THE FALLOW YEARS

THE FALLOW YEARS

The farmers knew. You can't plant the same crop year after year and expect the land to keep giving. Every three years, you let the ground lie fallow - not abandoned, not wasted, but resting. Regenerating. Preparing to yield more than it could have otherwise.

I understand this intellectually. I apply it with my clients. I'm struggling to apply it to myself.

Many of you reading this will recognise the type. Driven. A 'get-stuff-done' person. Perhaps impatient. The kind who sees busy people and reads that as success - always give a task to a busy person, they're the ones who deliver. That is how I have always seen myself. I am a doer. I am an achiever. I am, I admit, the person who takes their iPhone to the bathroom.

And yet.

I did enough sport in my twenties to know that you shouldn't push hard every day. If you want to keep improving, you need rest days. The science today is even clearer: peak performance comes from intensity once or twice a week, not relentless effort. The rest of the time? Steady state.

So here is my question - to myself, and to you: when do you give yourself time to lie fallow?

I can point to one place I do this well. Before every coaching session, I take fifteen minutes to clear my mind and prepare to be fully present. It is a form of fallow - and without it, I cannot do my best work. I know that with certainty.

At the macro level, I am not doing so well. Q1 2026 has been quieter than last year - deliberately so, because last year was busier than I wanted. I told myself to say yes less. To make space for reflection, for learning, for reading. And yet, rather than embrace it, I have been pushing against the quiet. Resisting the very thing I know I need.

As a coach, heal thyself.

The first move is awareness. I need to notice the signs that I am reaching for speed when I should be breathing into stillness. I need to understand the triggers - the habits, the reflexes - that pull me towards doing when I should be resting. And I need to decide what permission looks like: what structures or commitments would make slowing down feel like a choice rather than a failure.

My head knows what to do. My body is not yet convinced.

I suspect I am not alone in this. The very qualities that drive high performance - urgency, appetite, the inability to leave gaps unfilled - are the same qualities that make genuine rest feel uncomfortable. Almost suspicious. But the fallow ground is not empty. It is working. And so are we, when we let ourselves stop.

What would it mean for you to let the ground lie fallow - even briefly? I'd genuinely welcome your thoughts.

Best regards,

Xenia

Wickett Advisory

Sign up to my monthly newsletter here