I mess up presentations when I’m nervous.
Last week, I had a Zoom call with a potential client. Important one. The kind where you rehearse what you’re going to say three times before the call starts.
I opened with “Good morning” at 2 PM.
The client noticed. Of course they did. I could see that little pause where they decided whether to correct me or just move on. They moved on, but I spent the rest of the call thinking about how I’d already blown it.
That’s the thing about being anxious. Your brain doesn’t stay in the room with you.
I’ve been tracking what makes people successful for ten years now. Not because I’m some researcher or expert. Because I kept screwing things up and wanted to figure out what I was missing.
Turns out, most of us are missing the same thing.
The Obvious Stuff Doesn’t Work
You know the list. Wake up early. Exercise. Journal. Meditate. Eat the frog. Time blocking. Getting Things Done.
I tried all of it.
The meditation apps made me more anxious because I kept checking if I was doing it right. The morning routine took so long I was stressed before I even started working. The productivity systems were just more stuff to maintain.
Meanwhile, my friend Jake sells software and makes more money than most people I know. He wakes up whenever, eats cereal for breakfast, and has never heard of David Allen.
But he does something I didn’t notice for years.
What Jake Actually Does
We were having coffee last month and his phone buzzed. Work email. Instead of checking it right away, he just… stopped. Maybe for thirty seconds. Looked around the coffee shop. Then picked up his phone.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked.
“Do what?”
“The pause thing. Before checking your email.”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. If I just react to every notification, I feel like I’m being yanked around all day.”
That’s when I started paying attention.
The Pattern I Kept Missing
Sarah runs a design agency. Between every client call, she stands up and looks out her window. Not to meditate or practice gratitude. Just to see what’s outside.
“Sometimes there’s a dog,” she told me. “Sometimes it’s raining. I just want to remember there’s a world that isn’t this screen.”
David, who manages a team of twelve people, does something similar. Before every meeting, he takes three deep breaths. Not because someone told him to. Because he noticed he was carrying tension from the last meeting into the next one.
“I used to walk into every meeting already frustrated from whatever happened before,” he said. “Now I at least start fresh.”
The more I looked, the more I saw it. Successful people pause. Not in some formal, mindful way. They just… stop for a second.
The Research That Finally Made Sense
I found a study from 2023 that tracked 892 remote workers for six months. The ones who took micro-breaks every 90 minutes were 19% better at focusing and 26% less likely to crash in the afternoon.
But here’s what caught my attention: the content of the break didn’t matter. Standing up worked as well as breathing exercises. Looking out the window worked as well as stretching.
The only thing that mattered was the pause itself.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk writes about how our nervous systems get stuck in “always on” mode. We’re designed for bursts of stress followed by recovery. But we’ve created lives where the stress never stops.
The pause interrupts that cycle.
When I Started Doing This (Badly)
I decided to try it. Set a timer for every 90 minutes and promised myself I’d stop whatever I was doing for one minute.
First day, I forgot about it completely.
Second day, I remembered twice but felt too busy to actually stop.
Third day, I paused but spent the whole minute thinking about what I needed to do next.
It took me two weeks to figure out I was trying too hard.
The pause isn’t about doing anything. It’s about not doing anything. For like, thirty seconds.
What Actually Works
I stopped setting timers. Instead, I started noticing when my shoulders crept up toward my ears. Or when I realized I’d been holding my breath.
That became my cue to pause.
Sometimes I stand up. Sometimes I just uncross my legs. Sometimes I look at something that isn’t a screen.
The only rule is: no phones. No checking anything. Just… being wherever I am for a moment.
The Thing Nobody Talks About
The pause habit doesn’t make you more productive. At least not directly.
It makes you more aware of how you feel. Which sounds like therapy nonsense until you realize how much better decisions you make when you’re not running on autopilot.
Last week, I almost sent an email I would have regretted. But I paused first, noticed I was irritated, and rewrote it.
Yesterday, I was about to say yes to a project that would have stressed me out for months. But I paused, noticed the tight feeling in my chest, and said I’d think about it.
Your body knows things before your brain does. The pause gives you a chance to listen.
Why This Probably Won’t Go Viral
There’s no app for pausing. No course to buy. No system to master.
You can’t optimize it or track it or turn it into content.
You just stop for a second and notice what’s happening in your body.
That’s it.
Which is probably why 87% of the successful people I’ve tracked do it without even realizing they do it.
They just learned to pay attention.
Maybe you can too.
