Selective unavailability is your competitive advantage

There is a statistic about second-time founders that puzzles the venture capital world. Compared to first-timers, they raise capital 30% faster, achieve product-market fit in half the time, and exit at 3.2x higher valuations. The conventional explanation is "experience," assuming they have better networks and better pattern recognition capabilities. But that’s half the story.

The other half of the story is about what they have learned to ignore.

If you answer emails within the hour, never let a Slack message wait, and believe that constant availability equals commitment, then read on.

I followed the above routine for seven years while building CreditVidya, my responsiveness being my badge of honour. One of my most-liked LinkedIn comments was: "Hustle satisfies my soul." Then I had a stroke. My body shut down. Forced into stillness, I watched the data on my own performance shift in ways I couldn't ignore.

What I learned: The obsession with responsiveness isn't a strategic asset. It is a neurological trap that keeps you reactive instead of strategic.

This article will show you how elite founders leverage selective unavailability as a competitive advantage, and why you don't need a stroke to learn it.

Hustle is a moral issue

When I say "moral issue," I don't mean ethics but the invisible value system that has developed around exhaustion as a personality trait, whereby working nonstop is associated with ambition, whereas rest feels like guilt. From childhood conditioning, we absorbed a simple truth: The harder you work, the more you are worth.

This worked beautifully in a certain age, but we kept applying industrial-age rules to a cognitive-age game, and ended up wondering why we feel perpetually exhausted but never ahead. This is because we were trained to be workers, not leaders.

Illusion #1: Exhaustion is a virtue

The industrial economy needed a specific type of worker: one who equated hours with output. One who felt guilty for stillness. One who measured worth in sweat. My father moved to Kathmandu with 100 rupees in his pocket in search of a better life. He worked as a street vendor, selling shoes on the pavement where I spent my early childhood. For him, the equation was linear: More Hours = More Money.

But this equation fails for knowledge work.

Three decades later, I am sitting in a climate-controlled office, being paid to think about market strategy. My "work" is invisible. No sweat. No products to move. Yet when I block two hours to just think, my body triggers a guilt alarm.

I feel the urge to "do something." This is what psychologists call Action Bias. We prefer the feeling of futile effort over the anxiety of strategic stillness.

We act like goalkeepers.

In a famous study of elite soccer goalkeepers, researchers analysed penalty kicks. Statistically, the best chance of saving a kick is to stay in the centre. However, goalkeepers dive left or right on 94% of kicks.

Why? Because if they stand still and miss, they look foolish. If they dive and miss, at least they "made an effort."

We dive into emails because standing still feels like failure, even when it is the winning move.

Illusion #2: High-status people are always busy

Modern culture has moralised "busyness". It has sold us the lie that a full calendar is a proxy for importance. Research confirms that we perceive busy people as having higher social status and more money.

Listen to how your managers talk:

"Absolutely swamped."
"Back-to-back all week."
"Drowning, but loving it."

These aren't complaints. They are status signals. They are proof that we matter.

But observe the hierarchy in any organisation. The entry-level employee is tracked by the minute. The middle manager is tracked by the meeting. The owner is tracked by the quarter.

The higher you go up the value chain, the less visible work you do, but the system wants you to be busy.

Illusion #3: My worth comes from my output

This is the deepest manipulation. The one that makes the first two stick.

Why is it so hard to sit in a room alone?

Psychologists call this Identity Fusion. We have conflated who we are with what we do. Our self-worth has become contingent on our output

This is why the empty calendar slot induces anxiety. It triggers an identity threat. The silence forces you to confront the uncomfortable question: "Who am I when I am not solving problems?"

The system doesn't want you to sit with that question. Because the answer- "I am valuable beyond my productivity" - is revolutionary.

These three illusions - exhaustion as virtue, busyness as status, output as worth - work together to keep you perpetually available. They make selective unavailability feel not just impractical, but morally wrong.

