I just got back from a week at Rancho La Puerta, a wellness retreat tucked into the mountains of Mexico—and let me tell you, the biggest thing I unplugged wasn’t my devices. It was my brain.
As a VP of Engineering, I live in a world that moves fast. Notifications, Slack messages, back-to-back Zooms, constant problem-solving—it’s all part of this compelling and consuming job. As we know, this always-on culture doesn’t come without a cost. At some point, your creativity tanks, your patience thins, and your body starts whispering (or shouting) that it needs a break.
Enter Rancho La Puerta.
No email. No meetings. No laptop. For a full seven days, I swapped context switching for nature hikes at sunrise, strategy decks for making prayer arrows, and dopamine hits from likes for actual endorphin boosts from deep breathing and movement. I wasn’t optimizing for anything—except maybe joy.
Here’s what I learned:
Stillness is a feature, not a bug. When I’m always in motion, I forget how much wisdom comes from doing… nothing. Sitting under a tree journaling for an hour? Surprisingly productive. I started solving problems I didn’t even know I was carrying.
Wellness isn’t indulgent—it’s infrastructure. We build robust systems for scalability and uptime, but how often do we treat our own wellness as critical infrastructure? One massage or sound healing session doesn’t “fix” burnout, but building in regular recovery absolutely prevents it.
My team benefits when I unplug. When I step away, others have the space to step up. If I want to lead sustainably, I need to model rest as much as I model grit.
Tech leaders need to touch grass—literally. I hiked every morning, listened to birds, felt the wind (and sometimes rain) on my face. I was reminded that clarity doesn’t live on a screen. It lives in silence, in stillness, in space.
Coming back, I feel different. Not just rested, but re-centered. And while I won’t be hiking in Baja every morning (sadly), I am recommitting to bookending my workdays with a little more intention—whether that’s a short walk, stretching, or just five minutes without a device.
If you’re feeling stuck, exhausted, or like your Slack notifications are narrating your life—consider a break. A real one. Your brain (and your team) will thank you.
Kathleen Codes 