The Three Habits That Keep Me Clear-Headed as a CTO

Being a CTO is not a sport for the faint of heart.

The really important decisions often arrive:

• with incomplete information,
• under pressure,
• in the middle of notifications, meetings, and technical surprises.

For a while I thought the answer was “just work more and harder.”
Then I realized something simple, but uncomfortable:

If I don’t protect my mental clarity, I’m sabotaging my own work.

Over the years I’ve built a few personal habits that have nothing to do with yet another framework or tool, but that directly impact the quality of the decisions I make every day.

They revolve around three very concrete pillars:

• daily routines and method,
• sport as decompression,
• disconnection and authenticity as actual work tools, not “optional perks.”

Daily routines and method: sport, disconnection, authenticity

There is no clarity without discipline.
I’m not talking about “military” discipline, but about micro-habits which, combined, make a big difference.

A “typical” day that works for me

Not every day is perfect (far from it). But when things are going well, I’m usually sticking more or less to this pattern:

• Early morning: body first

  • No email and no Slack right after waking up.
  • A bit of movement (a run before breakfast helps to clear the fog from my mind).
  • A proper “champion’s breakfast”: generous but balanced.
  • 5–10 minutes to clarify: what is truly important today?

• Work morning: deep focus on decisions

  • Time blocks dedicated to complex decisions and strategic thinking.
  • “Heavy” meetings (technical alignment, important 1:1s) when my head is fresh.
  • Zero multitasking: either I talk to a person, or I think about a problem. Not both at the same time.

• Afternoon: execution and support

  • Answers, feedback, review of technical proposals.
  • Slots to “be available” for the team, without letting the entire day become just reactive.

• Evening: real disconnection (at least for a few hours)

  • No tabs left open “just in case”.
  • Notifications limited to the bare minimum.
  • Mental space free to be filled with completely different things.

I don’t manage to do this every day, but I’ve noticed something:
when I systematically skip these pillars, my decisions get worse.
I become more nervous, more superficial, more impulsive.

The common thread: authenticity

Routine and method are not there to turn me into a machine.
They are there, paradoxically, to allow me to be more authentic:

• If I’m tired, I say so.
• If I don’t have enough data to decide, I admit it.
• If I can’t properly follow something, I don’t pretend otherwise.

This authenticity starts from basic self-care: if I treat myself as an infinite resource to be squeezed, I’ll end up treating the team the same way.

Sport as decompression (not performance)

For years I treated sport as just another thing to optimize: times, results, progress.
Now I see it differently:

Sport is the moment when my brain stops being a CTO and goes back to being just a body that moves.

What sport really gives me

It’s not just about “being fit because it’s good for your health” (which is true, but generic).
What I feel directly in my work is:

• Mental reset

  • After a workout, problems that seemed stuck often become clearer.
  • Priorities get reshuffled: what was “super urgent” stops feeling so absolute.

• Reduction of background noise

  • Technical anxiety (possible incidents, endless backlog, future risks) goes down.
  • What’s left is the rational part: “okay, what can I concretely do right now?”

• Better conflict management

  • When I’ve burned off physical tension, it’s much harder for me to react impulsively on a call.
  • I can separate the person from the technical issue much more easily.

You don’t need to be an athlete, you need to be consistent

It doesn’t matter what sport you do. What matters is consistency, not epicness:

• a light run,
• a long walk,
• a swim,
• a bike ride,
• even just 20–30 minutes of real movement.

The key point is this:

Time dedicated to sport is not time taken away from work; it’s time invested so you don’t work badly.

When I skip sport for too long, I start compensating with:

• more hours at my desk,
• more caffeine,
• more pointless scrolling.

And none of those things make me any clearer.

How to disconnect in order to think better

In the CTO role, disconnection is never total, I know.
But there’s a huge difference between “always reachable” and “always connected.”

Disconnecting doesn’t mean disappearing

Disconnecting means:

• creating protected windows, during which:

  • nobody expects an immediate response,
  • I can stay with a problem calmly,
  • I can also allow myself not to think about work.

• having clear channels for real emergencies

  • “If something explodes, call me here.”
  • Everything else can wait.

Why disconnection improves thinking quality

When I’m always connected:

• I think in terms of reactivity, not strategy,
• I respond just to put out fires, not to prevent future ones,
• I make short-term decisions because I have no mental space for the mid/long term.

When I allow myself time to disconnect instead:

• some ideas arrive later, but in a much better form:
  • in the shower,
  • while walking,
  • while doing something completely different;
• I stop confusing noise with signal:
  • not everything that comes through Slack deserves my attention,
  • not everything urgent is important.

One thing I’ve learned to do is protect “deep focus” time blocks in my calendar, explicitly communicated to the team.
Not because I’m “important,” but because:

If the CTO never finds time to think, the company ends up flying blind.

The role of authenticity in decision making

The last pillar, the one that ties all the others together, is authenticity.

I don’t mean it in an abstract sense. I mean in very concrete decisions:

• saying “I don’t know” when I really don’t know;
• saying “I need time to think about it” instead of answering on impulse;
• saying “this is a risk I accept” instead of hiding behind vague wording.

Why authenticity is a technical asset

It might sound like a “soft” topic, but it has very hard impacts on the technical side:

• It improves the quality of information

  • If the team feels I can hear bad news without exploding, problems surface earlier.
  • Developers are not afraid to say “this solution is fragile” or “we won’t make that deadline.”

• It reduces bias in decisions

  • I can admit when a past choice isn’t working.
  • I can change my mind without turning the discussion into an ego battle.

• It builds trust

  • A genuine “I’m not convinced, let’s talk about it” is worth more than a perfectly polished but empty answer.
  • The team understands that my priority is not “being right,” but making the best possible decision.

Authenticity and vulnerability are not weakness

Being authentic doesn’t mean complaining or dumping anxiety on the team.
It means:

• showing that I, too, have limits,
• but that I take responsibility for managing them in an adult way.

Mental discipline comes into play exactly here:

The more I take care of my balance, the more I can afford to be transparent without losing clarity.

If I’m exhausted, I become cynical.
If I’m clear-headed, I can be honest without becoming destructive.

In closing

The three habits that keep me clear-headed as a CTO are not magical:

1. Daily routines and method

   • a few fixed rituals,
   • protection of focus time,
   • space not to be just a “human machine.”

2. Sport as decompression

   • not for performance,
   • but to release tension and reset the brain.

3. Disconnection and authenticity

   • to think better,
   • to make cleaner decisions,
   • to build a context in which the whole team can stay clear-headed.

Technology moves fast, problems change, stacks become obsolete in just a few years.
What remains is how we use our attention, our time, and our minds.

And in the end, in the CTO role, mental discipline really is the best technical ally we have.