I could see it in his eyes; he looked stretched thin.

He was doing a good job hiding from the rest of the world but he wasn’t going to fool me.

“You seem stressed,” I said.

He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window with his hands on his head, let out a big sigh and replied “I’ve got 5 massive projects and changes hitting all at once. It’s a lot. I just need to bear down and push through it”

He was used to dealing with stress and pressure. He knew how to navigate change. That’s just a day in the life of a leader running a $20M+ business and responsible for over 150 people.

But we’d been through this before. When life got stressful, he went into overdrive.

I asked, “what version of you are your family and your leadership team getting right now?”

He told me he felt like he was on edge, wound up, and short-fused in his interactions with his team and at home. The night before he’d snapped at one of his kids for something that wasn’t even a big deal.

After a couple more questions it became clear that he’d squeezed out parts of his routine that kept him grounded throughout his day. You know, the stuff that gets pushed aside when we feel like we’ve got way too much to do in too little time.

I looked him straight in the eyes and firmly but lovingly told him:

“Luke, the most valuable asset you bring to your family and your leaders is not your productivity, it’s your presence.

Yes, you have a ton on your plate and it needs to get done, but you’re not intentionally making space to think, to unwind, to align your heart to the Lord.

You’ve become a stripped version of yourself; the version of you that is highly productive, task driven, achievement minded, goal-oriented, but that version of you robs everyone around you of the most powerful part of you; your HEART…”

Presence, not pressure, is what drives results.

It’s the reason Abraham Lincoln said if he had 6hrs to chop a tree down, he’d spend 4hrs sharpening the ax. But how do we create presence when we constantly are feeling pressure?

A 3,000 Year-Old Proven Strategy to Help:

It’s all but forgotten in today’s productivity-obsessed culture but for thousands of years, people in the Jewish and Christian faiths practiced something called the “Daily Offices”.

These were set times to pause throughout the day and re-center yourself (morning, midday, evening, and night). Their purpose was to weave prayer and God’s Word into the rhythm of daily life, keeping time itself oriented around God rather than busyness or work.

Sometimes even a few minutes of margin might seem like something you can’t afford, but it’s when life and work are most demanding that pausing, even if only for a few minutes, becomes critical.

Start small…

• Pre-determine a time in the middle of your day where you will have a single 5min “Daily Office”. It doesn’t have to be the same time every day.
• Might be in the car, might be at lunch, or perhaps you need to end a meeting 5min early so you have an intentional gap.

Use that time to recalibrate your heart and mind back to what matters. THEN you’ll be able to lead from presence, not productivity or pressure.