Where Is Your Beach? Finding Your North Star Before the Noise Takes Over
Earlier this week, I wrote about returning to a beach that means something very different to me today than it did a year ago. A year ago, I sat there thinking about technology, leadership, work, family, and what I believed we were losing as the world became increasingly digital. I started thinking about being human again. Happy hours. Conversations around the coffee machine. Taking a walk without an agenda. Sitting with someone without checking a phone. Creating enough quiet in our lives to actually think.
Those thoughts eventually became three books. But returning to that beach made me realize something I hadn’t completely understood when I started writing them: the beach was never really about the beach. It was about finding a place where the noise became quiet enough for me to hear myself again.
Leaders carry a lot. We carry responsibility for our people, revenue numbers, transformation programs, customer expectations, budgets, deadlines, and increasingly enormous expectations around AI. Then we go home and carry the responsibilities waiting for us there. Somewhere along the way, we can become very good at taking care of everything except ourselves.
I was reminded of that while reading a CIO article this week about a problem we don’t talk about nearly enough: leadership burnout. It explored technology executives who are exhausted but reluctant to admit they’re struggling or ask for help. I understand why. Leadership has traditionally rewarded the person who has the answer. We’re supposed to know what to do. We’re supposed to remain calm, take the call, solve the problem, support everyone else, and keep moving.
But what happens when constantly moving becomes part of the problem?
I’ve written the sentence “Speed without direction is just noise” many times. I originally thought about it largely in the context of technology. Cloud made us faster. Automation made us faster. AI is making us exponentially faster. But I’ve come to realize that the same principle applies to people.
A full calendar doesn’t necessarily mean we’re moving toward something. An inbox at zero doesn’t mean we’re focused. Back-to-back meetings don’t necessarily mean we’re leading. Being available every waking hour certainly doesn’t mean we’re present. Sometimes we’re simply moving very quickly.
That’s why we need a North Star. And I’m not talking about the company’s North Star, this quarter’s target, or the transformation roadmap. I’m talking about our own. What matters to me? Who matters to me? What am I building? Who am I becoming? Does the way I’m spending my time actually point in that direction?
Those are much harder questions than asking what’s next on the calendar.
That’s where the beach comes in. I think everyone needs one, and it doesn’t have to be Aruba. Your beach might be the first cup of coffee in the morning before anyone else wakes up. It might be a walk, a workout, a chair on your back porch, dinner with friends, happy hour, or a conversation around the coffee machine that has absolutely nothing to do with the project everyone is working on.
Your beach is wherever you can temporarily put down the roles you carry, executive, employee, parent, spouse, leader, problem solver—and simply be human. There’s no productivity metric. Nothing to optimize. No deliverable. Just enough space to hear yourself think.
We’re entering an extraordinary period. AI is going to allow us to accomplish things faster than we ever imagined, and I believe that’s incredibly exciting. But I also believe the organizations that thrive in this next era won’t simply be the ones with the fastest technology. They’ll be the ones that remember there are human beings operating it.
That includes the people at the top.
Leaders need permission to ask for help. They need friendships. They need conversations without an agenda. They need time away. They need places where nobody needs them to have the answer. They need the opportunity to be human first. And sometimes leadership means recognizing that need in ourselves before we can create it for anyone else.
So I’m ending this week with a different kind of leadership question. Not what do you need to accomplish next week? Not what can you optimize? Not how are you going to use AI to move faster?
Where is your beach?
Where is the place where the noise disappears long enough for you to remember what matters? Where can you hear your own thoughts instead of everyone else’s expectations? Where do you reconnect with your North Star?
Find that place. Protect it. Go there occasionally.
Because the world isn’t going to get slower.
Sometimes we have to.