CEOs Unwind: 25 Activities for Effective Self-Care & Detachment

To avoid creative burnout, you must remain disconnected from clients and trends that are constantly shifting on the web. This is the only way you can maintain your speed of production in the rapidly evolving world of digital agencies. For me, one method to disconnect from all things client campaign and algorithmic trend is implementing a “No Screen Sunday” policy with regards to my own devices. To recharge creatively, I have always enjoyed spending a full day in my backyard vegetable garden. Working in the garden requires both physical effort and mentally engaging efforts, which are generally slower-paced than an online market. The benefits of participating in such an analog hobby as gardening were not entirely expected; however, they have provided a significant increase in my long-term patience and ability to plan projects. Disengaging from data analysis for a period of time, allows my mind to deeply rest in order to produce new digital strategy ideas.

Honest answer? For a long time, I didn’t. I wore “always on” like a badge of honor and called it dedication. It wasn’t. It was self-abandonment dressed up in productivity.

The one thing that changed everything for me is my morning ritual — and I protect it the way most people protect a board meeting. No phone, no emails, no decisions for the first 45 minutes of my day. Just coffee, a few minutes of breathwork to get out of my head and back into my body, and journaling. Not the gratitude-list kind. The real kind — where I ask myself what I’m actually feeling, what I’m carrying from yesterday, and what I need today to show up as myself.

It sounds simple. But that 45 minutes is the difference between me leading my day and my day leading me.

Here’s why it works: most burnout doesn’t come from doing too much. It comes from doing too much while being completely disconnected from yourself. The ritual closes that gap. It’s a daily act of checking back in — mind, body, and soul.

This is actually the foundation of the work I do with clients at Desert Roots Wellness. We don’t start with strategy or goals. We start with reconnection. Because you can’t build a life that fits you if you’re not paying attention to who you actually are.

That morning ritual isn’t just self-care. It’s how I stay honest with myself — and everything I teach starts there.

There’s a version of the CEO story where disconnecting from work is treated like a productivity hack – you rest so you can perform better, you meditate so you can focus harder, you take breaks so you can squeeze out more output. As the CEO of Breakthrough Apps, I’ve never been able to relate to that framing, and honestly, I think it misses the point entirely.

For me, disconnecting isn’t a strategy. It’s just something I’ve learned I genuinely need – not as a founder, but as a person.

The one thing that has made the biggest difference in my day-to-day is meditation. I meditate every single day, sometimes in the morning and sometimes at night after work, without exception. Not for a set number of minutes, not with a specific outcome in mind – just the practice itself, showing up for it consistently. What it gives me isn’t energy in the way a good night’s sleep does. It’s more like clarity. The mental noise that builds up over a week of decisions, conversations, and constant context-switching – meditation is the thing that quiets it. I notice the difference immediately on the days I skip it.

Beyond the daily practice, I go on meditation retreats a few times a year. That’s where the deeper work happens. I was actually on one just this past May – stepping fully out of the business, no phone, no emails, no decisions to make, just being still for a few days. It’s something I can’t replicate any other way. Every time I’ve come back from a retreat, I’ve returned with a perspective on the business that I couldn’t have found sitting at my desk. Some of the clearest thinking I’ve done about Breakthrough Apps has happened when I was actively not thinking about it.

I run a company that builds apps for yoga teachers, breathwork coaches, and meditation guides – so there’s an obvious thread here. But the honest truth is that I didn’t start meditating because of the work. The work came from what I already believed about how people should be allowed to live. Slowing down isn’t something I fit into my schedule. It’s something I build my schedule around.

Disconnecting has to be a decision you make on purpose, because the work will never end on its own. There’s always one more thing, so I stopped waiting to feel done and started setting a hard stop. When the day ends, I physically close the laptop and leave the room it lives in. The change of space tells my brain the shift is over in a way that just “logging off” never did.

The activity that actually resets me is lifting weights. It works because it demands my full attention. You can’t stew about a client problem while you’re under a loaded bar, so for that hour my mind is forced to be somewhere else entirely. That total absorption is the point. Scrolling my phone doesn’t recharge me because half my head is still at work.

My honest advice to other CEOs: pick something that fully occupies your hands and your focus, and protect the time for it like a meeting you can’t move. Rest isn’t a reward you earn after everything’s finished. Nothing is ever finished. It’s maintenance for the person the whole business depends on, so treat it like the job it is.

