Every week, I send a message to my teams letting them know I\u2019ll be offline for about two hours. During that time, I turn my phone off, lace up my skates, and play in a weekly hockey league.<\/p>\n
To some, it may sound silly. But for me, it\u2019s sacred time. Time without the anxiety of checking my phone. Time to breathe, to move, and to simply be. When I return, I\u2019m sharper, calmer, and better equipped to lead.<\/p>\n
That small act of boundary-setting taught me a larger truth: in a world that demands constant availability, stillness is not a luxury\u2014it\u2019s a necessity.<\/p>\n
Words matter. Yet in an increasingly busy world, mine too often become silence\u2014drowned out by the endless barrage of distractions.<\/p>\n
There is a war on our attention. And only those who notice it can fight back. The rest scroll endlessly into the abysmal infinity of pictures and videos, designed with precision to steal our minds away.<\/p>\n
The average person checks their phone 96 times a day<\/strong>\u2014about once every ten minutes (Asurion, 2023). Social media platforms are engineered to keep us hooked, with algorithms built on the same reward mechanisms used in slot machines.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s working. According to research by Gloria Mark at UC Irvine, our attention span on a screen has dropped to just 47 seconds<\/strong> before we switch to something else. That\u2019s not a loss of discipline\u2014that\u2019s a structural rewiring of how we think.<\/p>\n For leaders, this matters. Creativity doesn\u2019t happen in a brain that is constantly interrupted. Innovation doesn\u2019t come from minds that can\u2019t sit still.<\/p>\n Creativity lies within the ability to be silent, to be still, to be unbothered. History reminds us of this truth:<\/p>\n Newton\u2019s theory of gravity emerged during his time in isolation from the plague.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Beethoven composed some of his greatest works in silence after losing his hearing.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Bill Gates takes annual \u201cThink Weeks,\u201d locking himself away to read, write, and think deeply about the future of technology.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n The pattern is clear: stillness creates space for originality.<\/p>\n As a leader, there are no new ideas if you are too distracted by being busy. Busyness has become a badge of honor in our culture, but it is often a mask for distraction. We confuse activity with productivity, and in doing so, we starve ourselves of originality.<\/p>\n The technological paradox has stricken originality from our brains. Surrounded by tools meant to make us smarter, we often find ourselves duller. Surrounded by platforms meant to connect us, we feel more fragmented than ever.<\/p>\n Leaders who do not create stillness risk becoming reactive rather than visionary. They chase fires instead of building futures.<\/p>\n Stillness is not passivity. It is not the absence of effort. Stillness is an intentional discipline:<\/p>\n Start your day in silence.<\/strong> Even five minutes of journaling or meditation recalibrates the brain.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Protect your attention.<\/strong> Turn off notifications. Choose when to check email instead of letting it choose for you.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Take deliberate breaks.<\/strong> Walk without headphones. Drive without a podcast. Let your brain breathe.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Build \u201cthink time\u201d into your calendar.<\/strong> If you don\u2019t schedule it, busyness will devour it.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n Set boundaries.<\/strong> Allow yourself to step away from work\u2014and encourage your people to do the same.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n If you want to become a transformative individual, start within yourself. Find stillness. Find a way to not need distractions. Find peace.<\/p>\n Only in that silence will you discover the best ideas, the most brilliant thoughts, and the most consequential actions.<\/p>\n In the war on attention, stillness is not retreat. It is resistance. And in resistance, we find the clarity to lead.<\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Every week, I send a message to my teams letting them know I\u2019ll be offline for about two hours. During that time, I turn my phone off, lace up my skates, and play in a weekly hockey league. To some, it may sound silly. But for me, it\u2019s sacred time. Time without the anxiety of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2451,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_custom_body_class":"","_custom_post_class":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,14,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanfirst","category-insight","category-journal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2452,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450\/revisions\/2452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidbrownonline.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Stillness as a Source of Creativity<\/h2>\n
\n
Leadership and the Paradox of Busyness<\/h2>\n
Finding Stillness in Practice<\/h2>\n
\n
A Call to Transformative Leadership<\/h2>\n