The Power of the Pause: Why Disconnecting Can Drive Professional Success
I still remember the exact moment everything started to shift for me. It was 2 AM, and there I was in my office—again—frantically responding to emails that somehow all seemed "urgent." I'd been a CPA for years, worked my way up to partner, and truly believed that being available 24/7 was what success looked like.
But that night, staring at my computer screen with my eyes burning and my heart racing, something hit me hard: I wasn't actually succeeding at anything meaningful. I was just... busy.
That realization started me on a journey I write about in Disconnect to Connect—examining why I kept ending up in the same exhausting cycle, no matter where I worked or what role I held.
When "Always On" Actually Turns Everything Off
Working with hundreds of leaders over the past 25 years, I've noticed we've confused motion with progress. I see it constantly—managing partners who can't remember the last time they had lunch without checking their phones, executives who schedule calls during family dinners, team leaders who respond to emails at their kids' soccer games.
What strikes me most is how the more connected to work we try to be, the more disconnected we become from what actually matters.
I learned this the hard way during my transition from public accounting. I thought stepping into corporate leadership meant stepping up my availability. Instead, I found myself making decisions from a place of exhaustion rather than clarity. My team could sense it. My family definitely felt it. And honestly, my work suffered because I was operating on fumes instead of intention.
That's when I started exploring what happens when you actually create space instead of filling it.
The Magic Lives in the Pause
When I work with executives now, I watch them transform not by adding more to their schedules, but by creating intentional pauses. A CFO I worked with last year was drowning in back-to-back meetings. She was making decisions quickly, sure, but they weren't good decisions. We started with something simple: she'd take five minutes between meetings to just breathe and reset.
It sounds like a small change, but within a month, her team started commenting on how much more present she seemed. Her decisions became more thoughtful. She started catching problems before they became crises instead of just reacting to fires all day.
That's the power of taking a beat.
What Actually Changes When You Disconnect
This isn't about abandoning your responsibilities or checking out of your career—it's about showing up differently when you are present.
Your decisions get better
When you pause before responding to that heated email or jumping into problem-solving mode, something shifts. You move from reacting to responding. I've seen leaders completely change their firm culture just by implementing a simple rule: sleep on big decisions. Not because they're indecisive, but because they know better decisions come from a rested mind.
Your relationships deepen
When you're not constantly multitasking during conversations—not thinking about your next meeting, not glancing at your phone—people notice. They trust you more. They open up more. I have clients who've told me their teams started bringing them bigger problems to solve, not because they had more time, but because they were actually present when people talked to them.
Your energy becomes sustainable
The leaders I know who've been successful for decades all have this in common: they've figured out that rest isn't laziness, it's maintenance. You wouldn't run your car without changing the oil, but somehow we think we can run ourselves without downtime.
Practical Ways to Start Disconnecting
Leaders ask me all the time, "How do I actually do this without everything falling apart?" Here are some of the things that have worked for the leaders I coach:
Start your day before your day starts you
Instead of reaching for your phone the moment you wake up, try this: spend the first 10 minutes of your day in silence. It doesn’t have to be meditation—just quiet. I do this every morning now without fail. It's amazing how different the day feels when you begin it from intention instead of reaction.
Create communication boundaries
I worked with a partner at an accounting firm who was getting texts from team members at all hours. Instead of just accepting this as "how business works now," she set clear expectations: non-emergency communication happens during business hours. Period. Her team adjusted within a week, and suddenly those "urgent" late-night questions could wait until morning because they were never really urgent.
Schedule nothing
This sounds counterintuitive, but hear me out. Block time on your calendar for thinking. Protect it like you would any important meeting. Some of my best business insights have come not during scheduled strategy sessions, but during walks around the block, yoga sessions, or quiet moments in my office.
Practice mono-tasking
When you're in a meeting, be in the meeting. When you're working on a project, work on that project. When you're with your family, be with your family. Mono-tasking isn’t revolutionary advice, but it's revolutionary in practice because so few of us actually do it.
What Changes When You Change
I won't promise this is easy. In fact, disconnecting can feel uncomfortable at first because we're so used to the constant stimulation. But here's what happens when you stick with it:
You start making decisions from clarity instead of panic.
You build deeper trust with your team because they know when they have your attention, they really have it.
You find solutions to problems that seemed impossible when you were too busy to think clearly.
And here's the business case that matters most: you become sustainable. Not just for the next quarter or the next year, but for the long haul.
Starting Small
The beauty of strategic pauses is that they don't require dramatic life changes or complicated systems. Small shifts create big ripples.
Don't aim for perfection. Aim for intention. Pick one small pause this week. Five minutes before your first meeting to set an intention. One meal without checking your phone. A 10-minute walk outside instead of eating lunch at your desk.
In my book Disconnect to Connect, I explore the deeper patterns that keep us trapped in cycles of overwhelm—the internal stories and beliefs that drive us to say yes when we should say no, to react instead of respond, to mistake busyness for importance. The book examines how our past experiences shape the way we show up professionally, and how understanding those patterns can free us to make different choices.
Sometimes the biggest professional breakthrough comes from the smallest personal pause. Last week, a managing partner told me that taking three deep breaths before difficult conversations has changed how his entire team communicates with each other.
That's the thing about pauses. They spread through organizations faster than you'd expect.
Ready to explore what's driving your patterns of overwhelm? Disconnect to Connect: Tap into the Power Within You to Create the Life You Desire helps you examine the internal stories that keep you stuck and discover how to write new ones.