For most of my career, my calendar looked like a competitive sport. Back-to-back meetings, constant motion, always a few minutes behind.

I told myself it was the cost of leadership. High responsibility meant high velocity. Strategic thinking would have to happen somewhere in the margins.

Then I became an entrepreneur and discovered something uncomfortable. Even with a new role and complete autonomy over my time, the same habits showed up.

The truth is simple and humbling: you take yourself with you wherever you go.

Most senior leaders I work with are not short on intelligence, experience, or ambition. What they are short on is white space. Their days are stacked. Their calendars are crammed. Their strategic thinking is forced into the cracks between meetings.

This doesn’t require a productivity hack.
It requires building a leadership discipline. 

The Real Cost of a Crowded Mind

Our days are filled with constant inputs. Email. Slack. Meetings. News. Podcasts. Notifications. Even our breaks are filled with noise: scrolling social media, catching up on headlines, listening to podcasts or short reels.

Rarely do we give our minds true space to wander, reflect, or integrate.

This matters because the brain does not do its best strategic work under constant stimulation.

Neuroscience points us to the Default Mode Network (DMN), a network that becomes active when we are not focused on an external task.

The DMN plays a critical role in self-reflection, meaning-making, future planning, and connecting ideas that do not initially appear related. This is the system responsible that does the deep synthesis needed for strategy.

The catch is that the DMN only activates when external inputs are reduced. When we are constantly consuming information, this network stays quiet and strategic thinking gets deferred.

This is why insight so often shows up at 3:00 a.m. We think there’s something wrong with us, but it may be that deferred thinking is finally finding room to surface.

For a deeper look at the Default Mode Network and its role in cognition, see research summarized by ScienceDirect. 

Why Strategy Cannot Be Rushed

Leadership culture often reinforces ineffective behaviors. We push people into conference rooms, run through slide decks, and try to achieve strategic clarity on demand.

But cognitive psychology shares an important insight on why this approach is incomplete.

Research on attention and focus, including work popularized by Cal Newport, shows that complex thinking requires uninterrupted time.

Strategy does not happen in fragments. It does not survive constant context switching. It cannot be forced between meetings.

Cal Newport’s work on deep focus and cognitive strain, popularized in Deep Work, is grounded in decades of attention research. Leaders who consistently protect uninterrupted blocks of time do not just get more done.

They think more clearly.
They make better decisions.
They connect (strategic) dots others miss

The Body Matters More Than We Think

There is another element leaders often underestimate: the body.

Research from Stanford University found that walking increases creative output by up to 60% compared to sitting.

Movement activates brain regions associated with idea generation and planning. This helps explain why so many leaders say their best thinking happens on walks or while working out.

The insight is deceptively simple. Thinking improves when we stop trying to force it and allow the body to support the brain.

What if, instead of sitting around a conference table for your next strategy meeting, everyone went for a walk, moved around the room working in pods or worked together to build 3D paper models of their ideas?

White Space as a Strategic Practice

White space does not require a sabbatical or a radical life redesign. It requires intention.

Start by blocking protected time on your calendar for thinking. Treat it with the same respect you would give a meeting with your CEO.

Don’t over-structure it or try to multitask within it. Choose an intention and allow your mind to process slowly and organically.

If sitting down to think feels unproductive, move.

If moving is distracting, sit down with a journal or draw.
Sit by water.
Drink coffee slowly and savor the aroma.

Whatever you do, let your attention wander and notice what comes up.

Over time, turn this into a repeatable practice, weekly or even daily.

One way I am practicing this discipline is by taking my lunch hour to walk without audiobooks or podcasts (which is genuinely hard for me). I use this quiet time to get my steps in while processing the morning’s meetings. It helps me to reset my energy for the afternoon and carry less cognitive load into the evening.

One of the most important parts of your strategy this year may not be what you add.
It may be what you remove.

I’m not just talking about double booked meetings. I’m talking about noise.

Morning news.
Checking email.
Podcasts on the commute.
Watching TV while working out.
Netflix to relax.

Where could you swap one input and replace it with quiet thinking time? 

The Role of Coaching in Creating White Space

If you’re struggling to find time to think, many executive leaders I work with use coaching sessions as a forced break from the racetrack of their day.

It’s the one place where the noise quiets. We slow things down and go deep into their thinking, examining ideas from every angle in ways that are difficult to do alone.

What surprises most leaders is that they don’t lack insight. They lack uninterrupted space to find it.

Coaching is powerful not because someone gives you answers, but because it builds the discipline of thinking deeply, clearly, and without distraction. It creates the white space where your own wisdom can surface.

Whether that space comes through coaching, walking, or protected time on your calendar, the principle is the same.

Strategy doesn’t arrive when everything is loud.
It arrives when you finally make room to listen to yourself.

The Bottom Line

If you want to be strategic, you need to create the time.

Not later.
Not someday.
Now.

White space isn’t a luxury. It is your best strategy.

As you head back into your day, consider this:
What’s one thing you could remove this week to make room for deeper thinking?
And if you did that consistently, what might change in the strategy or direction of your business?

I’ll be right there with you, working on making white space a way of life. I’d love to hear how it’s going for you.

Interested in exploring coaching as a way to protect dedicated strategic thinking time?
Book a free discovery call to get started.