Leaders need to rediscover the lost art of recovery

Open any travel magazine right now and you’ll find the same language repeated: remote getaways, digital detox, secluded retreats, off-the-grid experiences. It’s as if isolation itself has become aspirational.

In a world where connection is constant, disconnection has become the ultimate luxury.

We’re told that “true” relaxation is found where there’s no signal, where no one can reach us, where the Wi-Fi password is a handwritten secret. The travel industry has rebranded solitude as sophistication. But what’s really going on here?

The noise we can’t escape

Life has never been louder. Every hour brings new pings, posts, and prompts demanding attention. Our work follows us home, our social lives happen in group chats, and our downtime is tracked by algorithms.

So when people crave remoteness, they’re not necessarily after wilderness. They're looking for silence, the kind that isn’t just acoustic, but psychological.

They want a pause in the relentless performance of modern life. The constant need to show up, contribute, engage, innovate. The “off-grid” experience isn’t about remoteness at all. It’s about recovery.

Innovation as pressure

Elisa Pratt, MA, CAE, CVF and I often discuss this on the Association Transformation podcast. Like most professional sectors, the membership and association world is caught in a loop of relentless innovation. Everyone is under pressure to reinvent, reimagine, and disrupt.

The mantra seems to be: “If you’re not evolving, you’re irrelevant.”

The irony is that in chasing creativity, we’ve built cultures that leave no space for it. Innovation needs time, reflection, and curiosity, none of which thrive under constant urgency. Leaders talk about blue-sky thinking while scheduling it into a 30-minute Teams call between budget meetings.

The result? Creative exhaustion. Organisational burnout disguised as progress.

The leadership parallel

That’s why the travel trend resonates so deeply with leadership psychology. The “off-grid” fantasy is a mirror for professional life.

When leaders fantasise about escaping to the wilderness, it’s often because their daily existence feels just as demanding as an expedition, only with fewer sunsets and more emails. They’re expected to be permanently online, constantly insightful, endlessly strategic, and unflappably composed; but they already know that nobody is creative when they’re crowded.

Good leadership, like good rest, requires distance. Stepping away from the noise isn’t indulgence; it’s maintenance. A boardroom that never pauses will eventually mistake activity for progress. A leader who never disconnects will confuse busyness for value.

The illusion of stillness

Of course, the irony is that even our escapes are curated. We pack power banks and backup Wi-Fi “just in case.” We photograph sunsets to post later, proving how beautifully unconnected we were and thus stillness has become performative.

But maybe that’s fine. Maybe the intention still counts. The fact that people long for isolation tells us something profound about the state of modern work. It’s not laziness. It’s longing, for boundaries, for balance, for simplicity.

When you see executives on a “digital detox” retreat, it’s not because they hate technology. It’s because they miss having uninterrupted thoughts.

The corporate contagion

This craving isn’t limited to holidays. It’s creeping into professional strategy.

More leaders I coach now talk openly about the need for white space, not just in calendars, but in thinking. Some organisations are experimenting with “meeting-free days,” or even “creative sabbaticals”, i.e., structured time away from routine work to think, explore, or simply breathe.

They’ve realised that innovation doesn’t happen because we demand it. It happens because we make room for it.

That’s a fundamental shift in mindset. For decades, success was measured by how full our diaries were. Now, the smartest leaders measure success by how much space they can protect.

Solitude as status symbol

Travel marketers understand this perfectly. Scarcity sells. Fewer people, fewer rooms, fewer signals, the fewer the better. It’s exclusivity by omission.

And leadership culture is catching up. The ability to step back, to disconnect, to create mental space, has become a marker of control and confidence. Leaders who can pause demonstrate authority. Those who can’t often look like they’re being led by circumstance rather than leading it.

In both travel and leadership, solitude has become a status symbol. The message is the same: “I’m not running from the world. I’m choosing when to engage with it.”

Making it practical

So how do we apply this beyond glossy magazine spreads?

For individuals:

• Schedule absence. Protect time when you’re intentionally unreachable. Treat it as seriously as any board meeting.

• Normalise stillness. Reflection isn’t a delay; it’s part of the job.

• Stop performing productivity. You don’t need to prove you’re busy. You need to be effective.

For organisations:

• Redefine innovation culture. Reward curiosity and experimentation, not just output.

• Create white space. Build thinking time into your governance calendar. A board that only meets to decide never has time to explore.

• Promote sustainable leadership. Encourage breaks, sabbaticals, and realistic workloads. No one performs at their best from burnout.

The final irony

We used to dream of connection; now we pay for disconnection. Progress has flipped on itself. But maybe that’s a good sign. It suggests people are waking up to the cost of constant availability. They’re starting to value attention as much as ambition.

And in leadership, that might be the most radical innovation of all, the rediscovery of thinking time; because whether you’re trekking through Patagonia or sitting quietly with your phone on flight mode, the point isn’t isolation. It’s clarity and sometimes the best way to move forward is to step away.