The Space Practice: Micro Breaks and Think Days
Engineer space between stimulus and response at two time scales
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 7
- Confidence
- 92%
The premise comes from Viktor Frankl: our power exists in the space we can create between stimulus and response. Entrepreneurs live in a constant loop where stimulus comes in and they immediately respond, at all hours — which makes them reactive, so everything in life becomes a reaction. The fix is deliberate space at two scales. Micro: five-minute walks between meetings, achieved by turning 30-minute meetings into 25. Bloom cites a Microsoft EEG study — back-to-back meetings built stress steadily and degraded performance, while a five-minute break produced zero stress buildup and consistent performance. A tiny intervention, an enormous difference, and all you lose is the weather banter. Macro: a think day monthly or quarterly — a 4-8 hour window outside your normal ecosystem with a journal and prompts that force you to zoom out. The output is decisions and a road map instead of open loops, which is why the stress melts away.
Origin
The idea of space comes from Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and author of Man's Search for Meaning, who wrote that our power exists in the space we can create between stimulus and response. Bloom operationalized it into a micro practice and a macro think day, with eight question prompts published in The 5 Types of Wealth.
Core principles
- 01Power exists in the space between stimulus and response.
- 02Entrepreneurs live in a constant stimulus-response loop, which makes them reactive.
- 03Space must be deliberate and calendared, not floating in the back of your mind.
- 04Micro and macro scales solve different problems — you need both.
- 05Space with a phone in your hand is not space.
- 06Stress is the gap between reality and expectations with no plan to bridge it.
How to run it
- 1
See the loop you're in
Notice that stimulus comes in and you respond instantly, at all hours, all the time. That's a dangerous place to be, because everything in your life becomes a reaction.
- 2
Shorten every meeting by five minutes
Make 30-minute meetings 25 minutes. All you actually remove is the banter about the weather that meetings start with — you'll be more efficient and still get it done.
Pro tip Change the calendar default so you don't have to make the decision each time.
- 3
Spend the recovered time on a walk
Use the five minutes as an actual break. Add a 15-minute walk after lunch. The break is the intervention, not the shorter meeting.
Pro tip The Microsoft EEG study: back-to-back meetings built stress steadily and degraded performance; five-minute breaks produced zero stress buildup and consistent performance.
Watch out You cannot be on your phone scrolling during that time. It needs to be truly shut off.
- 4
Protect one work-free evening a week
Give yourself one evening a week where you're not going to work. Structure it deliberately — it can't be something floating in the back of your mind.
- 5
Book a think day, monthly or quarterly at minimum
Give yourself a 4-8 hour window to step out of your normal ecosystem — a coffee shop, a rented Airbnb, a hotel, a spa. The change of environment is doing real work.
Pro tip Put it on the calendar. Space you intend to take is space you won't take.
- 6
Work prepared prompts with a journal and pen
Bring a journal and a pen and walk through question prompts that force you to zoom out and look at the bigger picture of what you're doing professionally and personally. Bloom uses eight.
Pro tip Prepare the prompts beforehand. Arriving prompt-less turns a think day into a nice coffee.
- 7
Leave with decisions, not open loops
The point is to close the loops — should I do this, should I do that — by actually deciding and producing a road map you can execute against.
Pro tip Stress is the gap between present reality and expectations, especially with no plan to bridge it. The road map IS the stress relief.
In the wild
Bloom cites a Microsoft study in which researchers put EEGs on participants' heads and ran them either through a set of back-to-back meetings or through the same meetings with a five-minute break between each. The back-to-back group showed stress building up steadily across the meetings and performance deteriorating as they went. The five-minute-break group showed zero stress buildup and consistent performance throughout. Bloom's point: an enormous difference from a tiny intervention — 25-minute meetings instead of 30.
→ A measurable physiological case for the cheapest possible calendar change, at the cost of the opening weather banter.
Bloom does a think day once a month or once a quarter at minimum. Host Hala Taha runs the same practice under the name strategy day and described the effect: her stress and anxiety as an entrepreneur just melt away, because all the open loops — should I do this, should I do that — get resolved. You make the decisions, you have your road map, and you can just action on it instead of worrying. Her framing: stress is the gap between present reality and expectations, particularly when you have no plan to bridge that gap.
→ Open loops close, a road map exists, and the work reduces to execution — which a disciplined entrepreneur already knows how to do.
Common mistakes
Filling the space with your phone
Scrolling during the gap reintroduces the exact stimulus the gap was supposed to remove. It needs to be truly shut off or the mechanism does nothing.
Leaving space uncalendared
Bloom is explicit that it can't be something floating in the back of your mind. Space you intend to take is space you never take.
Doing only one scale
Micro breaks manage in-day stress; think days close strategic open loops. Neither substitutes for the other — you need both to get the full benefit.
Is it for you?
Best for
Entrepreneurs and operators whose days are back-to-back and whose stress comes from unresolved open loops.
Not ideal for
Roles with genuinely no calendar discretion, where neither meeting length nor a full day off is yours to set.
From the transcript
“our power exists in in the space that we can create between stimulus and response”
“Entrepreneurs in particular live in this constant loop where stimulus is coming in and they're immediately responding to it at all hours of the day…”
“once a month or once a quarter at a minimum, do what I call a think day where you give yourself like a 4 to…”
From the episode
Sahil Bloom: How Entrepreneurs Build Real Wealth Beyond Money
Sahil Bloom