Sometimes the Fastest Way Forward Is to Step Back

Good morning gentlemen,

I got home from Vegas on Sunday. The plan was simple enough: land around midnight, get home, sleep, recover.

Reality had other ideas.

I walked in the door around 2:30 in the morning. By the time I got settled and actually got to bed, it was 3:30. Then at 8:00 a.m., my eyes popped open because classes still needed to be taught. Life doesn’t always care that you’re tired.

From there, it was unpack from Vegas, repack for Mexico, and catch a 6:00 a.m. flight the next morning.

And somewhere in all of this, my brain decided this was also the perfect time to solve the newsletter template issue.

I had become determined. I kept staring at it. Pushing harder. Trying different fixes. Using AI to help me troubleshoot. But nothing clicked.

Then I finally did something that I’m not naturally very good at. I stopped. Not forever. Not dramatically. I just loosened my grip.

I stopped telling myself there was only one way to solve it. I stopped assuming I had already thought of every option. I told my brain to widen the field and consider possibilities I hadn’t considered yet.

And then something funny happened. The right words showed up.

I gave AI a different prompt. Not a smarter prompt. Not a more technical prompt. Just a better question. Within minutes, the solution appeared.

The template is back.

What struck me wasn’t that AI solved the problem. It was that I couldn’t see the solution until I gave myself room to think differently.

Sometimes resilience isn’t grinding harder. Sometimes resilience is stepping back. Sometimes grace looks like admitting your brain is tired. Sometimes productivity looks suspiciously like taking a walk, sleeping an extra hour, changing the question, or deciding you don’t have to solve everything immediately.

If things are not flowing for you right now, maybe the answer isn’t more force. Maybe it’s permission. Permission to rest. Permission to widen the possibilities. Permission to trust that your brain is still working even when it feels stuck.

Give yourself a little time. Step back. Open the window and then come back and see what appears. You might discover the thing you needed wasn’t more effort.

You might discover you already had the answer waiting for you to get out of your own way.