The most expensive meeting in Silicon Valley never happened.
It was the one where the breakthrough idea would have emerged—if only the founder hadn’t been too “busy” to let his mind wander.
We’ve created a culture that celebrates the grind. Ninety-hour weeks become badges of honor. “Always on” becomes the gold standard.
But the data tells a different story.
The most valuable companies weren’t built by people who never stopped working. They were built by people who knew when to stop working.
Reed Hastings didn’t conceive Netflix during a board meeting. He conceived it during a forty-dollar late fee incident at Blockbuster—a moment of frustration that only had space to breathe because he wasn’t buried in spreadsheets.
Sara Blakely didn’t invent Spanx while optimizing supply chains. The idea hit her while getting ready for a party, struggling with pantyhose.
The pattern is unmistakable: breakthrough thinking requires breakthrough space.
Yet we schedule ourselves into creative bankruptcy. We mistake motion for progress, meetings for momentum.
The leaders who scale don’t just build systems—they protect their capacity to see what others miss. They understand that the most productive thing they can do is occasionally be unproductive.
Not because they’re lazy. Because they’re strategic.
The next time someone questions your commitment because you’re unreachable on Saturday morning, remember this: your competitors are probably in another meeting right now.
And while they’re busy being busy, you might just be having the thought that changes everything.
