Forget the last one. Do the next one.

In high school, our lacrosse team had shirts and across the shoulders was printed a simple fragment of a sentence, “The next one.”

The idea was simple: if you got a ground ball, get the next one. If you scored a goal, score the next one. If you did something good, don’t dwell on it, do the next one.

Recently this notion came back to me, not to stay stagnant for too long and think about what I just did, no matter what it was. Appreciate it briefly, celebrate, then go get the next one. Go do the next one.

For me, this has been a powerful way to approach life and work. I wrote a feature I’m really proud of. I’ve never written that kind of a feature before. Okay. Write the next one. I just swam a mile. Okay. Swim the next one.

Do. Accomplish. Pause. Appreciate. Do the next one.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. Continue the discussion over on Hacker News. I’d also be incredibly humbled if you followed me on Twitter.