The Heat Haze – Why School Leaders Can't Always Switch Off
School leaders often don't notice when this begins.
You're still capable. Still the one who has everything under control, still ticking through the list, still fine by every outward measure.
But internally, the noise hasn't switched off. And in a week that was meant to feel spacious - six weeks stretching out ahead - it's starting to feel crowded instead.
Even in the holidays, the demands don't fully stop. There's data still to make sense of. A new year already taking shape before this one has properly closed. Somewhere in the background, a list keeps building of everything that needs deciding before September.
Internally, the effect is a kind of low hum. Thoughts arrive faster than you can finish them. Decisions from last term keep replaying, uninvited, long after they were made.
Sitting in the garden, book open, sun on the page - and the words don't go in. Eyes closed to relax, and the mind still moves, quietly listing everything left to do.
Part of it is that the school year doesn't really end when the gates close. Emails still land. Plans for September still need shaping, even loosely, even in the back of your mind.
There's rarely a clean line between "finished" and "starting again" - just a slow overlap, where one year is still being tidied up while the next one is already being sketched out.
You know how to rest. You've done it before, and you'll do it again. It isn't that the skill has gone.
But somewhere in the last few days, "just having a quick look" at something work-related has started to feel less like curiosity and more like reaching for solid ground - because sitting still, doing nothing, has started to feel harder than doing something.
It starts to feel like heat haze.
On a hot day, the air just above the ground begins to shimmer. Nothing is standing in your way. There's no fog, no obstruction, nothing physically blocking the view. It's just that the heat itself bends the light, so that whatever you're looking at won't quite hold still.
You can still see. You're not lost. But nothing comes into focus the way it should, and the very thing that was supposed to bring relief - the sun, the warmth, the stretch of open time - is what's doing the distorting.
There's something almost interesting about it, if you let yourself notice it rather than fight it. It doesn't feel like a fault. It just feels like too much brightness, with nowhere yet for it to settle.
And here's the part that often goes unseen.
When last year hasn't finished settling and next year is already asking to begin, thinking gets narrower, not clearer. Small decisions start to feel disproportionately hard. The pull toward urgency - opening the laptop "just for ten minutes" — becomes stronger than the pull toward rest, because urgency at least feels like movement.
And so the break, the one thing that was meant to create space, quietly gets carried into instead of stepped into.
At some point, it stops being about coping - and starts shaping the kind of leader you are able to be when the new term actually arrives.
This isn't a capacity problem. It's a sequencing problem.
Last year hasn't finished emptying out. And you can't properly fill something that hasn't yet been emptied.
More effort isn't the answer here. Neither is more thinking, or trying harder to relax.
Because what's missing isn't willpower — it's space. Specifically, space for last year to finish before next year is allowed to begin.
In coaching, something different happens.
There's no interruption. No performance, no need to arrive with it already resolved. You get to follow a thought all the way through, uninterrupted, for what might be the first time in months.
It isn't about being told what to do next. It's the relief of finally hearing your own thinking clearly, without the haze around it.
If you've recognised yourself in this, this isn't something you fix by pushing harder. Coaching becomes the space you've been missing
Here's What I've Learnt
You haven't lost the ability to rest, or to think clearly - it's still there. Thinking returns on its own once there's genuine space for it. And clarity was never something that could be forced into arriving early.
Carry This With You
● Notice the next time you reach for "just a quick look" — is it curiosity, or is it reaching for solid ground?
● Give last year permission to properly finish before you ask yourself to begin the next one.
● Ask yourself: what would it feel like to rest without an agenda attached to it?
Rest isn't something you fit in around everything else. It's something you let finish.
The Whisper
Your mind isn't the problem.
What would change if you let last year finish before you started the next one?
I help school leaders who feel like they’re slowly disappearing into the job -
find their way back.
If this resonates, I offer a complimentary 30 ‑ minute session where we focus on one thing that’s on your mind.
A simple space to step back, think clearly, and begin to feel like yourself again.