#013 - Panic Looks Like Productivity.
Your executive team is drowning.
Not because they lack intelligence. Not because they lack effort. They are drowning because they mistake motion for progress.
I see it every week. Senior leaders are rushing from meeting to meeting. They launch new initiatives before finishing old ones. They pivot strategies quarterly. They build roadmaps with 50 slides and zero coherence.
From the outside, it looks impressive. Look how busy they are. Look how many projects they manage.
But here's what I see: panic dressed up as productivity.
The Illusion of Action
When uncertainty spikes, our brains scream at us to move.
AI has made this worse. The pressure to "do something" with AI is suffocating. So you react. You throw money at proof-of-concepts. You throw money at corporate innovation. You reorganize teams around technologies you barely understand.
This is not a strategy. This is cortisol.
Real productivity requires calm. Panic burns energy on the wrong problems.
Right now, many companies are planning next year's budgets—of course, double-digit growth. Teams sprint to justify ambitious numbers.
The result? Corporate theater. Again.
You get power games instead of honest analysis. You get inflated forecasts instead of strategic clarity. You get 100-slide decks that say nothing.
Meanwhile, the basics rot. Your sales process still doesn't work. Your data is a mess. Your team culture rewards being busy over being effective.
What Panic Costs You
Panic has a price. It burns your focus on low-value work.
You have limited energy. Your organization has limited capacity. Every zombie project drains resources from what matters. And I hate zombies.
That AI chatbot no one uses? That's oxygen you can't get back.
Those weekly status meetings with no decisions? That's capacity bleeding out.
The real strategic edge—the one move that could actually transform your business—sits untouched. You are too busy to be effective.
Your competitors who move calmly will eat you alive.
The Fix is Simple (Not Easy)
Stop. Literally stop.
Before your next "urgent" decision, pause. Lower your pulse. Separate the real threat from the noise in your head.
Most crises are not crises. They are discomfort. Your brain cannot tell the difference, but you must.
I learned this the hard way. I used to be that corporate headless chicken. Always stressed. Always reacting. Always exhausted.
Then I spent two months freediving in the Indian Ocean.
In the water, panic kills you instantly. It burns oxygen when you need it most. The ocean taught me what the boardroom never did: stop before you act.
Elite performers—in any domain—master their internal state before they move. They build courage to act despite uncertainty. They develop calm under pressure. They create clarity about what actually matters.
Everything else is noise.
The Dive
The pressure is real. AI is reshaping your industry. The stakes are high.
But beating in the water won't save you. Strategic clarity will.
Cut the dead weight. Kill the projects that don't matter. Stop pretending motion equals progress.
Then, and only then, make your move.
If you want to understand how an extreme sport rewired my approach to high-stakes leadership, read my latest blog:
Lessons from the Abyss: What Freediving and High-Stakes Leadership Have in Common.
Your move.
