Wired for Purpose – Week 10: Presence

This week, I learned a lesson from a loaf of bread.

A few days ago, I baked a loaf that came out nearly perfect. Great shape. Beautiful rise. Crisp crust. The kind of loaf that makes you stop and admire it before cutting into it.

Today, I used the same recipe.

Same flour.
Same Dutch oven.
Same process.

Yet the loaf wasn’t quite the same.
It was still good, but it lacked the shape and rise of the loaf from earlier in the week.

Naturally, I started looking for answers.
Was it the weather?
The humidity?
The dough temperature?
The proofing time?
The shaping?

As I worked through each possibility, one realization became impossible to ignore.

I felt rushed.
The difference wasn’t in the bread.
The difference was in the baker.

When we feel rushed, we don’t just move faster. We pay attention differently. We stop noticing small details. We skip steps that seem insignificant. We focus on getting through the process instead of being present in it.

The loaf reflected exactly where my attention was.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized this wasn’t a lesson about bread.

It was a lesson about presence.

Many of us spend our days moving from meeting to meeting, notification to notification, task to task. We assume productivity is about speed. We assume progress is measured by how much we accomplish.

But attention gives direction to effort.
Presence gives quality to attention.

Without presence, we can still produce output. We can still check the boxes. We can still stay busy.
What we lose is quality.

The quality of our work.
The quality of our conversations.
The quality of our relationships.
The quality of our thinking.
The quality of our lives.

What struck me most was that I spent an afternoon looking for the answer in the dough.
The answer wasn’t in the dough.

It was in me.

The loaf told the truth before I was willing to admit it.

I wasn’t lacking skill.
I wasn’t lacking knowledge.

I was lacking presence.

Maybe that’s the challenge for all of us in a world that constantly demands our attention.

Not finding more time.
Not working harder.
Simply being fully present in the time we already have.

This week, pay attention to where your attention is.
Then ask yourself a second question:

Are you truly present there?

Because what we create often reflects the quality of attention we bring to it.

And sometimes, even a loaf of bread knows the difference.

— Michael Earls

Wired for Purpose is a weekly reflection on finding clarity, purpose, and direction in a world moving faster than ever.