You may have come across these books at your airport bookstore.
Be Obsessed or Be Average by Grant Cardone: The title alone tells you what you're about to read—and what you need to do, or else.
Can't Hurt Me by David Goggins: David makes the point that your desire to stop is your mind lying to you.
Relentless by Tim Grover: The highest performers never turn it off. Ever.
These books tell us to keep going, to keep pushing through, to do more and do it faster, never stopping until you absolutely need to.
I love these books—and many others like them. They have inspired me and given me new perspectives.
There is a place for them. They represent our industry's north star: The belief that if we don't stay ahead of the curve, we'll fall behind it; lose a deal, lose a client, lose our business. Or, maybe worst of all, lose the identity we've tied to this work.
Then what will we do?
Colombia during my sabbatical
ONE IDEA I’M SITTING WITH
A few nights a week, at the end of dinner, my wife pulls out a book and reads a section to our girls. An example would be a spiritual devotional or a Hebrew or Greek scripture reading where she's found inspiration.
The other night, she shared this from a devotional called Rest—and yes, it's geared toward kids, so forgive the simplicity:
Have you ever noticed how everything in nature has a rhythm? The sun rises and sets. Seasons change from spring to summer to fall to winter. Plants grow, bloom, produce fruit, and then rest during winter. Animals have times of being active and times of sleeping.
Think about your own body. Your heart doesn't beat constantly; it pulses, with tiny moments of rest between each beat. Your lungs don't just breathe in; they also breathe out. Even while you sleep, your body is doing important work—restoring your cells, muscles, and energy—which can only happen during rest.
When we look closely at creation, we discover that nothing was designed to go-go-go all the time. The land itself needs times when nothing is planted so the soil can get healthy again. Day becomes night, giving time for sleep. The ocean tide comes in and then goes back out.
These patterns remind us that rest isn't being lazy; it's an important part of life's rhythm. Just as a beautiful song includes both notes and rests to create its melody, our lives need both activity and pause to be whole.
The world around us rests. The grass goes dormant in winter. The waves move forward, then retract. Yet in the venture world, we live by mantras like:
We'll sleep when we're dead.
Move fast and break things.
Grow or die.
We're seeing data that confirms where this leads. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that AI is increasing the speed, density, and complexity of work rather than reducing them. An analysis of 443 million work hours across 164,000 employees shows that the extra capacity AI creates simply gets filled with more tasks.
Similarly, the Scientific American found that developers using AI are actually working longer hours—releasing more software while logging more time, then spending nights and weekends debugging what the AI got wrong.
So what do we do?
The first is to rest ourselves. Research consistently finds that frequent, shorter vacations are more effective than grinding through the year for one trip, with well-being peaking around day eight. Most American workers never get there; they don't have the days. Many of us in venture do. And there's increasing evidence that the sabbatical—the real one, measured in months, not weeks—may be the most underutilized tool we have.
Harvard Business School professor DJ DiDonna interviewed hundreds of people who've taken sabbaticals and found they improve organizational performance in three specific ways: by clarifying responsibilities and retaining talent; by building resilience across the team; and by unlocking new ideas that wouldn't surface otherwise.
Sabbaticals are becoming more common in business. In one survey, nearly 30 percent of businesses said they offered unpaid sabbaticals in 2021, compared with 18 percent in 2016. But more employers offering sabbaticals doesn’t mean employees are taking them. Common reasons people opt out are consistent: They worry their company will fall apart. They can't find the right time. They can't afford to step away financially. They're afraid of losing momentum.
The research keeps landing in the same place. The psychological benefits—reduced stress, increased well-being—last long after people return. Teams often operate better in the founder's absence than before they left. The venture partner who worried most about his team found that his time away created upward momentum in their careers.
And the momentum concern? Jason Fried of 37signals didn't take a real break for 23 years. When he finally did (for six weeks), he came back with a perspective on the business he couldn't have gotten any other way: leaders tend to overestimate their role in the organization. “You're not as important as you think you are.”
All of which to say: The fears are understandable, but the data doesn't support them.
There’s a clear takeaway here: It’s time to stop treating rest as something you earn after the sprint and start treating it as part of the strategy. Whether we're "accelerating" or "venture building," even the vocabulary we use in this industry points toward speed. But some of the best work we ever did at GVN was creating the Founder Wellness Pact—a commitment that the health of the founder matters as much as the health of the startup.
That work still stands.
May you find rest in this season and freely share that gift with others, especially your ventures.
With love and trust,
Pat
TWO QUESTIONS I’M ASKING
What has rest—real rest—looked like for you when it actually worked?
What have you done to encourage rest for the founders you work with—and when did they actually take that advice?
These are the questions I actually want answered. Hit reply. I read and respond to every one.
THREE THINGS I’M SEEING
What the Data Says about How CEOs Manage Time
ARTICLE · HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
As I step back into the CEO role at GVN, I keep coming back to this Harvard Business School study. Researchers tracked 27 CEOs across 60,000 hours of their actual days—every 15 minutes, 24/7, for 13 weeks. The gap between what the subjects thought they did and what they actually did tells a revealing story. Most CEOs believed they were spending significant time with customers. The reality: they only spent 3% of their time with customers. Most thought they were being proactive, but about a third of their time was spent handling unfolding issues, both internal and external. It's a useful mirror for anyone in leadership right now.
Should We Be Paying Kids to Stay Off Their Phones?
ARTICLE · WALL STREET JOURNAL
This piece from the Wall Street Journal caught my attention: Should we pay our kids to stay off social media? It explores a deeper tension most of us feel: that we've handed our attention over to something that never stops pulling at it.
For Better Social Skills, Scientists Recommend a Little Chekhov
ARTICLE · NEW YORK TIMES
And finally, I’m thinking about this New York Times piece on literary fiction and empathy. Research shows that reading stories—real stories, not just books about productivity—improves our ability to understand other people's inner worlds. Fiction slows you down. It asks you to inhabit someone else, and that is its own kind of rest. I’m grateful to Alli Horst at Matchstick for pushing me to think more about this.
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