There’s a kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. You wake up with it already installed. It feels less like exhaustion and more like static. Too many tabs open in the mind. Too many unfinished gestures. Too many tiny negotiations with the day before it has even started. For a while I thought this was just adulthood. Or work. Or the news cycle. Pick your villain.
The first time I read about Before the Coffee Gets Cold, I was sitting in a café not unlike the one in the book — quiet, a little narrow, the kind of place where time seems to gather rather than pass. Outside, the city was still in its morning hurry, but inside there was only the soft hum of the espresso machine and the faint clatter of cups.
The trails in Switzerland don’t rush you. They invite you — past cowbells, into fir shade, up where the air turns glassy. Somewhere between a ridgeline and a mountain hut, a small yellow sign rewired how I think about work.
The light tilts, the colors deepen, pavements shine after quick showers. Autumn moves the city from one state to another without fuss or apology. That same current runs through our workdays: from tiny thresholds to bigger crossings it’s all about the art of leaving one thing cleanly and arriving well at the next. These transitions come in all sizes — from the eyelash-thin switch between two tasks that lasts a heartbeat to the long arcs that reshape teams, companies, and people over months, sometimes years.
Leadership is a journey of trial and error. Over the years, I’ve experimented with countless ideas to make work better for my team. Many didn’t work—and that’s okay. But today, I want to share three things that did. These small adjustments might not seem revolutionary, but they’ve stood the test of time. And they have made a difference.