ISSUE 82
15 APRIL 2026 | READ ONLINE
Hi Reader,
In 10 days, I walk into the first of three major speaking engagements for April.
There are workbooks going to the printer. Slide decks to wrap up. Speaker dinners I haven’t fully thought about yet. That nervousness of wondering whether I’ll show up the way people are expecting.
So yesterday, I took the day off.
Not because everything was done. It wasn’t. Not because someone told me to. Nobody did.
My body just stopped. It signaled clearly enough that I listened.
Here’s what I spent the afternoon thinking about.
Is this hibernation? Or is this preparation?
They look identical from the outside. Both involve going quiet. Both involve pulling back. But they come from completely different places.
Hibernation is survival. The body conserving what it has because there isn’t enough. Shutting down to get through.
Preparation is strategic. The body consolidating what it’s already built so it can perform, not just scrape by.
I think what happened yesterday was the second one.
There’s a phenomenon in migration biology called Zugunruhe.
It describes the restless, pre-migratory state birds enter before a major journey. They don’t just take off. They eat more. They sleep more. They go quiet in some ways while building resources in others. They aren’t avoiding the journey. They are loading up for it.
I think high-performers do something similar before high-stakes moments. The instinct to step back isn’t a failure of nerve. It’s the system preparing.
Here’s what the research supports.
The research comes from sports science, but the mechanism is the same. Elite athletes deliberately reduce their training load in the final days before a major competition. Not because they’re done preparing, but because the body needs time to convert accumulated work into peak performance. Studies consistently show that athletes who taper before major events outperform those who train all the way through.
Cognitive science tells a similar story. Sustained mental effort depletes the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for judgment, emotional regulation, and keeping your presence of mind in a room full of expectations (Pessiglione et al. 2025).
The insight isn’t that rest matters. You already know that.
The insight is that the discomfort of resting before something big is not a sign that something is wrong. It is a sign that you are taking the thing seriously.
Pressure you care about produces this exact feeling.
After all, you don’t get nervous about things that don’t matter.
What I notice in myself, and in the leaders I coach, is that anxiety before big moments often masquerades as productivity. We stay busy because busy feels like readiness. But there’s a difference between preparation and agitation. One builds capacity. One depletes it.
The question worth sitting with is this: what does readiness actually look like for you, right now?
Yesterday, for me, readiness looked like not working.
Today, it looks like sending workbooks to the printer and making sure the slides look good.
Both belong to the same thing.
Two options for this week.
Option A: Find your version of Zugunruhe
If something significant is coming for you, a presentation, a conversation, a decision, ask yourself: what would it look like to actually prepare for it rather than just stay busy around it?
Not the task list. The internal preparation. What does the version of you who needs to show up actually need from you right now?
Do that thing this week.
Option B: Name the pressure out loud
Most of us carry performance pressure without naming it. We feel vaguely anxious and work harder.
This week, finish this sentence in writing: “The real fear here is ________.”
Don’t solve it. Just name it. You’ll find that clarity arrives faster than you expect.
See you next week,
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