Please forward this to a high-impact leader who needs the energy edge. If this was forwarded to you, get plugged in here.

⚡ QUICK SPIN:

Here’s what no productivity tool will tell you:

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This past week, our family has been road-tripping our way through LA, Tahoe, Napa, and San Francisco.
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No agenda.

No hustle.

No checking in.

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And somewhere between the trees and the coastlines, I stopped trying to solve everything.​
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And that’s exactly when it all clicked.

🛠️ MY TURN:

We often assume insight comes from “doing the work.”

What I’ve learned?

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​Real insight shows up when you step away from the work.

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Some of the best ideas I’ve ever had:

• Emerged while hiking virtually alone in Kauai
• Showed up on the back deck of a rental house in New Zealand
• Hit me while walking to breakfast in Napa this week, thinking about a business challenge I hadn’t even meant to solve

It’s not magic. It’s neuroscience.

🧠 WHAT THE SCIENCE SAYS:

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🧠 Your brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), the part responsible for insight, creativity, and long-range decision-making, only activates when your mind is at rest

📉 Constant context switching kills it

🧘‍♂️ Nature, walking, silence, and unstructured time fuel it — Harvard Business Review, 2021

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Translation?

You won’t think your way into your next big move.

You have to walk into it, breathe into it, unplug into it.

⚙️ WHAT SURFACED FOR ME:

So far, this trip has given me…

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✔️ A new coaching framework (that was not on the whiteboard last month)

✔️ A story I’ll use in my next keynote

✔️ Emotional closure on something I’ve been dragging too long

✔️ A clearer vision of what rested leadership looks like for my family and my clients

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None of it came through effort.

It came through release.

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🤗 YOUR TURN:

• When did your last real insight arrive, and what state were you in?
• What decision have you been trying to grind through instead of stepping back from?
• If ideas come in the silence…how are you protecting the silence?

👊 Let’s Talk

You don’t need another brainstorm.

You need space for the answer to arrive.

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And if you’re leading something big (or building something bold), I promise you, clarity is your most valuable asset.
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Let’s build your next breakthrough from the inside out.

👉 adamwbarney.com​

Cheers, Adam

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