I do my best thinking when I’m walking my back acreage.
Not at my desk. Not in meetings. Not while staring at a cursor blinking on a screen, trying to find something new in the same space I’ve been sitting in for days. Out here. Where the only noise is the wind and my boots on the ground (and the cat who likes to walk with me).
In the EOS world, we call these Clarity Breaks. Scheduled time to disconnect from the “how” so you can remember the “why.”
I know the resistance. I used to feel it too. The accountant in me screamed that if I wasn’t billing, responding or grinding, I wasn’t working.
But that is a lie.
When you are constantly reacting to what is in front of you, you miss the patterns. You solve the wrong problems. You mistake motion for progress.
If the weather is nice, I walk every single day, often just to reflect on the day and get re-grounded. But the real breakthroughs happen when I lean in for a long 90 minutes. I try to do this at least once a quarter. No phone. No agenda (really). Just an empty field and time.
And here is what happens:
The question I’ve been wrestling with for weeks suddenly untangles itself. The decision I was avoiding becomes painfully obvious. The noise settles and the path clears. Open tabs in my brain get closed.
This isn’t a luxury. It’s strategy.
Your best decisions don’t come from working harder. They come from creating the space to see clearly.
If 90 minutes feels like too much, start small. Try 15 minutes. No agenda. No phone. Just let your mind go where it needs to.