I walk my product development floor once a week with my phone locked in my office. I’ll spend 45 minutes handling finished products, reading batch labels, talking to my team about what they’re seeing on the line. It started as a quality check.

The physical act of picking something up, turning it over, asking a team member how a new formulation feels on their hands pulls me completely out of the strategic noise. My breathing slows down. I notice things I’d miss on a screen, like a label alignment issue or a texture change that tells me something about a supplier’s raw materials.

By the time I get back to my desk, I’ve had a full mental reset without ever leaving the building. I’m in the room where the work gets made, doing something with my hands, surrounded by people who care about the same details I do.

The honest answer is that disconnecting as a CEO requires the same thing that good operations require: structure. Hoping to unwind at the end of a day with no defined endpoint does not work. The boundary has to be built into the architecture of the day, not added as an afterthought when the work feels done, because the work never fully feels done.

Living in Paris has made this both easier and more non-negotiable. The city does not accommodate the always-on work culture that many founders wear as a badge of honor. Lunch is a real meal, not something eaten at a desk. Evenings belong to life, not to Slack. That cultural rhythm pushed me toward boundaries I should have been enforcing anyway.

The one activity that consistently recharges me is walking. Not a structured workout, not a podcast in my ears, just walking through the city without an agenda or a destination. Paris is built for this in a way that very few cities are. There is always something to look at, something to notice, something that has nothing to do with the business. That aimlessness is the point. The mind that has been making decisions and holding complexity all day needs something genuinely undemanding to reset. Walking provides that without requiring any preparation, any equipment, or any scheduling.

The secondary discipline that protects the recharge is a hard stop on work in the evenings and a full absence on weekends. Not a soft preference but an actual boundary. The business is better for it because I am better for it, and the people around me are, too. A CEO who never disconnects is not a harder worker. They are slower thinkers, making worse decisions and recovering less than the role deserves.

As a CEO, I disconnect from work by creating a very deliberate transition between “operator mode” and personal time. The biggest challenge is not the number of hours, it is the mental carryover. When you run internet businesses, there is always one more metric to check, one more message to answer, or one more product idea to capture. What helps me most is making the shutdown process physical, not just mental.

The one activity I rely on most is a long walk without my phone. I usually do it in the evening after I have written down the next day’s top priorities. That matters because if I do not close the open loops first, my brain keeps trying to solve them in the background. Once I have a short plan for tomorrow, I leave the phone behind and go for a 45 to 60 minute walk.

That walk works for me for three reasons. First, it removes the trigger. If the phone is with me, I will be tempted to check dashboards, messages, or notes. Second, walking gives me enough movement to release tension from sitting and decision-making all day. Third, it creates mental distance from the business without forcing it. I am not trying to “optimize” the walk. I am just letting my mind slow down.

Ironically, this is often when better thinking happens. I come back calmer, less reactive, and usually clearer about what actually deserves attention the next day. I have found that self-care as a CEO does not need to be elaborate. It just needs to be consistent and strong enough to break the always-on pattern. For me, an unplugged walk is the simplest habit with the highest return.

The rule that protects my sanity is a hard boundary, not an activity: my phone doesn’t enter the bedroom, and work apps get deleted from my home screen every Friday evening and reinstalled Monday morning. It sounds extreme, but as a CEO the problem isn’t finding time to unwind — it’s that work follows you into whatever you’re doing. Removing the access point matters more than scheduling the downtime.

The one activity that genuinely recharges me is long-distance cycling. What makes it work isn’t the exercise — it’s that it’s cognitively incompatible with worrying. When you’re descending a hill at 50 km/h, your brain physically cannot draft an email. Two or three hours on the bike is the only time my mind fully lets go of the business, and I consistently return with clearer judgment on whatever problem I left behind.

My advice to other founders: don’t look for relaxing activities. Look for absorbing ones. Relaxation lets your mind wander back to work — absorption doesn’t give it the chance.

I used to think disconnecting was weakness. When I was scaling my fulfillment company from zero to $10M, I’d answer emails at 2am and take calls during dinner. Then I hit a wall around year three where I couldn’t make basic decisions anymore. My team started noticing I’d forget conversations we’d had the day before.

