I once watched a Korean Olympic archer on television — his stance steady, eyes locked on the target.
What struck me wasn’t the moment he released the arrow, but what came before: that breathless pause as he drew the bowstring back, holding it taut just a second longer than seemed necessary.
Later, I learned this wasn’t hesitation. It was part of the shot. The arrow’s power came not just from the release, but from that suspended moment of perfect tension.
You see, we live in a world that worships at the altar of constant motion. Our phones buzz with productivity apps and notification pings, our society praises “hustle culture,” and we wear our exhaustion like badges of honour.
I know this dance well — there was a time in my early career when I measured my worth by how few hours I slept and how many meetings I could cram into a day. The headaches and sluggishness that followed were my body’s way of sounding the alarm, though I was too busy to listen at first. It took a stern warning from my doctor to realise I’d been treating myself like a perpetual machine that never needed maintenance.
The truth is, we’ve fundamentally misunderstood what it means to pause. We see it as empty space—wasted time between bursts of productivity—when in reality, it’s where the magic happens.
Think of the way a durian tree rests between fruitings, or how the best nasi lemak requires the rice to soak before steaming. These aren’t interruptions to the process; they are the process.
Consider how we approach problem-solving. How often have you wrestled with a question or life problem late into the night, only to have the solution appear the next morning in the shower?
That’s not coincidence — it’s your brain finally being allowed to do its best work (some say it’s your subconscious part of your brain that solved it, but let’s not get into that today). The spaces between our efforts are where connections form, where creativity sparks.
Yet we resist these pauses fiercely. There’s the guilt—that nagging voice whispering “you should be doing more.” There’s the fear—that if we stop, even for a moment, we’ll fall hopelessly behind.
But this is like an archer refusing to draw their bow properly for fear of wasting time. The power was always in the pullback.
Building pauses into our lives requires intention. It might mean stepping outside between meetings to feel the sun on your face and breathe deeply—inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for six. When I’m stuck on a complex problem, I’ve learned to switch to something seemingly unrelated—maybe writing an outline for my next article based on a thought I had during my run the previous weekend, crafting a prompt for an artificial intelligence (AI) tool to produce a song (yes, there is such a thing), or simply looking out the window of my office.
These aren’t distractions, but portals to new ways of thinking.
The most radical pause I’ve implemented is a quarterly day of complete disconnection—no emails, no news, just a notebook and my thoughts.
It is in these quiet spaces that my best ideas emerge, fully formed like butterflies from cocoons. At first, it felt self-indulgent. Now I recognise it as the most productive thing I do.
What we’re talking about here isn’t laziness or lack of ambition. It’s the wisdom to understand that all living things operate in rhythms—expansion and contraction, effort and recovery. I remembered my old friend Norazlisham, who shared the same birthday as me (just the date, not the year), saying that in silat, the most powerful strikes come after moments of perfect stillness. The pause isn’t the enemy of productivity; it’s its secret weapon.
So this week, I challenge you to experiment with intentional pauses. Not when you’re already exhausted, but before you need them. Notice how the quality of your work changes when you allow for breathing room. Observe how solutions emerge when you stop chasing them so desperately.
Rumi once wrote that “sometimes silence is the most powerful scream.” In a world that never stops shouting, perhaps our most revolutionary act is the courage to be still.
To draw back like the archer, to feel the tension of potential, and then, only then;
To release.
The views expressed here are the personal opinion of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of Twentytwo13.