As I mentioned last week, I spent several days on a silent meditation retreat. It was, in a word, restorative. But this isn’t really about me. It’s about how you can finally make meaningful progress on your idea, project, or plan you’ve been thinking about—but not actually working on.
Retreats have been part of human life for a very long time. Monastics across traditions stepped away from ordinary routines so their attention could settle and their practice could deepen.
In the twentieth century, S. N. Goenka helped popularize ten-day Vipassana courses, and Western teachers like Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and Jon Kabat-Zinn brought related practices to the U.S. The basic premise hasn’t changed: remove the usual frictions, protect attention, and let the mind quiet long enough to do deep work.
We have secular versions of this, too. Writers and artists disappear to residencies. Scientists retreat to field stations or quiet labs. Ministers and educators take sabbatical. Company leaders hold offsites—shorter in duration, but with a similar intention: reduce noise so the work that matters has a chance.
The first time I signed up for a multi-day retreat, I had no idea what I was doing. I had all the fears you might expect: What happens when I put down the phone, step away from travel and calls, and sit with my own mind?
And then, that first evening when silence begins, something else arrived—calm. In a remote, beautiful place, my thinking slowed, my nervous system downshifted, and the need to distract myself faded.
Over the next days I sat in meditation, read, journaled, and walked. I was still keeping myself busy, but it was a big departure from my usual busy life.
Since then I’ve sat roughly ten multi-day retreats and designed a few writing retreats of my own: rent a modest, quiet Airbnb, go alone, and spend a long weekend on a single piece of work. Every time, the pattern repeats. Attention, once protected, becomes capable of things that feel impossible in the middle of everyday life.
Cal Newport calls this “deep work”—cognitively demanding work performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your abilities and creates real value. You don’t need to be a monk to get it, but you do need conditions. That’s what a retreat offers: the conditions for depth.
If a formal retreat isn’t feasible right now, you can still create your own.
Choose a place within an hour of home—quiet, preferably in nature, and just inconvenient enough that you won’t pop out for errands. Go with one focus only: a book chapter, a new offer, a curriculum draft, a thorny strategic problem. Bring simple food you don’t have to think about cooking/prep. During work blocks, close email, texts, and Slack; put the phone in another room. Make a humane rhythm—two or three blocks of 90–120 minutes, walks between, early lights-out.
Expect the little voice that says, I’ll just check my email real quick. That’s how hours disappear. As Eisenhower put it, “What is important is seldom urgent, and what is urgent is seldom important.”
You’ll notice the difference afterward. Not the tired satisfaction of a busy day, but the steadier feeling that comes from having thought clearly and made something real. You’ll come back with pages written, decisions made, a plan you trust—and, maybe more importantly, the sense that your attention still belongs to you.
And if time or budget are tight, run a mini-retreat. Half a day at a library, a public garden, or a friend’s empty living room can shift more than you think—provided you hold the same rules: one focus, protected attention, simple breaks, no “just checking.”
Retreats aren’t only for meditation or manuscripts; they’re for remembering how to think when you give yourself the right conditions. If you’ve been circling an idea for months, this is your nudge. Pick dates. Choose a place. Decide the one thing you’ll work on. Then go.
Big Love,
Parker