My workweek is 50% as long as it was in 2019. My highest-leverage results happen in about 4 hours a week. And they almost never happen during the blocks I've labeled "strategic thinking."
No productivity hacks here. This is what happens when you stop trying to force emergence and start creating conditions where it can actually happen.
I've coached 500+ professionals since November 2022. Most came from corporate settings where calendar blocking was the productivity gospel. They'd all learned to block time for strategic thinking, deep work, focus sessions.
And they'd all learned to override those blocks the moment something more urgent appeared.
What they didn't realize: every time you schedule "deep work" and then take a meeting instead, you're teaching your nervous system that your strategic thinking doesn't actually matter. The block exists as performance: proof you value focused time. But your subconscious registers the pattern. Urgent requests get honored, your own thinking time gets dismissed.
The leaders getting the best results weren't blocking more time for strategy. They were scheduling less overall and protecting what they did schedule like it was non-negotiable.
Look at your calendar right now. How many blocks labeled "focus time" or "strategic thinking" did you override this week? What does that pattern tell your nervous system about what actually matters?
Here's the part that helps: this isn't a discipline problem. Your brain's hardware and software haven't gotten an upgrade in thousands of years. The shortcuts that kept our ancestors alive (constant vigilance for threats, immediate response to urgent signals, prioritizing what's in front of you over what might matter later) still run in your nervous system today.
When you schedule strategic thinking from 2 to 3 p.m. on Tuesdays, you're asking your brain to produce insights on command. That's not how creative thinking actually works at a neurological level.
A study in Communications Biology analyzing 2,433 participants across five countries found that creativity emerges from dynamic switching between the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN, which supports spontaneous thought) and Executive Control Network (ECN, which handles controlled cognition). The number of switches between these networks, not the time spent in either state, predicted creative ability.
You can't force the switches. You can only create conditions where they're more likely to happen.
Recent neuroscience in Scientific Reports analyzing 1,717 participants confirmed that spontaneous thought isn't just Default Mode Network activation. It involves distinct patterns of functional network integration across self-awareness, executive, and visual networks. Your brain needs to be genuinely at rest, in ways specific to how your particular brain works, for creative insight to emerge.
You can't fake it by scheduling "rest blocks" while secretly planning your next quarter.
I learned this the expensive way over my consulting career. I tried to optimize everything. I time-blocked strategic thinking. I scheduled innovation sessions. I treated creativity like a muscle you could train on a program.
What I got was a lot of perfectly formatted strategy documents and almost no actual strategic breakthroughs or business changes. The breakthroughs came later, usually while I was doing something else entirely, after I'd stopped trying to force them into existence.
Forced emergence looks like this:
Allowed emergence looks like this:
Over 20 years of working with entrepreneurs showed me this: those who tried to schedule innovation like they scheduled sales calls consistently struggled. The ones who protected their time and lifestyles tended to come back with the insights that actually moved their companies forward.
The irony: giving yourself permission to stop trying to be strategic often generates more strategic value than scheduling strategic thinking ever could.
I'm not suggesting you abandon planning. Structure matters. Deadlines matter. Execution matters. Without containers, emergence becomes chaos.
But if your strategic plan assumes creativity will show up on schedule, you're optimizing for the wrong variable. You're measuring your adherence to the plan rather than whether the plan is still accurate to what wants to emerge.
Here's what I'd try instead. You can experiment with one, multiple, or none of these tactics. But just being aware that you are the author of your life, that things aren't just happening to you, can help you make decisions that get you to your desired destination.
Protect your DMN-ECN switches. The Communications Biology study found that creative ability correlated with the number of switches between spontaneous thought and controlled cognition, not the time spent in either state. That means: preserve time where your brain can shift naturally between modes. Don't fill every gap in your calendar with podcasts, meetings, or productivity content. Let some time just be. No input. No output. Just space.
Your version will look different than mine. The principle stays the same: protect time for your brain to wander without an agenda.
Question your planning cadence relentlessly. Quarterly might be too slow if you're in early-stage product-market fit. It might be too fast if you're in a stable, mature business. Monthly might be perfect for your stage, or it might create fake urgency that prevents ideas from developing fully.
Ask yourself: are you planning on a rhythm that matches your reality, or a rhythm you inherited from a business book or previous company?
Watch for where emergence wants to happen. This requires paying attention in a specific way. Track over the next month where your best ideas actually show up. Not where you think they should show up. Where they do.
Pay attention to:
If you notice a pattern (say, your best thinking happens in the first hour after you wake up, or during evening walks, or in the brief window between meetings), protect that time fiercely. Don't let it get colonized by optimization.
Distinguish "I can do this" from "this wants to be done." This is the hardest distinction to make and the most important.
You can force yourself to execute almost anything. You have the discipline. The work ethic. The capacity to push through. That's how you got here.
But forced execution and allowed emergence produce different quality outputs. Forced execution might hit the deadline. Allowed emergence tends to create work that actually moves things forward.
Here's how I tell the difference in my own work: Forced execution feels like dragging something uphill. I'm generating the energy to make it happen. Allowed emergence feels like catching a wave. There's still effort, but I'm working with momentum rather than creating it from scratch.
Build buffers into your strategy. Not buffer time in your calendar (though that helps). Buffer in your strategic assumptions.
What if your timeline is wrong? What if the market needs six months to catch up to what you're offering? What if your team needs space to discover roles you haven't imagined yet? What if the breakthrough insight hasn't arrived because you haven't given it permission to emerge?
Most strategic plans would benefit from adding six months to every timeline. This comes from being more honest about how emergence actually works rather than pretending you're less ambitious.
A March 2025 systematic review in organizational creativity identified substantial gaps between theoretical models and practical application, particularly around what they call "microprocesses": the small-scale interactions, information exchanges, and problem-solving moments that happen spontaneously within teams. These aren't things you can schedule in your project management software. They're things you have to allow space for.
Sometimes the fastest way to your goal is to stop trying to force it on your preferred timeline. Sometimes strategic thinking emerges most reliably when you stop scheduling it.
The creativity you need doesn't arrive on command. It arrives when conditions allow it. Your job isn't to force emergence. It's to protect the space where emergence can happen.
What becomes possible: a life and schedule that supports how you create value best. Your business model (how you make money) supports your biggest unique value creation. The rhythm you work at matches the rhythm your brain actually operates on.
Your ideal might be more than four hours a week of high-leverage thinking. That's fine. The promise isn't a specific number. The promise is developing a dynamic, always-improving life where your work supports your best quality of life.
That quality of life looks different for each of us. It changes throughout our lives based on the season we're in, the season of parenting we're in, health, all these other factors. But the principle stays the same: you can design your life to work with how you actually function, not against it.
That distinction makes all the difference.
The world keeps accelerating. The Simplicity Protocol helps ambitious professionals do less to achieve more through weekly elimination strategies you can implement in 20 minutes or less.
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