Fasting from Leadership and Other Self-Inflicted Sabbaticals

James Robinson • August 15, 2024

What are you doing to renew, relearn, and reprioritize?

I remember listening to an interview between Tim Ferris and Jerry Colonna, the famed CEO coach. I was excited to listen to the conversation as Jerry's book Reboot set the stage for me to enroll in an ICF program for Jungian Coaching. During the interview, I learned that Jerry goes on sabbaticals to recharge, refresh, and rejuvenate. It helps him be a better coach, a more present human, a better father, and loyal friend.


From June- November, I fasted from leadership and focused my energy  on becoming a Jungian Coach and to review and study  leadership and  charter schools-- where I've spent the last 14 years of my life.  While I’ve not taken time off to rest, per se, fasting from educational leadership– has been a powerful experience. Stepping away does helped me feel rested, but also allows newer perspectives to emerge as I worked through my days. 


Many of the insights and learnings helped me identify an organization I could serve authentically while also finding  ways to apply lessons from my six-month hiatus and fast . Some of those changes are based on a series of talks I posted on my YouTube Channel-- The Courage Gap. 

The channel itself is not for the faint of heart nor is it entertaining-- but it served its purpose in helping me readjust.


One of those perspectives is, why don’t more organizations prioritize sabbaticals or leadership fasts for leaders? 


In my day industry, an 8-week sabbatical, on a cycle of three-years, could do wonders for school leaders, district leaders and network leaders alike.


Yes, there’s the rest and rejuvenation element– but there’s also the perspective you gain about yourself, the people around you and the field of education with all of its complexities and nuanced challenges. 


Sometimes engaging in the day-to-day , the urgent, and the tactical just doesn’t allow enough space to evaluate current tactics and strategies – and so we continue on autopilot, and sometimes get burnt out. Allowing leaders a sabbatical helps them observe the sector from a distance, and more objectively.  With that comes new opportunities to do things better and differently because you take the time to see things that way. 


And the public doesn’t necessarily need to foot the bill for school leader sabbaticals. There are a lot of creative people in the world, and I’m sure there’s some finance team that could build a fast growing fund for leaders to invest in their sabbaticals in some pretax way. 


We just have to think differently. 


If that’s not possible, although I think it is,   then engaging in leadership micro-fasting by visiting another district , network and city works just fine.


When I was a principal and principal manager, I made it a point to visit another city and other schools just to reset, learn, and contribute. 


Here’s why it was valuable:


  1. It’s an incentive:  In order to do one of these trips to another network , school , and city, it’s imperative to make sure your own school is running well. You can’t really be absent from your school if it’s not running at a high level. This is just not just because it’s the wrong thing to do, it’s also because you want to be fully present on these trips.  If you are receiving calls and texts because things have gone awry, it’s just too hard to focus. 
  2. Learning: There’s nothing better than visiting another school and walking with different leaders– especially if their model and program is different than yours. In fact, it should be a little different– even a lot different-– because new knowledge happens when we evaluate the differences between what we know and what we encounter. Plus the perspective of other leaders is valuable.
  3. Contribute and Connect: Any time I’ve done a visit to another school, other leaders ask for feedback or some kind of debrief. It’s a generous exchange for everybody AND you just connected with somebody whom you can email in the future with a question.


So this week, ask yourself what you’re doing to renew, reflect and learn. It’s important and could save your career.


But if you want more of a cognitive and spiritual workout that affords reflection, renewal and learning, Jungian coaching might be for you. It will help you become more creative, unstuck and  may change your perspective on a lot of things– with that comes opportunities. Additionally, it helps you step away from the urgent, to settle in,  to think,  and to re-evaluate. So, it’s kind of like a micro-sabbatical every couple of weeks. You deserve at least that, don’t you?  Email me at james@miningandshining.com for a free Resilience Assessment OR persona assessment and a consultation.

