Originally published on nvarma.com
These are my personal thoughts, experiences, and opinions, and they do not reflect the views of the company I work for.
This past weekend, I packed up the family and drove to San Francisco. No agenda, no itinerary synced to a calendar, and almost no Slack notifications. Okay, there was one I was a little too eager to respond to. But mostly, it was just the open road, some good music, and a few days with the people I love most.
We hit the Golden Gate Bridge on a rare fog-free day. We had ice cream at Ghirardelli Square. We drove the 17-Mile Drive through Pebble Beach and picked up dark chocolate treats from All About the Chocolate in Carmel-by-the-Sea. We stopped at the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz, because honestly, some days you need a place where gravity doesn't make sense to remind you that the world is more playful than your inbox suggests.
The Golden Gate Bridge, completely fog-free. If you know San Francisco, you know how rare this is.
There's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now. In tech, in geopolitics, in the economy. If you're in a leadership role, you feel the weight of it constantly. The decisions that need to be made, the ambiguity of what's next, the responsibility of guiding people when you have an idea of the path but are leaning on your best judgement to do what's right for everyone around you, knowing full well you can't please all the people all of the time. It builds up. Quietly, persistently, until one morning you realize you've been carrying tension you didn't even name.
I've learned over the years that one of the most important things I can do for myself, and by extension for my team, is to step away. Not escape. Step away. There's a difference. Escaping is avoidance. Stepping away is choosing to create space so you can come back with clarity.
The Constant Coastline
The first time I drove to Pebble Beach was in 2004, and the Pacific Ocean was just a stunning backdrop to a day trip with family. I came back in 2010 as a grad student, slightly older, slightly more aware of the world. In 2019, I visited again, and the photo from that trip is still the one on my homepage today. Since then, I've returned every time family or friends visit from out of town. It's become one of those places I keep coming back to.
Pebble Beach, July 2010. Grad student, web developer, part-time DJ, no gray or balding hair. Same rocks, same waves.
Here's what gets me every time: the coastline hasn't changed, but I've grown and evolved. The same rocks, the same waves, the same Lone Cypress clinging to its cliff. But the person standing there looking at it has gone from college kid to grad student to engineer to engineering leader, through job changes, cross-country moves, losing loved ones, navigating a pandemic, and now leading teams through a significant transformation. Twenty-two years of evolution. The rocks didn't move an inch.
The Lone Cypress at Pebble Beach. There's something about a tree that's been standing alone on a rock for 250 years that puts your quarterly review worries into perspective.
I think about this a lot. We spend so much energy keeping pace with change. New frameworks, new org structures, new strategies, new market conditions. And that's exciting, honestly, because it means we're building in a time where the possibilities keep expanding. But it also means we rarely pause. Standing at the cliffs of Pebble Beach, I'm reminded that the ocean doesn't know what quarter it is. Those rocks were there before your company existed and will be there long after. It's a scale reset. It recalibrates what "urgent" actually means.
Simple Things, Big Returns
I don't think you need to fly to Hawaii or book a silent retreat to find this kind of reset. For me, it's always been simple things. A long drive with music playing, the kind of songs that pull you back to a specific year and a specific feeling. Visiting places that hold memories from earlier chapters of my life. Making new memories of artisan chocolates or a fancy restaurant you've never been to. Showing someone a place you love and watching them see it for the first time. These are small acts, but they reconnect you to a version of yourself that existed before the job title, the responsibilities, and the constant hum of notifications.
The coastline along 17-Mile Drive. No filter, no edit. Just the Pacific doing what it's been doing for millions of years.
This heat wave weekend was one of those rare Northern California days where the sky was perfectly clear and the air was warm. We drove with the sun-roof down. We spotted sea lions on the docks at Pier 39. My wife pointed out wildflowers on the cliffs. And for a few hours, I wasn't thinking about roadmaps or deadlines or the latest industry disruption. I was just present. The world felt enormous and still and exactly as it should be, even as headlines everywhere insisted otherwise.
The Pause Is a Leadership Skill
We talk a lot about resilience, about grit, about pushing through. And those are real. But I've found that some of my best decisions as a leader came not from pushing harder, but from stepping back far enough to see the full picture. It's hard to evaluate a situation clearly when you're inside the pressure of it. Distance, even a weekend's worth, changes the perspective.
What does that look like in practice? It means not checking email on the drive. Not "just quickly" responding to a message at every stop. Actually disconnecting. Actually being in the place you drove to, with the people you brought along. It means trusting your team to hold things down, and trusting yourself to come back sharper for having been away.
I don't know if everyone feels this way when they stand at the edge of the Pacific and look out at the horizon. But I suspect many of you do. We just don't say it out loud often enough, especially in professional circles where "always on" is still treated like a badge of honor.
What I Brought Back from the Coast
The world will keep spinning with its uncertainty and noise. Your inbox will be there on Monday. The hard decisions won't go away. But you'll face them differently when you've stood at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge on a clear day and remembered that the world, for all its chaos, is still breathtakingly beautiful. The things that evolve fastest need you the most. The things that never change ground you the most. Knowing the difference is what keeps you steady.
Remember to take a step back from time to time, play your favorite music loud, let your favorite places remind you what being steady feels like.
This post was originally published on nvarma.com. Follow me there for more on software architecture, engineering leadership, and the craft of building things that last.
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