Here is Rob’s next chapter!

A few weeks ago, I had a scheduled Zoom call with the CEO of a two-year-old company. The moment his video appeared, I noticed his eyes. They were heavy. He was working hard just to keep them open.

He was six hours into a Tuesday that had followed a twenty-four-hour Monday — having pulled an all-nighter to address a crisis with his largest customer — a customer he could not afford to lose. He was in the middle of a $10 million fundraising round. Four days before our call, one of his key employees had walked out the door for another opportunity.

He finished his update with these words: “I’m feeling very alone.”

Well what kind of place is that to lead from?! We spent the rest of our session focused on one thing: how could he take a real break in the coming days? Not a half-break. Not an “I won’t bring work home tonight” break. A break that would actually replenish him — physically, intellectually, emotionally — to be the leader he needed to be at this moment.

This CEO is talented, driven, and deeply committed to building something useful to the world. He is also running himself into the ground. And the irony is that the very activities he thinks are making him effective are actually making him less so.

The Leadership Challenge: Why You Won’t Stop

If you feel you are near a breaking point and have turned to this chapter seeking help, way to go! One of the big challenges productive leaders have is recognizing they have a problem with taking breaks.

Most leaders don’t have a time management problem. They have a permission problem. They simply do not give themselves permission to stop.

Here are some of the internal messages that keep leaders from pausing to refresh.

“I don’t deserve a break until . . .” Rest is something you earn. Eventually you’ll take that vacation. Eventually you’ll get things over the hump and can take a break. But “eventually” never comes. There is always another fire, another deadline, another round to close. Here’s the reframe for you as a leader: Rest isn’t a reward. It’s a requirement. No Formula One driver has ever won a race by skipping the pit stop. Your vacation, your mid-day walk, your five minutes of quiet before a hard conversation — these are your pit stops. Skip enough of them and you won’t finish the race.

“I will be less productive if I take a break.” When you step away, your brain doesn’t stop working. It actually starts doing some of its best work. Neuroscience has a name for this: the Default Mode Network1. Your DMN is responsible for creative problem-solving, pattern recognition, strategic thinking, and empathy. The insight you’ve been chasing for three weeks? It’s waiting for you on a walk.

“I can perform just fine without a break.” Fatigue doesn’t just make you tired. It distorts your judgment. Tired leaders make worse decisions. They are quicker to anger and slower to empathy. Biology has its way.

“It’s good for my team to see me work this hard.” If you never take breaks, your team won’t either. You model the way. The leader who brags about working through the weekend is quietly punishing their team for having a life outside of work.

“I am known for my hard work.” If you genuinely cannot stop, that’s rarely a workload problem. It’s an identity problem — control issues, fear of irrelevance, or a belief that your value is tied to your busyness. If stopping makes you feel purposeless, you don’t need a vacation. You need a conversation — with a coach, a therapist, or someone you trust.

The Leadership Opportunity: Pausing to Recharge

If you recognize you need to take a break, you are halfway there! Here are some ideas for how to do it.

In the Middle of the Day

One of the most effective mid-day resets I’ve found is what I call a “dimensional shift.” You have four dimensions as a leader: physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual. When one dimension is depleted or overwhelmed, shift your attention and energy to a different one where you feel stronger and more balanced.

If something has you emotionally jacked up — a tense conversation, a difficult piece of news — don’t let your feelings dictate your leadership presence. Instead, shift over to your physical dimension: take a walk, go outside, move your body. Or shift to the intellectual: read or listen to something completely unrelated to what’s got you stirred up, something purely for curiosity or learning. How about shifting to the Spiritual? Pause in a quiet moment (5 minutes at least) and meditate on your Identity — who you are — and your Purpose — why you are here. The goal is to change the channel so your brain and body can recover.

These aren’t escapes. They’re resets. And they work2.

When You Take Vacation

Vacation only works if you actually go on one. Here’s how to make it count.

• Prepare your mindset before you leave. Decide in advance that this is going to be a real vacation. Not a working vacation. Set specific limits for yourself if you must stay connected for some reason.

• Prepare your team before you leave. One of my president-level clients does this brilliantly. He tells his team no emails, no texts while he’s gone (so the messages don’t pile up and create mental clutter). His one rule: “If it’s big enough to matter, call me.” That single filter requires the caller to do real thinking before reaching out — and it protects this leader’s time away.

• Be accountable to the people you’re with. If you absolutely must spend an hour on email in the morning, tell your family when you’re going to do it — and stick to it. Don’t let work bleed into the rest of the day.

• Go easy on yourself as you detox. It takes a couple of days to decompress from the grind. Expect it. Be kind to yourself through the withdrawal.

• Fill the vacuum. It’s not enough to say you won’t work. You need a plan for what you’re going to do instead. Plan activities, especially early on, that are genuinely fun and absorbing. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does a workaholic leader.

Greg McKeown, in his excellent book Essentialism, puts it simply: the point “is not to get more things done; it’s about how to get the right things done3.” Rest isn’t the enemy of your best work. It’s the condition for it.

Stop waiting until you’ve earned it. You already have.

Notes

1. The Default Mode Network (DMN) is a set of interconnected brain regions—including the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and angular gyrus—that become more active when you are not focused on an external task. It activates during mind-wandering, daydreaming, self-reflection, and imagining future scenarios. Crucially, the DMN and the brain’s task-focused executive control network are largely anti-correlated: when one is active, the other quiets. This means chronic busyness suppresses the very neural activity responsible for your deepest strategic thinking, empathy, and creative insight. Neuroscientists once dismissed DMN activity as background noise. They now recognize it as essential to high-order cognition. For leaders, this is not a soft idea—it is biology.

2. For more, see the chapter titled “Adjust” in my book, Lead Like You Were Meant To — Make the Shift from Autopilot to Intentional.

3. Essentialism, p. 6