Jump higher.”

“Keep your feet closer together.”

“Turn the rope faster.”

This is just some of the advice I’ve been given over the five-plus years that I’ve struggled to master the “double-under,” a classic CrossFit move where a jump rope passes beneath your feet twice each time you jump. Jump high, spin fast.

400 emails a day. 30 calls and meetings a week. Fires burning all the time. 134 things on my to-do list (yup, I just counted). I spend at least 75% of my time in reaction mode, working on other people’s priorities rather than my own. It is really, really hard to walk away feeling there is so much more to do and so much that requires response and attention and give myself the time and space to focus on the strategic parts of my business and my goals. In 2020, that has to change. And I have a plan.

My flight was delayed and I was killing time in the airport bookstore when I spotted a book that had been recommended by a friend. I pulled it off the shelf. It looked like a short read, something I could get through on my flight to California if I ever managed to get on the plane. Excited, I bought the book and began to read it while I continued to wait for the fog to lift and the plane to board. And it created a practice that has changed my life.

My daughter likes her bananas green. Once they turn yellow, she declares them mushy and inedible. My son and I both prefer our bananas fully ripe and yellow. This means that when we go to the grocery store, we are likely to buy two different bunches of bananas: one green and one yellow. Now here’s the tricky part: we have one large beautiful wooden fruit bowl that sits on our counter, typically filled with apples and bananas and oranges and, come summer, nectarines. But if we put both bunches of bananas next to each other in the fruit bowl, my daughter's green bananas quickly turn yellow.

When I was in college, I would come home at the end of the semester, crawl into my parents’ king-sized bed and watch TV for three straight days. I would get up only to eat and, at the end of the day, wander into my own room to sleep. Though I never gave it conscious thought, intuitively, I knew that my body and my mind needed the rest.

Guess what? We still need rest.