A Swarm of Lemmings:Writers' Passive Suicide and the Crisis in K-12 Literacy – Implications for Western Civilization

By James Robinson • March 7, 2026
A swarm of lemmings continues their march to the proverbial sea, attracted by a temporary vision of sun and beauty, but ultimately distracted by that vision—thus, they fall off the cliff in a passive suicide. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Their deaths were the consequence of distraction alone. In this allegory, the lemmings are writers (and many in publishing) who ignore the erosion in elementary schools and K-12 education. Writers may create brilliant work, but if students graduate without the skills to engage deeply, our audience vanishes. From a cultural perspective, this is alarming—and the stakes extend to the health of Western civilization itself. In my day job, as Executive Director of a small non-profit, I oversee a pre-K program, a charter school, and our efforts to revitalize a publishing company re-dedicated to high-quality children's books, which we're strongly considering. These trends hit close to home: we're building foundations early because the data shows the stakes are high—not just for individuals, but for the shared knowledge, critical reasoning, and civic discourse that have sustained Western democratic traditions for centuries. Key trends: Average Grade Level of Books Sold Now vs. 1950: Decline Toward Grade 5–7 Bestsellers today often score 5th–7th grade on Flesch-Kincaid (many 4th–6th for broad appeal), with simpler sentences and vocabulary to match declining adult reading stamina. Mid-20th-century works frequently demanded more (closer to 7th–9th in analyses), reflecting a market shift toward accessibility amid falling literacy. Didactic vs. Non-Didactic vs. Classics: Effects on Brain Development Narrative-driven reading (non-didactic stories or classics) sustains broader brain activation—engaging language, empathy, memory, and connectivity regions more effectively than passive or overly didactic methods. Neuroscience shows immersive storytelling promotes neuroplasticity and deeper neural pathways, while fragmented/instructional approaches may limit sustained engagement and cognitive depth needed for complex literature. If Trends Continue: What Will Texts Look Like in the Future—4th Grade? Pleasure reading has plummeted ~40% over 20 years (daily readers from 28% peak in 2004 to 16% in 2023); adult literacy scores dropped sharply (many below 6th grade); NAEP reading scores remain at historic lows. Unchecked, popular texts could simplify to 4th-grade or lower: basic vocabulary, short sentences, reduced nuance—eroding space for sophisticated writing. These declines threaten more than literacy: they undermine the foundations of Western civilization. Deep reading fosters critical thinking, empathy, and shared cultural references essential to informed citizenship and democratic debate. As reading wanes, societies risk shallower discourse, greater susceptibility to manipulation, weakened civic engagement, and a fraying of the reflective reasoning that has driven progress, innovation, and self-governance in the West. This isn't inevitable. Writers and creators bring storytelling, imagination, and engagement that schools and early programs need most. Call to Action: Get involved in schools and early education. Ask kids about the books you remember reading when you were a kid– The Oddyssey, Of Mice and Men, Leaves of Grass. Advocate for narrative-rich curricula, or support initiatives like ours in pre-K and charter settings. Or send me an email, I'd love to chat. When we relaunch our website in the summer, we'll have some exciting news. We have a lot of work to do-- and we're all learning from it.

Venturing into the Courage Gap, #1

By James Robinson • February 21, 2026
Pushing and Pulling The "push" connotes aggression whereas the "pull" connotes invitation. The "push" is a criticism, and the "pull" is coffee and advice at a nice cafe selected just for the advisee. Both are needed in different measures, at different times and often towards the same ends. In 2024, I engaged in a sabbatical to step back, read, study, think, and reflect about schools and leading through the pandemic. It was a very prolific period. However, what made it prolific was the "push"-- spending days reviewing data and learning to criticize the sector I worked in. The Courage Gap Talks document those learnings, in the most lo-fi way. They're ugly, but they inform the work and solutions we're imlpementing at the park, where our goal is to "pull" folks into a transformative educational envioronment. Originally, they were called "Career-Suicide Notebooks", the original plan being to walk away from education all together. Instead, what I learned will inform my work for years. It's been said that Buddhist monks can see the world in a grain of rice. After being immersed in education for several years, I see the world in a school ecosystem. Thus, schools enter my creative work and the way I think about creativity enters my work in schools. The first video is called 33% and it looks at the proficiency scores of 4th grade students on the NAEP Assessment. Additionally, it looks at the broad economy that works to maintain the status quo.