The executive team looks productive.
Twelve meetings. Three new AI pilots. A weekend of urgent messages.
Yet nobody can state which decision changed.
Activity has become a way to discharge anxiety. The team feels movement, so it mistakes movement for progress.
Panic can look exactly like productivity.
I learned the difference underwater.
Years ago, I spent two months on an island in the Indian Ocean, freediving. Beneath the surface, effort has a visible cost. Every unnecessary movement consumes limited capacity. The water does not reward how busy you look. It rewards preparation, economy and respect for the environment.
The lesson was to read the situation accurately before spending energy. Danger still demands action.
That distinction matters even more in a boardroom.
Pressure creates bad work that feels useful
A competitor launches an AI assistant. A board member forwards a dramatic headline. A vendor announces another breakthrough. The pressure rises.
Then the organization starts moving.
Executives request new presentations. Teams open pilots. Calendars fill with steering meetings. Leaders ask for daily updates on work that still lacks a customer problem, an owner or a measure of value.
Each action offers a small emotional reward. We are doing something.
The strategic position may not improve at all.
Stress does affect decision-making, but the science is less tidy than the usual leadership slogan. A 2024 integrative review found that the effect depends on the stressor, its timing, the type of decision and the individual. There is no honest basis for claiming that calm automatically makes every leader smarter.
There is a strong operating reason to create a pause anyway. Pressure changes what the room rewards. Visible action becomes easier to defend than deliberate judgment. The pause makes the real decision explicit before the organization pays for the reaction.
Calm matches the response to the evidence and the decision clock. During a real production incident, contain harm immediately. During a genuine regulatory deadline, act within the deadline.
The freediving metaphor has a limit
Breath-hold diving teaches respect for signals and protocols. Treating it as permission to override the urge to breathe is a dangerous distortion.
Divers Alert Network explains that carbon dioxide is a powerful stimulus to breathe while oxygen can fall to dangerous levels during a breath-hold. Hyperventilation can weaken that warning and increase the risk of hypoxic blackout. Its safety guidance is direct: get formal training, never freedive alone and never hyperventilate before a dive.
That correction matters because the old version of this story treated the warning as harmless discomfort. In water, that wording is unsafe.
The useful leadership analogy is narrower. DAN's risk-assessment guidance centres on training, briefings, capable buddies, known limits and an emergency plan. Discipline preserves the capacity needed for the important part of the dive.
Consequential AI decisions need an explicit protocol because a meeting alone provides no protection.
Put urgent AI work through the Calm Gate
Before launching a new initiative or changing direction under pressure, write the answers to five questions:
- What changed in the real world? Name the event and evidence. Separate it from commentary, status anxiety and vendor claims.
- What decision does this event require? Replace “Do something with AI” with a decision: fund, test, scale, pause, stop or roll back.
- What must happen now? Contain current harm first. If no harm or deadline exists, state how long you can investigate without losing the opportunity.
- Which action changes the outcome? Distinguish it from work that mainly reassures the room, such as another deck, committee or disconnected pilot.
- Who owns the move, and what will stop? Name one decision holder, one clock and the lower-value work that releases capacity.
Call this the Calm Gate. It turns “urgent” into a claim that must carry evidence.
Imagine a competitor launches an AI service on Monday morning. By 10:00, the CEO wants a matching product by Friday. The calendar fills before anyone has spoken to a customer.
The Calm Gate changes the work. The event is a competitor announcement. It creates no immediate customer harm and no external deadline. The decision is whether the new service changes customer expectations enough to justify a focused test. A product owner gets two days to examine customer demand, the competitor experience, the required data and the smallest reversible experiment. The team also names the existing initiative that would lose capacity if the test starts.
Friday may still end with a test.
It may also end with Stop.
Both are productive because both resolve the decision. Five reactive pilots resolve nothing.
Calm makes courage usable
Calm alone can become avoidance. A beautifully facilitated pause that ends without a decision is still theatre.
Courage supplies the commitment. Calm protects the quality of that commitment. Together they create clarity about what deserves action and what deserves subtraction.
Take the most urgent AI request on your agenda this week. Run it through the five questions before the next meeting.
If the request cannot name the event, decision, evidence, owner and work to stop, it is still anxiety wearing a project plan.
Your move.