Holidays bifurcate into two modes.

Either they are used fully for leisure—or they become deep-work retreats.

There is very little in between.

This year is a good example. I had planned to travel to Japan, but a scheduling conflict kept me in Toronto. Rather than treat that as a loss, it created exactly the conditions that are otherwise very hard to manufacture during the year: quiet, low external obligation, and reduced market noise.

With some markets slowed or closed and social cadence reduced, it became an ideal moment to zoom out—to optimize, refine, and extend the authorship framework forward rather than operate it tactically day-to-day.

The same dynamic applies in summer.

In Europe, August often resolves into a clear fork:

• You are on off the coast somewhere off Italy, fully disengaged

• Or you are working almost entirely in solitude.

Historically, my most meaningful career advances—the things that later look “inevitable” in hindsight—tend to originate in the second scenario.

Not because of grind.

But because solitude compresses cognition.

When the surrounding system slows, you can finally think at the scale the work actually demands.

That’s how I’ve always used holiday seasons: either to genuinely disconnect—or to do the kind of deep, structural work that normal market conditions simply don’t allow.