\n\t\t Entrepreneur \t<\/p>\n
I was CTO at Automation Anywhere when Covid shut everything down. Our cloud product demand surged 600% almost overnight. Businesses suddenly discovered their employees weren\u2019t going back to the office for months \u2014 maybe longer \u2014 and they needed automation to survive. This wasn\u2019t a scenario anyone had planned for. There was no playbook.<\/p>\n
My investors had one natural fear: Would the crisis kill employee productivity? Would we let our customers down? Would the business weather the storm?<\/p>\n
Most leaders would have required 80-hour workweeks. We did the opposite.<\/p>\n
I told my team to take walks. Read a book. Learn something new. Play a sport, go for a hike \u2014 whatever helped them step away from their screens. It worked. We didn\u2019t just survive the storm; we ran faster than ever.<\/p>\n
Related: To Improve Productivity, Tell Your Team to Go Take a Hike<\/b><\/p>\nThe trust realization<\/h2>\n
I learned something in those first chaotic weeks. We didn\u2019t have a motivation issue. In spite of the virus, in spite of all the uncertainty, employees wanted to keep working \u2014 to maintain their work relationships. People longed to do something meaningful when everything else felt hopeless and out of their control.<\/p>\n
While motivation wasn\u2019t the challenge, creating a clear understanding of what was most important and developing the tools and culture necessary to foster trust was. So that\u2019s what we focused on. Not micromanaging. Not surveillance. Not having to check in every hour. Trust.<\/p>\n
The result? Employees were grateful for the autonomy. And grateful employees work harder not because they\u2019re being forced to, but because they genuinely want to.<\/p>\n
As it turned out, there was science behind what felt like instinct at the time. Researchers at San Francisco State University have discovered that people who regularly participate in non-work-related activities (creative hobbies, sports, etc.) that require the participant to become fully absorbed are likely to perform 15-30% better on performance evaluations than those who don\u2019t.<\/p>\n
Personally, I have experienced this throughout my career, from managing 10,000 engineers at Ericsson to leading Sauce Labs as CEO, and I have always found that stress is best managed when you allow yourself to take a figurative step back and evaluate the situation objectively.<\/p>\n
To me, finding time to do something that requires your full attention, such as playing squash, is the best way to allow your mind to detach and return to the problem at hand with objectivity.<\/p>\n
For larger, more complex problems, I use walking. Typically 10 miles. Walking helps to corral your thoughts and provides a structure for evaluating them. There is something about moving physically and having open space that seems to unlock clarity.<\/p>\n
It was during one of these 10-mile hikes that I made one of the most critical strategic decisions for Sauce Labs \u2014 to go all-in on AI-based test authoring and intelligence for large engineering teams. This was a fundamental bet on what our customers needed and where the market would go.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t an incremental improvement. It was a tremendous leap of faith that resulted in immediate product-market fit and real customer excitement. It didn\u2019t come from a boardroom. It came from a trail.<\/p>\n
Related: 3 Ways to Get Employees to Actually Take a Break<\/b><\/p>\nEat the frog first<\/h2>\n
There is a fine line here. I\u2019m not suggesting you avoid hard work. In fact, quite the opposite.<\/p>\n
My strategy is to \u201ceat the frog first.\u201d Identify the task you dread the most each day \u2014 the one you\u2019re most tempted to delay \u2014 and knock it out early. Don\u2019t let it sit on your to-do list, draining mental energy.<\/p>\n
When you do the hardest thing first, you build momentum. You create good energy that will carry you through the remaining work.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the trick: After you eat the frog, go take a walk. Play a game. Do whatever you want. The cumulative effect of taking short breaks every day adds up to sustained performance over time.<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t about being lazy; it\u2019s about being human. We aren\u2019t machines. When we attempt to function like machines \u2014 processing tasks continuously without rest \u2014 we fail. Our decisions get worse. We burn out.<\/p>\n
Related: The Easiest Thing I Did to Get Promoted Quickly at Google and Meta Was to \u2018Eat the Frog\u2019 For My Boss<\/b><\/p>\nThe one framework that has lasted through six career transitions<\/h2>\n
Throughout my career, I\u2019ve been an engineer, a startup founder, a CTO\/CPO at several companies, and now I\u2019m a CEO. Each transition required learning a whole new set of skills, while unlearning old habits that served me so well in the past.<\/p>\n
The only constant I\u2019ve maintained is spending 30 minutes per day doing something unrelated to technology \u2014 sometimes that\u2019s squash, sometimes it\u2019s a long walk, and sometimes it\u2019s simply reading about topics unrelated to software.<\/p>\n
Investing in this area has value. It doesn\u2019t waste time. It keeps your thinking fresh when everything else about your job is pushing you toward narrow focus and tunnel vision. You need the ability to step back and look at things clearly.<\/p>\n
Trust your people. Eat the frog first. Then, go take a walk.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n