Strategic Pause or Shuddering Stop - What's Your Decision?

When Roger Federer announced a six-week break mid-season in 2016, critics wondered if the 35-year-old was finished. He returned to win three Grand Slams over the next eighteen months. “Taking time off,” Federer later reflected, “was the best decision I ever made for my longevity.”

The greatest performers in sport understand what many business leaders are only beginning to grasp, that sustained excellence requires strategic disengagement.

Consider LeBron James, who spends over $1.5 million annually on body maintenance and recovery. But perhaps his smartest investment is simpler. He takes complete mental breaks from basketball during the off-season. “I don’t touch a basketball for two months,” James has said. “When I come back, I’m hungry again.” At 40 going on 41, he’s still performing at an elite level in a young man’s game.

Contrast this with the corporate world’s glorification of relentlessness. The executive who proudly announces they haven’t taken a proper vacation in three years. The founder answering emails at midnight. We’ve confused endurance with effectiveness, mistaking the appearance of dedication for actual results.

Satya Nadella changed that narrative at Microsoft. Shortly after becoming CEO in 2014, he instituted mandatory vacation policies for senior leadership and led by example, taking real breaks with his family. “You can’t transform a company culture,” Nadella has observed, “if you’re running on empty yourself.” Microsoft’s market capitalization has increased over 1000% under his leadership.

The science backs this intuition. Research from Stanford University shows that productivity per hour declines sharply when the work week exceeds 50 hours, with output dropping so dramatically after 55 hours that additional work becomes pointless. Elite athletes have known this intuitively for generations. Rest isn’t the opposite of performance; it’s a prerequisite for it. So much for certain CEO’s in recent times advising people to work longer hours.

Simone Biles demonstrated this powerfully at Tokyo 2020. After withdrawing from events to protect her mental health, she returned to win bronze on beam. “At the end of the day,” she said, “we’re human too, and we have to protect our mind and our body rather than just go out there and do what the world wants us to do.”

The business equivalent? Ray Dalio’s practice of extended meditation retreats, which he credits with helping him build Bridgewater Associates into the world’s largest hedge fund.

Or Bill Gates’s famous “Think Weeks”. It was a biannual seven-day retreat with no phone, no email, just books and thinking time. Several Microsoft products, including Internet Explorer, emerged from insights Gates gained during these deliberate pauses.

Yet here’s the paradox: in sport, recovery is non-negotiable. No coach would dream of training an athlete 365 days a year. But in business, we often pride ourselves on doing exactly that to ourselves.

Tennis great Steffi Graf retired at 30, at the peak of her powers. Asked why, she explained: “I wanted to leave with love for the game, not resentment.” She understood that longevity isn’t measured in years but in the quality of those years.

The lesson for leaders is clear. Your competitive advantage isn’t how long you can work. It is how effectively you can perform when it matters most. And that requires what elite athletes have always known, the courage to step away, to truly disengage, to come back hungry. 

If you haven’t taken a break yet in this season, do it. Take the week off. The world will keep rotating while you step away to rejuvenate. In the long game of sustained excellence, the pause isn’t a luxury. It’s your leadership strategy.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​