Headspace is Perishable

And when you have it, it’s worth acting on.

The most memorable thing I took away from BaseCamp’s REWORK is the idea that inspiration is perishable. Basically—if you’re inspired to do something you should do it immediately, because that inspiration is fleeting.

I recommend reading the essay in its entirety here. It’s short, beautifully written, and quite motivating.

This post is about another part of life that’s also perishable: headspace.

I just got back from a two-week family holiday. It was great—my days were filled with beaches, ocean life, and quality time with my family. I read books, disconnected from work, the news, and social media, and spent my downtime pondering life and purpose.

Today when I opened my laptop for the first time, looked at my email, and opened Twitter—it felt… off. It was like putting on an old pair of jeans after losing weight. Comfortable, familiar, but also not quite right anymore.

Why am I doing this again? I thought. And rather than slide back into my normal routine, I decided to lean into that feeling.

Most of life is routine. We make plans for the week, month, or year, and then act them out. We pick up things where we left off the day before. We respond to messages and problems as they come up.

Holidays, and especially the turn of the year, are unique because most of that routine disappears. This provides us with a perspective that’s hard to remember in the day-to-day grind. This is the time when we think about our big-picture goals and what fulfills us. The time to imagine where we’d like to be one, five, or twenty years into the future. The time we are open to change.

Big changes—things like a new career direction, or a big company pivot—require a certain amount of headspace to execute on. And headspace, like inspiration, is perishable.1

I think it’s worth responding to headspace the same way DHH says to respond to inspiration: “If it grabs you, grab it right back and put it to work.” To me, this means intentionally pushing back against that return-to-normalcy for as long as I can. Staying out of my routine, and spending more time writing and thinking instead.

Why? Well, maybe with inspiration you can build a product in a weekend, but with headspace you can permanently change the course of your life. You can learn what really matters to you. Establish a new direction. And, ideally, create a space for those big-picture changes to happen even after day-to-day life resumes.

I don’t yet know what that looks like for me, but I’m happy to be asking the question. For example, some things I’m pondering right now include:

  • Why do I spend so much time on social media? After a two-week break from Twitter, opening the app suddenly seems… pointless.
  • Why do I stress so much about my business income when I’m already making more money than I need?
  • What’s the point of doing work that doesn’t bring me joy when I have the freedom to do whatever I want?
  • Why do I still work 40 hour weeks when I don’t need to, and could be spending more time with my kids?

I know these feelings are unlikely to last long, so my goal is to figure out which of these questions to take seriously, and bring them into my plans for the coming year. And I know I have to act fast—while I still have the headspace I need. Once you step back into the routine, it’s hard to get back.

And if I fail? If, in a month or two, I’m back on Twitter as much as before, working 40-hour weeks, and grinding and stressing about Pegasus? Well, at least I’ll have documented this feeling.

Because headspace is perishable. And when you have it, it’s worth acting on.


  1. One thing I don’t discuss here is how to create headspace, but it can be done intentionally. The main requirement seems to be disconnecting from your routine for at least a few days. When I was an executive at a startup, we would regularly bring different parts of the company together for a “summit” every year. The biggest and best decisions always happened when the venue was far from a local office—ideally even without Internet.