My idea of a holiday is clearly defined: spa, excellent service, a good wine. All understated, but enjoyed.
My sons had other plans for my birthday. Their present: four days of hiking in Mallorca. Back to basics.
A small rucksack. Eight hours of walking a day. Nights in the most basic youth hostels.
The reality: if you sleep here, you make your own bed.
So there I was, managing partner of an executive search boutique, standing in front of a scratchy sheet and realising that strategic foresight is no use whatsoever against the pitfalls of a bunk bed. While my boys were already grinning into their pillows, I was still wrestling with the geometry of the bedding.
Dinner? No sommelier. Just a hearty stew.
And honestly, with 15 kilometres in your legs, that stew tastes better than any five-star menu.
What this “detox” meant to me as an entrepreneur:
1. Freedom through travelling light
When you only carry what fits in your rucksack, the “urgent” business problems shrink to the size of ants. In management, we often carry far too much mental baggage around.
2. The luxury of silence
The first few hours without a signal feel like withdrawal. Your thumb twitches towards the phone: phantom pain. But then there’s room for real conversations with my sons, without the digital background noise.
3. Real recovery means going fully offline
Being reachable all the time doesn’t make us more efficient; it makes us more driven. The radio silence in the mountains sharpened my focus again.
My conclusion:
those days didn’t solve a single operational problem. But they put things back into perspective. I came back without a signal, but with a clarity no spa resort in the world can offer.
Now I’m back in business, where leadership in a crisis is what counts. But I’m taking the taste of that simple stew and the calm of the mountains with me into the next meetings.
When did you last consciously switch off?
