How to Give Yourself More Space to Think

We live in a work world obsessed with what we in our research call doing mode — setting goals, forming to-do lists, and checking items off, busily. We talk incessantly about short-term, tangible targets that are easy to measure in our jobs, and our managers tacitly and explicitly encourage us to pay most if not all of our attention to them. And to be sure, “getting stuff done” is necessary for corporate survival.

However, as organizational researchers and advisors, we believe this doing mode is getting out of hand. In our ongoing survey, 39% of over 1,500 global, cross-sector, mid and senior managers say they are unable to pause during the day to reflect on how to plan and prioritize, 59% describe meetings as “rushed,” 37% describe them as “distracted,” and 29% feel unable to take the time needed to consider and respond to what others say.

When we operate only in doing mode, we risk failing to grasp the big challenges and opportunities in front of us, damaging our relationships, and missing the joy that makes life and work worthwhile. Think back to your most important moments, memories, and realizations — many of them likely came not in times of relentless doing, but in the in-between spaces.

Last year, one of our research participants, Anne, a senior manager in an international charity, reported finishing 2023 overwhelmed at work. She’d been saying “yes” to too many requests, failing to notice she was beyond what she could deal with. Her constant doing mode had resulted in her having a very short fuse with both colleagues and family. Her mediocre performance review stated she needed to step back, prioritize better, and build better stakeholder relationships.

Ultimately, for both our well-being and our performance as leaders, we need to habitually pause from our frenetic doing. But, critically, this is not simply a matter of carving out more time: Pausing calls for engaging a different kind of attention. Our research with hundreds of employees, managers and experts over the last year and a half has explored what we call spacious mode, in which attention becomes expansive and unhurried.

In spacious mode, the shoulds and musts of doing mode are put on the backburner. This allows us to widen our view, engage with curiosity, encounter what is not readily measurable or predictable, and notice and enjoy interdependencies and relationships. New insights become possible and we are able to better engage with the complexity of our wicked challenges — and life and work regain their color. Thus spacious mode is just as critical as doing mode.

But even when we know this, many of us dare not pause. Organizations are so set up to incentivize doing mode that they end up actively discouraging spacious mode. As Paula, an operations manager in the U.S. told us, “It’s scary for many people to pause…Who has ever been praised for slowing down?” And even when we try to do it, many of us fall back into the same patterns. As she began 2024, Anne tried to better manage her time and take more frequent breaks, but when she did, she just continued to ruminate on her to-do list and ended up feeling guilty.

So, how do you make a habit of pausing — without having even less time to tackle your to-do list, losing your job, or derailing your career? Our research and experience suggest the following tactics.

Give Yourself Permission First

Although we tend to instinctively blame those in charge for trapping us in doing mode, we are often our own worst taskmasters. So, it’s up to you to start by becoming truly open to spacious mode.

Many of us have been brought up in cultures that have drilled into us the need to keep busy and which have rewarded us according to the level of our visible activity. And so, we tie our self-worth to our busyness. A useful first step to shift this mindset is to clearly understand the benefits of the spacious mode and the risks of over-doing doing mode, because if we don’t believe in its value, no amount of new year’s resolutions will make a difference.

What’s more, while we may say we crave downtime and may think pausing sounds blissful, when we are presented with the opportunity many of us actively avoid expanding our attention. According to our research, that’s because many of us are worried about what we will notice when we put down our to-do list. What if we realize we are doing the wrong things? Or decide that the choices we have made and are making are wrong? It can be easier to keep paying attention to the problems we know instead of venturing into the unknown.

So, pausing requires a leap of faith. It takes courage to make it — but focusing on the costs of not making the leap can help. Although Anne at first found spacious mode hard to access, she stuck with it; her determination strengthened as she listened to the impact that her busyness had on others .

