How Important Is It for a Company Founder to Raise His Head?

I feel that the most important decisions I’ve made came to me when I wasn’t really busy — weekends, vacations, that sort of thing. The chores and my 70-hour workweek simply put me into a tactical mode, whereas any sort of downtime would open up an opportunity for strategic thinking.

I don’t presume to be unique, rather I believe that this applies to most founders. Remember when you last took a proper vacation and got completely off the grid? Does it seem like “never”? If so, try what worked for me — get yourself to a place where the Internet simply doesn’t exist. Yes, there is Gmail Offline. Yes, you can write an article for your blog without being connected to the almighty Web (that’s exactly what I’m doing right now). There are lots of things you can do offline, but your options are still going to be fairly limited. My eye-opening experience was climbing Mount Elbrus, an 18,500 ft. mountain in Europe, with a dear friend and former colleague of mine. 7 days of pure silence, emptiness, and calmness in freezing temperatures and harsh winds. So much time to think. So many good ideas came out of this great trip.

I came up with a plan for expanding our engineering office when I was “underloaded”, working out of Distillery’s RU offices. I was bored to death in Belarus. Our company was growing at a steady pace, the proper structure was built, the management was pretty much independent and required very little guidance. An international expansion to California became the result of that boredom. Today, no matter if I am overloaded with work to the point where someone needs to clone me, I still try to set aside an hour or two every other week, when I simply don’t do any work. No emails, no meetings, my laptop is closed and my cell phone shows Airplane Mode: On. I raise my head and ponder whether I’m doing everything possible to make the company better. Am I helping my partners and employees do their best as well? I use this hour as my own mini-session for strategic planning. It is my time to raise my head and think big.

I’m curious how other founders and CEOs approach this, especially when in a time-crunch.