The Reality Gap

I posted yesterday about the relentless pace of AI and the pressure to keep up. In this market, if you blink, you feel like you are obsolete.

As a consultant, that fear is multiplied. The equation is brutal: Time not working equals money not earning.

So you run faster. You absorb the low-level exhaustion that creeps up on you until it feels normal. You convince yourself that the strategy deck, the pipeline anxiety, and the client fire-drill are matters of life and death.

They feel real. But they are not “Real World” real.

I am reminded of a day years ago. My wife was training to be a nurse. I came home, absolutely wired, carrying the weight of the world because of some crisis at the office. I vented. I was stressed. I treated my problems like they were the centre of the universe.

Then I asked about her day.

She didn’t talk about spreadsheets or deadlines. She told me she had spent the afternoon ballroom dancing with a 90-year-old man in a care home. A man whose wife had died years ago, and for whom that dance was likely the first moment of genuine joy he had felt in ages.

It stopped me in my tracks.

At my absolute best that day, I had helped a corporation sell more fizzy drinks. At her absolute best, she had touched a human soul.

The Hack:

We get trapped in the “Business Real” - a hermetically sealed bubble where urgent Slacks are the be all and end all. But you cannot solve complex problems if you never leave that bubble.

You need to step out into the “Actual Real.”

Taking a break isn’t just about “wellness” or recharging your batteries so you can bill more hours next week. It is about recalibrating your definition of importance.

If you don’t step away, you lose the ability to tell the difference between a bad quarter and a bad life. And once you lose that perspective, you aren’t a strategist anymore. You are just a machine that is running out of fuel.

Go find your version of ballroom dancing. The fizzy drinks will still be there on Monday.

P.S. I’m off to enjoy a well-earned half term break with the wife and kids now. Back soon!