Train Your Mind to Be More Spacious

In her previous research, Megan has found that around 10 minutes of regular mindfulness practice a day can, over time, develop a capacity to pay attention differently. The goal is to create a habitual space between stimulus and response. In doing mode, we respond quickly, often driven by stress and anxiety. In spacious mode, the pause before a response allows us to see multiple possible choices and to make wiser decisions.

A quick, more immediate way to disrupt the doing mode and shift to spacious attention is to tune into your body sensations. Briefly pausing for a few seconds to attend to what you feel in your feet or your hands, noticing your body’s contact with the chair, or exploring where you sense your breath most vividly can be just enough to interrupt doing mode.

During our research we spoke to Saul, the CEO of a construction company, who began to use a quick body scan before challenging conversations. Saul’s practice enabled him to attend fully to the person he was meeting — doing mode keeps us focused on what others can do for us, while spacious mode helps us attend to relationships for their own sake. Over time, Saul’s relationships at work improved and his need to have difficult conversations diminished.

Make It Safer

If you are in an organization that is firmly in doing mode, announcing that you plan to spend part of each day pausing may not be the best career move. Instead, employ what one of our research participants called guerilla spaciousness — trying, at least initially, to subtly change small habits to shift into spacious mode in such a way that you don’t trigger your supervisor or others to question what you’re doing.

For example:

• Ask bigger questions. Step back and ask broad questions of yourself and others, such as “What have I learned about this relationship that can help me to speak up skillfully?” “How would the customer challenge us if they were sat with us in this meeting?” or “What have we not talked about that would help us work together even better?” These questions are often seen as legitimate within existing workplace culture and can also lead you towards more spacious attention and more critical thinking, and away from automatic doing.

• Change your environment. For a meeting, how about a walk and talk? What about meeting offsite? You can keep your appointments but open yourself to new experiences at the same time. If you’re on your own, get outside, interact with the natural environment, or lift your gaze to the horizon just for a few moments every hour. For example, one of our interviewees who worked in Mumbai would find one of the city’s green spaces from time to time, which was all she needed to give herself a refreshing pause in the middle of a workday. A quick break doesn’t arouse negative attention, and can be just enough to enable you to shift your mindset.

• Schedule pauses. Putting pauses into your calendar — with a specific intention to pay attention differently — and publicizing them as such can help bring others on board. One senior leader we interviewed blocked out the last Tuesday of every month and labelled it “FAMT.” Everyone assumed this was some sort of management team (MT) meeting, but it actually meant a less polite version of “No to All Management Team Meetings.” (This person eventually told their manager what the acronym stood for; the manager found it hilarious and thoroughly supported the initiative.) There are also other ways to use your calendar to give you time for pauses that may not set off alarm bells — scheduling 45-minute meetings rather than hourlong ones, for example, or putting in blocks of time with the name of the project you are working on.

Keep Good Company

While you probably can’t choose your work colleagues, you can still take steps to spend more time with people and groups that can help you reflect and expand your perceptions — and less time with those that don’t. Step away from social media platforms that feel locked into a single world view, contract with a coach or mentor who can help you find regular reflective time, decline to go to lunch with the colleague who persistently blames and complains, and reach out to people who have interesting and different views.

In 2020, during Covid-19 lockdown, coach Brigid Russell and clinical psychologist Charlie Jones began Spaces for Listening: virtual meetings of just under an hour which bring together no more than eight individuals who are often strangers. The meetings are lightly structured and allow participants to check in with each other and listen deeply to and alongside others. They are often experienced as profound for those who attend (as Megan can attest). This accessible simplicity of pausing with others who are deeply supportive and non-judgmental can lead us to direct our attention differently.

A Call to Pause

Pausing can seem like a luxury — but it’s not. It’s a different, critical kind of work, one that allows us to attend to one another and the world around us. And while many of us are caught in systems which are firmly in the grip of busyness, we do all have some level of agency to pause. That pausing might even give permission for others to do the same, which is, in our mind, an increasingly critical act of leadership.

Copyright 2025 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate.

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