The thing that saved me was Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Sounds random, but here’s why it works when everything else failed. You literally cannot think about your P&L or that angry customer email when someone’s trying to choke you out. Your brain goes into pure survival mode for 90 minutes. I train four mornings a week at 6am, and it’s the only time my phone stays in the locker.

What I learned is that self-care isn’t about bubble baths or meditation apps, though those work for some people. It’s about finding something that demands your complete attention. For me, that’s a physical activity where hesitation gets you hurt. The added benefit is it taught me how to stay calm under pressure, which translated directly back to business. When you’re comfortable being uncomfortable on the mat, a tough board meeting feels manageable.

The counterintuitive part? I’m more productive now working 50 hours a week with jiu-jitsu than I was grinding 80 hours without it. My team at Fulfill.com knows my training schedule is non-negotiable, same as a client meeting. That boundary setting actually made them respect my time more, not less.

Here’s what nobody tells you about being a CEO: your company’s ceiling is your own mental and physical state. If you’re burned out, your decisions suffer, your team suffers, and eventually your customers suffer. I’ve seen founders lose million-dollar businesses because they refused to take care of themselves. The work will always be there. Your health won’t.

The honest answer: I don’t rely on willpower to disconnect. I rely on structure.

My calendar is managed by my EA. Deep work blocks are fixed and meeting slots are defined. Everything outside those windows—family time, fitness, personal life—is blocked and protected the same way a board meeting would be. Not as a preference. As a non-negotiable.

Most CEOs treat self-care as something that happens when work allows it. It never allows it. There’s always another email, another decision, another thing that feels urgent. If the boundary isn’t built into the system, it doesn’t exist.

The specific activity that recharges me most isn’t exotic. It’s presence—being with my family without a device pulling my attention back to work. That sounds simple. It requires a lot of infrastructure to actually achieve. The recharge isn’t the activity. It’s the absence of the mental load that usually follows me everywhere.

Build the boundary into the system. Then trust the system.

Honestly, disconnecting is something I had to learn the hard way. When you’re running an agency, your brain doesn’t clock out—you’re always half-thinking about a client, a proposal, a hire. For a long time I confused “being busy” with “being productive,” and I paid for it.

The thing that changed everything for me was sailing. I’m a member at a sailing club, and getting out on the water is the one place where I genuinely cannot multitask. The sea demands your full attention—wind, trim, position—and that forced presence is exactly what resets me. There’s no Slack notification that matters when you’re tacking in open water.

It also gives me something I rarely get as a CEO: immediate, honest feedback. You either read the wind right or you don’t. No politics, no ambiguity. I find that weirdly therapeutic.

If I skip too many weeks on the water, I notice it—in my patience, in my decisions, in how I show up for my team. So at this point I treat it less like a hobby and more like maintenance.

I’ve stopped trying to disconnect from work the clean way founders are supposed to. The phone-off, fully-unplugged, do-not-disturb version never worked for me. My brain doesn’t have an off switch I can flip on a schedule. I’ve tried it, but haven’t stuck to it for long.

What actually recharges me is smaller and a little strange. I go to the same cafe, sit at the same corner table, order the same coffee, and watch other tables. People on first dates. Someone clearly bombing an interview. A grandfather explaining something to a kid who isn’t listening.

For one hour, nobody in that room knows I run a company. Nobody needs a decision from me. I’m just someone with a coffee.

I’ve realised what actually wears you down as a founder. It’s being needed; constantly, by default. The cafe is the one place that forgets to need me.

I disconnect by cooking dinner with my phone in another room, and the rule is simple: no screens until the food is on the table. When I lived in Lisbon, a neighbor taught me to make a proper seafood rice, and chopping garlic for twenty minutes turned out to be the only thing that fully quieted my head after a brutal day of investor calls. There’s no Slack notification that can reach you over a hot pan. I cook three or four nights a week now, and it’s done more for my focus than any productivity hack I’ve tried. You can’t pour real attention into work if you never give your mind a place to land.

Running two companies while living between Bali and Tallinn means “disconnecting” looks different depending on which timezone I’m in.

The honest answer is that full disconnection is a myth when you’re bootstrapped. There’s no one else to catch the ball. So instead of trying to switch off completely, I got better at switching contexts.

The one thing that actually works for me: morning time with my daughter before opening a single app. She’s one year old and has zero interest in my Slack notifications. That hour of just being present with her resets something in my brain that no meditation app has ever managed.

