Silence

Silence isn’t absence; it’s invitation.

We are culturally wired to interpret noise - Slack pings, Jira updates, partner emails - as productivity. However, my personal journey toward self-awareness and being a father of two young ones has taught me that constant input degrades output. We often mistake motion for progress, failing to realize that the most critical decisions at work or home require the least amount of external noise to process.

Research by Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, shows that it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to clear your ‘attention residue’ and fully regain focus after an interruption (pdf). If your day is a series of interruptions, you are never truly doing deep work; you are merely context-switching. Silence isn’t just a spiritual luxury one should seek outside of work; it is a necessary professional discipline to counter cognitive fragmentation.

I used to think being a good leader and father meant “doing” things constantly. Now, I treat empty calendar blocks as “Deep Work” (a framework popularized by Cal Newport - amazon) rather than available space, allowing me to recharge and be truly present. This silence also acts as a “Bus Factor” test (wiki): if my team panics when I step away, I haven’t built a strong enough organization.

My goal, influenced by a realization that control is often an illusion, is to move consistently toward the “Strategic Growth Zone.” When I step back, I am creating the necessary vacuum for my engineering managers and TPMs to step up. If they cannot function without my constant transmission, I haven’t built a team; I’ve built a dependency.

This holiday season, with my laptop shut and my two little ones’ laughter the only “notifications,” I’m going to embrace the withdrawal from urgency. From my family to yours, Happy Holidays!