The Next Best Action

On presence, trust, and a solo trip to Puerto Rico

read time 4 minutes

Happy New Year. I hope 2026 brings you some peace, some growth, and fewer moments where you're fighting yourself.

To start the year, I wanted to share something I’ve been sitting with lately, a way of seeing that turned out to be more useful than I expected.

Looking Back

I ended the year on a solo trip to Puerto Rico. I went in wanting it to be reflective, exploratory, and fun. Instead, I caught myself doing what I usually do first: planning every hour, mapping every route, trying to make sure the experience would turn out “right.”

A few hours into that, it became obvious what I was doing. I was turning the trip into the exact thing I didn’t want it to be. Tight. Overthought. An itinerary pretending to be freedom. So I scrapped it. No schedule, no hourly plans, just me, a place I didn’t know well, and whatever showed up next.

That decision came with some anxiety at first. Open space tends to do that to me. When there isn’t a plan, my brain tries to create one immediately. The first night, I found myself sitting alone at a bar and could feel that familiar pressure to justify what I was doing, even if no one was asking.

So I paused and asked myself one simple question:

Who am I when no one here knows my job, my story, or what I’m working toward?

The answer was simple. I was just noticing things. Talking when I wanted. Relaxed. Not trying to impress or perform. I fell asleep that night feeling something I hadn’t felt consistently in a while: content, without the urge to extract meaning or turn the moment into something else.

From there, the trip started to unfold naturally. Whenever I felt drawn somewhere, I went. Wandering Old San Juan without a plan. Finding coffee shops tucked into corners like Cuatro Sombras. Sitting in a church on Christmas Eve because it felt right to be in a place that had held other people’s uncertainty for a long time. Salsa in the streets. Birds moving in these strangely coordinated patterns that made me smile. Local dishes like mofongo recommended by bartenders and strangers who quickly became friends.

What I kept noticing was that things worked out when I stopped forcing them into shape. The days felt better when I let myself respond to what was actually in front of me instead of what I thought should happen next. Over time, something familiar came back. I trusted my instincts more. Decisions felt lighter. Choosing became easier because I wasn’t trying to optimize every step.

I'm not anti-planning, planning has its place. But I also saw how easily it becomes a shield for me, a way to stay in my head when the moment is asking for something simpler.

Looking Ahead

Somewhere in the middle of the trip, I found a phrase that helped bring me back whenever my mind started jumping ahead. I started calling it NBA: Next Best Action.

My brain loves to extrapolate. It will build a five-year plan while I’m sitting in front of a plate of food. NBA was a way to bring the decision back down to the size of the moment. I’d ask myself, right now, from where I actually am, what is the next best action?

If I was in bed, the next best action was sleep. If I was at dinner, the next best action was to eat and enjoy it, not plan the rest of the night. If I was watching the sunset, the next best action was to stay and watch.

It sounds almost too simple, but that simplicity is what made it work. NBA turned a huge, abstract question — what should I do with my life — into a smaller, honest one: what should I do next, right now?

A lot of my stress, I realized, comes from trying to live a few steps ahead of myself. NBA brought me back to the only place where agency actually exists.

The trip also clarified something else I’d been carrying without fully naming. A lot of what drains me isn’t effort, it’s the feeling of being evaluated. In big systems, it’s easy to learn to associate screens and refinement with judgment and stakes. Sitting down to edit can start to feel like a review instead of an act of expression.

Puerto Rico stripped that away. No one knew my job. No one was watching my output. There was nothing to prove. I could just be a person moving through the world. NBA helped with that too, because it kept me focused on honest movement instead of impressive movement.

I’m sharing this because I suspect I’m not the only one who spends too much time ahead of himself. If you want to try this idea, don’t apply it to a big life decision. Try it for the next ten minutes. Ask what the next best action is from where you are, and choose the one that keeps you present rather than stuck.

The sentence I’m carrying into 2026 is simple: My job is not to know the whole path. My job is to take the next step that keeps me engaged with my life. That’s it. Just a way of moving that feels sustainable and honest.

Here’s to the year ahead and the next best action.

— Akash