind of day that blends into the next. And the way he said it—there beside those quiet stones—carried something else too. A quiet disappointment. As if an "ordinary day" were something to endure rather than inhabit.
I hear this word a lot. Not only in coaching sessions, but in everyday conversations. And I understand it. Alltag was never meant to dull life. It was meant to stabilize it. It promised reliability, order, safety. And for a long time, that mattered.
But somewhere along the way, stability began to masquerade as sameness. And sameness, over time, can quietly drain meaning.
Here's what that looks like from the outside: A person wakes up Monday and thinks "just another week." By Friday, they wonder where the days went. Years pass this way. Promotions happen, children grow, parents age—but the person experiencing it feels strangely absent from their own life. Not because nothing is happening, but because they stopped noticing what is.
ONE QUESTION
Is today a good day to die?
Before we go any further, let me offer a question. Not a comfortable one, but a clarifying one.
Is today a good day to die?
I'll wait.
Not as a morbid thought. Not as a provocation. But as a lens.
Because when we ask it honestly, something interesting happens. We suddenly notice things we usually rush past. Conversations. Light. Laughter. The people we love. The unfinished sentences. The things we would want just a little more time for.
The question is not really about death.
It is about aliveness.
The most meaningful gift isn’t something you unwrap. It’s the future you help someone create.
Use FUTUREREADY as your code and get 50% off our online course “Your 8 Days Future-Ready Mindstate Training” here, Future Creator!
You can also share the code once with someone you love or care about and who you think might need it. Just forward the link or the email.
I’ve created a free 31-day Future Calendar on WhatsApp: a one-minute morning ritual to practice stepping into possibility. Each day you’ll receive a short voice message from me and a small prompt a question, a gentle challenge, or an awareness moment. What began as an experiment has already grown into a beautiful circle of more than 170 people showing up with intention each morning. If this feels like something your future self would choose, you’re warmly invited to join us.
TWO PERSPECTIVES
1️⃣ Why our mindstate loves Our mindstate is a master of efficiency. It looks for patterns, routines, shortcuts. This is not a flaw. It is how we reduce cognitive load and feel safe in a complex world. Labeling a day as "just another day" gives us comfort. It tells us we know how this goes. But that same mechanism can become a trap. Psychologists have found that when our days feel repetitive, our brains compress memory. Time seems to speed up. Weeks blur. Years disappear. Life feels shorter not because it is, but because less of it is truly noticed. Here's the counterintuitive part: Research shows that people remember more from a two-week vacation than from two months of routine work—not because vacation days contain more events, but because we grant them permission to be distinct. We expect vacation days to matter, so we notice them. We expect Tuesday to be like Monday, so we delete it from memory before it even ends. The philosopher Heraclitus captured this long before neuroscience did: “You cannot step into the same river twice. Not because the river has changed alone, but because you have changed too.” Every day is that river. Always moving. Always new. Yet our mindstate prefers to reuse yesterday rather than fully meet today. Efficiency wins. Presence loses. | 2️⃣ Impermanence as Impermanence is often misunderstood. It is not the idea that things end. It is the reality that nothing ever stays exactly the same. Every moment is already in motion. Thoughts arise and pass. Bodies change. Relationships evolve. Even the most familiar days reshape themselves while we're inside them. This is why the idea of an "average day" is misleading. There is no neutral baseline we return to each morning. No reset button that brings us back to yesterday. What we call routine is simply change happening slowly enough that we stop noticing it. When we truly understand impermanence, something subtle shifts. Responsibility returns. If nothing repeats, then waiting loses its appeal. Postponing meaning starts to feel expensive. The question changes from "What will happen?" to "How do I want to meet what is already happening?" Impermanence does not ask us to panic. It asks us to participate. Seen this way, an ordinary day is not something to get through. It is something to engage with. Fully. While it is here. |
ONE EXPERIMENT
Here is a simple experiment. It takes less than ten seconds.
Every morning, I wake my kids with three sentences:
It's a beautiful day. It's your day. Let's make it the best one yet.
Sometimes they smile. Sometimes they are annoyed, as it is sometimes the first thing they hear in the morning. Last Tuesday, my daughter looked at me with sleep-blurred eyes and said, "It's raining, daddy." I looked out the window. She was right. Heavy gray clouds, water streaming down the glass.
"Even better," I said. "We get to find out what makes a rainy day beautiful."
She rolled her eyes. But at breakfast, she told me about a dream she'd had. Something she normally would have forgotten. The ritual had already worked, not by making the day objectively special, but by marking it as worth noticing.
The ritual is not only for them. It is for me. It marks the day as distinct before the world flattens it into routine.
For the next week, try this. Say these words to yourself. Or adapt them. The words matter less than the intention. What matters is pausing long enough to acknowledge that this day is not interchangeable with any other.
Ask yourself, quietly or out loud:
If this were the only version of today I will ever get, how do I want to meet it?
Life works. But something inside you wants more.
Not more to do. More alignment. More clarity. More you. My 1:1 Future Being Coaching is a space to reconnect with the future you actually want to live. Together, we uncover what’s quietly holding you back and turn insight into real steps you can take now, in your life as it is. This is for people who are ready to stop waiting for the right moment and start shaping what comes next from within. If that feels familiar, you’re invited.
New Podcast Episode
When the future feels uncertain, notice who isn’t waiting. This Best Of episode of The Future Is HOW brings together moments from people who practice the future instead of predicting it. A Michelin-star chef. Different worlds. 🎧 Listen to the Best Of episode here. The future isn’t something we wait for. |  |
A closing thought
Walking back down that hill with my coachee, past the cemetery where the light was starting to fade, I thought about all those names on stones. Each one marked a life made entirely of days. Some labeled "ordinary." Some labeled "special." But all of them, every single one, unrepeatable.
There is no such thing as Alltag in the way we often use it.
There are only days we enter on autopilot, and days we choose to meet awake.
Tomorrow morning, someone will wake up and think: "Just another day."
They'll be wrong.
So will you.
Today is not average.
It never was.
With future love,
Frederik
The most meaningful gift isn’t something you unwrap. It’s the future you help someone create.
Use FUTUREREADY as your code and get 50% off our online course “Your 8 Days Future-Ready Mindstate Training” here, Future Creator!
You can also share the code once with someone you love or care about and who you think might need it. Just forward the link or the email.