The Day Off That Makes You More Productive (Not Less)

Bill Gates disappears for a week every year.

And his calendar looks as blank as a freshly washed white sheet.

He calls it Think Week, and it's one of the most productive things he does all year.

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I don’t want to add to what everyone has been saying but “2026 has been a challenging year for founders”.

Yet, it’s true. We're all running faster just to stay in place: some of us are trying to grow, some of us are trying to survive, some of us are trying to expand.

Back-to-back meetings. Endless emails. Constant notifications.

I make it one of my big personal values to be transparent so I am not going to lie and say it’s been easy to keep on going after maternity leave.

We had highs and lows, and are just finding our feet again. And the main reason why I can see progress, is because I went against my usual instinct that would have me push through.

I made more space for thinking, and a whole lot changes.

And we rarely give ourselves permission to just think.

Because thinking doesn't feel, well, productive.

Then I remembered the Bill Gates story, the one I would use as an example when promoting my second book, Reclaim your Time Off: free time to think is an investment in future opportunities.

When you have space to step back, zoom out, and actually process what's happening in your business (and your life), you spot patterns.

You see connections. You have ideas.

But you can't do that when you're sprinting from one thing to the next.

Just to state the obvious, yo probably can't take a full week off like Bill Gates. Neither can I.

But you can take a day. Or half-day.

Once a quarter. Or once a year.

Protect it like your life depends on it. Hell, turn it into a lil accountability exercise if you have to.

I am yet to bring this back due to nursery and childcare, but it is definitely in the cards.

Here are three things that have made a difference for me.

Seclude yourself.

Physically, if possible. Go somewhere different. A café. A park. An Airbnb.

Mentally, at minimum. Turn off notifications. Put up an out-of-office.

Do the one thing that you know will help you to make yourself unreachable.

Bring thinking materials.

Block it in chunks.

60-minute focus blocks with walks in between. I do 8 hours total. You might do 4. The point is uninterrupted thinking time.

I tend to break the day down to include a variation of the following:

Use prompts to spark your brain.

Here are some I use:

The first time I tried a Think Day, a few years back I felt guilty. Like I was skiving off.

I cleared my whole calendar for meetings and spend the whole day in a cafe down the road - and that felt like a luxury.

Then, about two hours in, something shifted. I had clarity I hadn't had in months. I saw problems I'd been avoiding. I spotted opportunities I'd missed.

I made decisions that had been paralysing me for weeks.

And I came back to work the next day more energised than I'd been in ages.

Most of us are afraid of unstructured time.

Because when you stop running, you have to face what you've been avoiding.

Maybe your business isn't working the way you hoped. Maybe you're chasing goals that don't actually matter to you. Maybe you're burned out and pretending you're not.

A Think Day forces you to sit with all of that. And that's uncomfortable.

But it's also necessary.

You can't think your way to success while you're sprinting.

So please, for the love of God, hit the breaks.

I’ll be cheering you on from the sidelines, as always.

Fab 🤘