I just spent two
weeks on a
sabbatical. I was in Naivasha. Turns out it’s a beautiful place to reset. For the
first 3 days,
my nervous system screamed. I’m so
used to working. Calling me a work addict wouldn’t be so far from the truth. My
fingers twitched for the phone. My mind kept drafting replies to emails I
hadn’t received. Then, somewhere around day four, the noise stopped. I could hear birds
again. I started enjoying the
lake view. I could hear myself think. Actually think, not the reactive, fragmented thinking we
mistake for productivity, but the deep, spacious kind that rearranges your
soul.
I came back home
lighter, sharper, kinder, and paradoxically more ambitious than when I left.
That paradox is the entire point of this article.
The Philosophy of Strategic Nothingness
The Ancient Greeks had a word for it: Acedia was
considered a vice, spiritual
sloth, but the
Stoics and Epicureans quietly practised something closer to sanctified
idleness. Seneca wrote letters from his garden, Marcus Aurelius stole moments
on the battlefield to stare at the stars. They understood that the mind is like
a bow, keep it
strung 24/7 and the string will snap or lose its power.
Lao Tzu put it even more plainly: “Muddy water, let stand,
becomes clear.”
We are the muddy water. Hustle culture is the hand that keeps
stirring.
The Spiritual Argument for Rest
Every major spiritual tradition has a sabbath, a Ramadan, a
retreat, a silent meditation period. Why? Because the soul grows in the spaces
where the ego is not performing.
When you stop producing, you are forced to confront who you
are when no one is watching, when no metric is climbing, when there is no
applause. That confrontation is terrifying and
transformative.
During my sabbatical, I
discovered that 90% of my “urgent” thoughts dissolved within five minutes when
I refused to act on them. The remaining 10% were worth carrying home.
Did You Know….
That your
brain’s default mode network, the part
responsible for creativity, problem-solving, and self-reflection, only
activates when you are mentally idle. Daydreaming, walking, staring out of bus
windows: these are not time-wasters; they are where breakthroughs are knitted
together beneath conscious awareness.
Chronic busyness floods you with cortisol. Extended rest
triggers parasympathetic repair: heart-rate variability improves, inflammation
markers drop, and hippocampal volume (memory and learning) increases. Companies
like Basecamp and DuckDuckGo now mandate sabbaticals because the data is
undeniable: people who take long breaks outperform those who don’t, for years
afterwards.
The Entrepreneur’s Special Delusion
As entrepreneurs, we wear
exhaustion like a badge. “I’ll rest when I’m dead” is not a flex; it’s a
pre-obituary.
Don’t you actually have friends
who have built eight-figure
businesses and still check their phones in the washroom? You need to realize the company won’t die without you
for just 2 weeks. In fact, it may run better. Your team will step up. Systems you think only you understand might turn out
to be documented enough. The world will keep spinning.
The ego hates that discovery.
How to Actually Unwind (Practical Playbook)
1. Schedule
the void first Block four to eight weeks a year from now. Put it in the
calendar before the year fills with noise. Tell your team it’s non-negotiable.
They will respect you more, not less.
2. Go far
enough that logistics defeat you A staycation is not a sabbatical. Fly across
time zones. Make it inconvenient to “just pop into the office”.
3. Delete
the temptation Log out of work accounts. Use a dumb phone or none at all. The
first week will feel like heroin withdrawal. Good. That’s the addiction leaving
your body.
4. Have
zero goals Not “read 20 books”, not “learn Spanish”, not “get shredded”. The only
goal is to remember what it feels like to have no goals.
5. Let
boredom do the heavy lifting Boredom is the portal. It is uncomfortable because
it forces you to feel feelings you’ve been productivity-fugging for years. Sit
in it. Cry if you need to. Laugh at how ridiculous adult life has become.
Something on the other side is waiting.
6. Re-enter
gently Keep the first two weeks back almost empty. Say no to everything that
isn’t life-giving. Your renewed clarity is the most valuable asset your company
now has, protect
it fiercely.
We are human beings, not human doings.
The Latin root of sabbatical is sabbaticus, from shabbāth, to cease. To cease is not to quit. It is important
to remember that your worth was never in the doing in the first place.
I came back from my
sabbatical with no new grand strategy, no 100-point plan. I came back
with silence in my pocket, and
somehow that has been worth more than any quarter I’ve ever crushed.
If you are reading this on LinkedIn while secretly wishing
you could close the laptop and disappear for a month, listen to that wish. It’s not a weakness.
It’s intelligence wearing the disguise of longing.
Book the ticket. Send the out-of-office.
The work will be here when you return. But you, fully, gloriously, annoyingly human, might not be if you don’t leave soon.
Go unwind. The world needs you whole.
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