Bali helps too. When the office is your laptop and the view is rice fields, the boundary between work and rest is blurry, but in a good way. I’m not commuting, not in back-to-back meetings, not performing busyness. The pace there forces a kind of low-grade decompression that I don’t get in Tallinn.

The trap most founders fall into is treating self-care like another item on the productivity list. It stops working the moment you optimize it. The morning with my kid works because it has nothing to do with output.

My two sphynx cats are the best thing I do for myself after work. They need feeding, grooming, and attention on their schedule, and that schedule holds whether or not I feel like stopping for the day.

Every evening I spend time brushing and bathing them, because sphynx cats need regular skin care. My hands are busy, my phone is across the room, and I’m focused entirely on their coat and skin. I’ve tried vacations and weekend retreats, but the cat care routine is what I come back to every single day.

I sleep better on the nights I stick with it, and I notice the difference in morning meetings the next day. The whole thing is a short window of cat skin care, but the cats enforce it on their own terms.

Like many founders, I find it difficult to completely switch off. Running a business means ideas don’t neatly stay within office hours.

One thing that has made a real difference is doing occasional digital detoxes at Aim Wild in the Welsh countryside. I’ll spend a weekend in the middle of a field with little or no phone signal, away from emails, notifications, and the constant pressure to respond. It forces me to slow down in a way that everyday life rarely does.

Ironically, I often come back far more productive. Some of my best ideas have appeared when I’ve stopped trying to think about work altogether. Creating that distance gives my brain the space to connect ideas that get lost in the pace of everyday business.

I’ve realised that rest isn’t the opposite of productivity. It’s often what makes good judgement possible in the first place.

I run a surgical practice and have spent 20+ years doing delicate eye, face, and neck procedures, so I can’t afford to treat recovery like an afterthought. A tired surgeon or CEO makes worse decisions.

My main reset is very simple: I make a 16 oz green juice and step away from the phone while I drink it. I started recommending green juice before and after surgery because I saw how much nutrition and hydration affected healing, and I realized I needed the same discipline myself.

The bigger lesson is to create a “closing ritual.” I write down what truly must be handled tomorrow, close the loop mentally, then stop letting every message feel like an emergency.

Self-care for a CEO is not indulgence; it is maintenance of judgment. If your work depends on precision, your recovery habits are part of the job.

As a CEO, I’ve learned that to disconnect from work I must create intentional boundaries. If you wait until everything is done before taking care of yourself, you’ll never switch off because there’s always another email, meeting, or problem to solve.

One habit that’s made the biggest difference for me is scheduling a dedicated recovery break into my day. Rather than pushing through until I’m exhausted, I take 10-15 minutes each afternoon to step away from my desk and spend time on a vibroacoustic lounge.

The gentle vibration and soothing soundscapes help me shift my attention away from screens and constant decision-making and back into the present moment. It’s a simple way to interrupt the mental loop that many business leaders experience after hours of problem-solving.

I’ve found that this physical reset leaves me feeling clearer, more focused, and better equipped to make decisions for the rest of the day. It’s also much easier to maintain than routines that require perfect conditions or a large time commitment.

Beyond that, I make it a priority to move regularly, spend time outdoors whenever possible, and protect my sleep.

When I was in the thick of building my business while raising my kids, life was incredibly intense. I was balancing being a wife, a mom, and a business owner all at once. During that season, my best way to reset was to get away once a quarter. I would check into a local hotel for one or two nights alone just to clear my head and dream. It was essential for my mental clarity.

These days, I travel quite a bit and use that time to intentionally disconnect. I have also designed a work schedule that flexes with the different seasons of my life. Everything I do starts with my values as my North Star. My faith and my family sit at the very top of that list, so my work revolves around those priorities instead of the other way around.

On a daily basis, I still rely on quiet time and prayer as an anchor. It slows my mind down and resets my perspective. When I skip it, I can feel impatience or a sense of dread start to creep in. Taking that space ensures I return to my work grounded and clear so I can show up fully for my team and the people we serve.

Being CEO of a business is a job that doesn’t really allow you to ‘unplug’ as there’s always more to do. I find that practicing and playing golf 3-4 times a week, in between all the other work I do, helps recharge my batteries.

