Life is a voyage. You are the captain. Most of us know where we want to go. Then life happens: a diagnosis, a loss, a season so loud we look up months later and realize we have been drifting. Navigating the Now is for that moment. Leadership author, speaker, and CEO, Joe Baker brings together two things that rarely share a shelf: a proven goal-setting system and a philosophy of radical presence. One gives you a destination. The other keeps you steady when the plan meets real life. Most books give you one or the other. This one holds both together.
Nine hundred mornings: Joe wrote this book in the thirty months he lost both of his parents. As he puts it in the prologue, those were "nine hundred chances to either drift or sail." He was still leading a company and raising three children, and he learned that a plan can tell you where to go but not how to show up the morning after a funeral. What emerged is a complete navigation system for a fully lived life.
This is his third book, and his most personal. Living with a Never Better Attitude: "If you ask me how I'm doing, there is only one honest answer: Never Better." Never Better is not a claim that everything is fine. It is a choice to meet this moment fully, holding grief and gratitude at once. It is a mantra tested in hospital hallways and boardrooms, against real loss and real joy, and it held.
One book, three parts:
Chart Your Course gives you the destination.
Never Better gives you the fortitude to reach it.
A captain can't control the weather, only the heading and the sails.
Part One: Chart Your Course. A four-part method for turning purpose into a plan, drawn from decades of executive leadership:
- North Star: who you're becoming
- Compass: why it matters
- Voyage: your annual goals
- Atlas: the habits that carry you there
Part Two: Stay Your Course.
Ninety-one short practices, each readable in a few minutes, for staying resilient when the system alone isn't enough, organized under the SAIL framework:
- Serenity: finding peace in the present moment, even when life gets hard
- Agility: adapting with grace when conditions change
- Intentionality: keeping your focus on what matters
- Love: living with an open heart, guided by passion and compassion
Part Three: Change Your Course.
What to do when adversity actually arrives. Changing course isn't failure; it's what good captains do:
- Storms: external adversity
- Icebergs: internal adversity
- Drifting: distraction and lost focus
Who it's for: Published as a book and guided workbook, it asks you to build your own plan, not just read about Joe's. It is for leaders guiding teams through uncertainty, professionals in transition, anyone walking through grief, and goal-setters who keep stalling and need purpose, not another planner. Teams and book clubs gain a shared language for what matters.