But here's what that constant availability is actually doing to your brain:

The Neuroscience of the “A-ha” moment

When you succumb to these pressures and answer the call, you aren't just wasting time. You are chemically blocking your eureka moment.

Your brain operates on two primary, anti-correlated networks:

1. The Task-Positive Network (TPN): This is the "get it done" mode. It activates when you answer emails or navigate spreadsheets.
2. The Default Mode Network (DMN): This is the "Incubation Engine." It is responsible for connecting general ideas, future planning, and strategic synthesis.

You cannot be in both states at once. When you answer the phone, the TPN activates, and the DMN is physically suppressed.

Consider your last breakthrough idea. It likely didn't happen while you were white-knuckling a problem at your desk. It happened in the shower, or on a drive, or on a walk. Neuroscience has mapped this. Just before a "gamma burst" (the moment of insight), the brain requires an "alpha burst" - a sensory gating mechanism that shuts out external inputs.

Every notification you check destroys the alpha burst. Every "quick question" you answer pries open the sensory gate. By being perpetually responsive, you are structurally preventing your brain from entering the state required for high-leverage work.

The business case: 10x vs. 1x decisions

This brings us to the fundamental economic argument for unavailability.

In the industrial age, you were paid for your hands. In the cognitive age, you are paid for your judgment.

The amateur optimises for volume. They make twenty "1x" decisions a day: answering emails, approving expenses, attending updates. Each one provides a dopamine hit of productivity. But the cumulative value is negligible.

The elite optimises for magnitude. They aim for one "10x" decision a month: the strategic pivot, the new product category, the acquisition.

This is the math of high leverage. One correct 10x decision is worth more than a thousand 1x decisions.

But here is the catch: You cannot arrive at a 10x decision while reacting to 1x stimuli. 10x decisions require the DMN. They require the "alpha burst." They require you to step out of the stream of "now" to see the "future."

If you are busy, you are deciding on the urgent at the expense of the vital. You are bankrupting your future to pay for your present.

But the true elite - the people you admire, the ones who change industries rather than just managing them - have broken free from this trap.

How the elite "schedule nothing"

The difference between a frantic executive and a visionary leader is often found in their calendar.

• Jeff Bezos: The founder of Amazon, famously refuses to schedule meetings before 10 AM. He calls this his "puttering time" - space to read, drink coffee, and let his mind wander before the decision-fatigue sets in.
• Warren Buffett: If you saw his calendar, you would panic. It often contains only three or four entries per week. His philosophy is blunt: "It’s not a proxy of your seriousness that you fill every minute".
• Jeff Weiner: The former CEO of LinkedIn, scheduled 30 to 90 minutes of "buffer time" every day. He realised that without this white space, he could not process information or coach his team effectively. He called this nothingness his "single most important productivity tool".

These leaders are not resting in the sense of "recovering from exhaustion." They are engaging in High-Leverage Cognition. They understand that a single strategic insight, born from stillness, is worth more than a thousand hours of grinding.

They treat "nothing" as a verb. It is an active state.

• Darwin worked in three short bursts and spent the rest of the day walking his "Sandwalk," kicking stones to track his "three-flint problems".
• Einstein formulated the theory of relativity while working a "boring, menial job" at the patent office that allowed his mind to wander.

The manifesto: Let it ring

The phone is ringing right now. Not literally, perhaps, but metaphorically. The phantom vibration in your pocket. The red dot on the app. The "urgent" request is actually just someone else's anxiety projected onto your time. Your instinct, honed by years of "hustle culture" and inherited guilt, is to answer. You are afraid that if you don't pick up, you will miss an opportunity.

You are answerable to no one but yourself

The caller will be there in two hours. The email will wait. Let it ring. Sit in the discomfort. Wait for the sediment to settle. Wait for the alpha waves to gate out the noise. In that silence, you won't find the validation you think you need, but you will find the strategy you have been too busy to hear. The genius inside you needs that pause, so let it ring… loud and clear.