I try to practice my golf swings a few times a week. This activity is a complete contrast to the work I do in the office and is a total physical activity conducted outdoors. It requires great focus and patience, and even a short trip to the driving range for a practice session can clear my head and help me arrive back at the office focused. Other activities can offer similar benefits, such as taking a long walk in nature, swimming, practicing yoga, or cycling. These types of activities also encourage you to disconnect, be present, and recharge mentally and physically.

My advice to other CEOs would be to find an activity that cannot be mixed with work and in which your phone, your emails, and the problems of your business will not follow you. If they do, it is unlikely to be much help to you.

The key to disconnecting successfully for me has been setting clear expectations with myself through setting 3 objectives for a Saturday that are easily accomplished and can flex based on my mood. Whenever I wake up, I decide where I am getting my cup of coffee, what activity that gets my body moving (walking downtown, farmers market, or going to the gym) that day, then choosing one meal I am going to have (at some point). I find the activity of a simple plan removes the thought of my work expectations and keeps me going without burdening my mind and also allows me the flexibility to shift my day.

Honestly, I don’t think good CEOs ever fully disconnect. There’s always something in the back of your mind, whether you are in the shower or on the toilet. Over the years, I’ve learned that it’s less about switching work off completely and more about switching my attention to something that requires my full focus.

Piloting the plane has become one such switch for me. When you’re in the cockpit, you need to be focused on weather, navigation, and how not to die. I also promised my wife that I won’t die like this, so it creates extra pressure. You simply can not answer emails. It forces you to be here and now, and after landing, it is important to give yourself some time before jumping back into endless work.

Another thing that helps is spending time with my son. When the phone is away. When I know clearly that he is a priority over work, that helps; sometimes I do not open my laptop over the weekend.

Many people ask CEOs how they disconnect from work. I think the better question is: How do you protect yourself from becoming disconnected from your best leadership?

I don’t try to get away from leadership. I protect the clarity, capacity, and character required to lead at my best.

For me, that starts with intentional reflection.

Several mornings each week, before my schedule fills with meetings, decisions, and emails, I carve out uninterrupted time to read, think, and write. Sometimes I’m exploring a leadership book. Other mornings I’m engaged in focused reflection on a difficult decision, capturing lessons from recent experiences, or asking myself questions no one else can answer. One question I return to often is, “What am I seeing today that I couldn’t have seen six months ago?” That question keeps me learning instead of simply accumulating experience.

Those moments are not a luxury. They are where better leadership begins.

Leaders rarely struggle because they lack information. They struggle because they lack the space to process it. Reflection creates that space. It helps me separate what is urgent from what is important, challenge my assumptions, and make better decisions.

I believe self-care should never be separated from leadership development. Reflection strengthens judgment. Reading expands perspective. Writing sharpens thinking. Time with my family reminds me that leadership is an important part of my life, but it should never become my entire identity.

One of my greatest sources of renewal is spending time with my granddaughter. Those moments remind me why the work matters while ensuring the work never becomes everything that matters.

The greatest misconception about self-care is that it is about escaping responsibility. I see it differently. It is about protecting the person responsible for leading others. Leaders don’t lose trust because they care too much. They lose trust when fatigue erodes their judgment, consistency, and presence. Renewal protects all three.

When leaders invest in their clarity, capacity, and character, they improve not only their own well-being but also every decision they make and every person they influence. Our teams rarely perform beyond the condition of their leader. When we protect ourselves, we give others our best instead of what is left of us.

Leadership is demanding. Renewal is not a reward for surviving it. Renewal is one of the disciplines that makes exceptional leadership possible.

As the CEO of a digital software retailer, I disconnect by stepping away from the business side and actually using the software we sell—I build custom Windows gaming PCs and play immersive games to decompress.

Disconnecting is something I had to learn the hard way. For the first few years of running Webspero, I genuinely did not know where work ended and where it began. My entire day is screens, Slack messages, client calls, campaign data, and decision-making meetings. By evening, my brain is running on fumes but still refusing to switch off. I thought that was just what building something required. But it was quietly draining my energy and killing my excitement for the work I actually loved.

What changed it was cooking for my family. No calls, no notifications, nothing. When I am in the kitchen, I am fully there. And my daughter very sweetly pulls up a chair and shares her day highlights with me. Her whole day, every detail, everything that made her laugh or frustrated her made that moment even more special and refreshing. By the time the meal is ready, I have completely forgotten what was stressing me an hour ago. And that simple feedback loop from my lovely daughter recharges me in a way no productivity hack ever has.