The Leadership Secret Hiding in Your Hobbies.

As someone who works in technology and cyber, I initially thought book writing was just another passion project—something separate from my “real” work. But the writing process taught me that the most emotionally resilient leaders aren’t those who work 24/7. They’re the ones who protect time for activities that recharge their cognitive and emotional batteries. They understand that stepping away from their primary work often leads to breakthrough thinking.

During our intense writing sessions for Bytes and Breaths: The VitaSphere Quest bytesnbreaths, I discovered that my passion projects weren’t distracting from my leadership thinking—they were enhancing it.

Whether I was reading a thought-provoking article, writing a journal or a blog post, or working on a piano piece, these activities were doing something profound. They were creating new neural pathways, improving my problem-solving abilities, and giving me the cognitive flexibility needed for complex leadership challenges in my tech work.

That weekly piano practice wasn’t just music—it was cognitive cross-training for the intricate character development in our book. Those blog posts weren’t just writing exercises—they were helping me process the emotional regulation themes we were exploring through Zara’s journey.

Your passion projects aren’t separate from your leadership—they’re strategic investments in the kind of leader you want to become.

How does Zara discover her own path to emotional resilience? Find out in our upcoming leadership parable