The article explores how cognitive fitness — the balance between high performance and intentional recovery — is essential for sustainable leadership. CEO Salli Hara shares her journey of learning to slow down, emphasizing that rest, boredom, and self-awareness enhance creativity and long-term success. Performance coach Heikki Huovinen reinforces that true productivity comes not from constant busyness but from mastering the art of recovery.

Salli Hara, CEO of Prysmian Nordics, has spent more than a decade in the C-suite of the global cabling solutions provider. Through her journey from legal partner to HR director to CEO, she has come to understand the psychology of dopamine hits — the subtle thrill that drives constant accomplishment. 

“I can get into things very passionately,” she said, admitting that the surge of dopamine is addictive. Not afraid of new challenges, Hara has risen through the ranks: first joining as an HR director for Finland at the Italian company, later becoming country manager in Sweden, and finally serving as CEO.

Salli Hara is the CEO of Prysmian Nordics, a leading cabling solutions provider.

The intensity of leadership roles has inspired Hara to explore a new kind of discipline: optimizing the mental load and improving what she calls her cognitive fitness —  a skill taught by Heikki Huovinen, a co-founder of Mental Race Oy.

Huovinen defines cognitive fitness as our brain's potential to perform now and in the long term. In his work with executives and Formula 1 drivers alike, he describes it as “the physiological and psychological foundation from which we can all perform in the tasks that really matter to us.”

Balancing performance and recovery, however, is rarely easy — especially for those used to excelling. “It's been a learning curve,” Hara said. “There have been moments when I’ve been so overloaded with everything in my life that I have hit the wall, where you have to say, I'm not okay. This is not okay. I don't feel okay.”

“Is it really worth contributing to the universe by disappearing?”

— Salli Hara

Those moments of overload, she explains, have taught her that slowing down is not only healthy — it’s essential. “In the longer run or mid-term, I'm starting to hurt myself as a human being, and everything else will disappear from my life, and I disappear from myself, and then the question is: is it really worth contributing to the universe by disappearing? I don't think so. I can lose my identity, I can lose really myself.”

The Unseen Infrastructure of Performance

According to Huovinen, the two most important pillars of cognitive fitness are physical recovery and psychological rest. “It’s not hard for us to push hard,” he explained. “It’s hard for us to rest.” That difficulty, he says, creates what he calls 'enjoyable busyness' — a kind of dopamine-fueled overdrive that keeps ambitious leaders feeling productive, even as their focus and empathy quietly erode.

Modern neuroscience supports this view. Dr. Kerry Ressler, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, writes in the Harvard Business Review that stress interferes with cognition, attention, and memory (HBR, 2021). Meanwhile, a 2022 Deloitte and Workplace Intelligence report found that nearly 70% of the 2,100 C-suite respondents surveyed were considering leaving their roles for positions that better support well-being.

Hara’s description of the executive’s high-alert mode — that constant sense of being switched on — mirrors what Huovinen calls the ‘addiction to arousal.’ “High achievers enjoy being busy,” he said. “We get a sense of status, we feel we’re advancing something. But physiologically, we need the opposite state — low arousal — for creativity, memory consolidation, and emotional stability.”

Learning to Downshift

"You can train it, like a muscle.”

– Heikki Huovinen

Both experts agree: the hardest part isn’t knowing you need rest — it’s transitioning from high speed to stillness. Huovinen compares it to telling a hunting wolf to stop mid-chase and tend to its pups. “It’s the transition that’s hard,” he said. “But you can train it, like a muscle. You stop, you accept that it feels bad, and you repeat it — until it starts to feel good.”

Hara has developed her own pragmatic techniques for downshifting. When she notices her mental gears spinning too fast, she sometimes watches old movie reruns — “something I know will not surprise me,” she explained. “It tricks my mind not to think, not to act.” Other times, she suggests movement.

“Living bored is good for you. Maybe it’s a t-shirt I should wear.”

— Salli Hara

On clear autumn days, she recommends going out for a walk — but deliberately reducing the pace, resisting the Nordic instinct to rush. “Physically, you reduce your speed,” she says, adding that despite the feeling that people might be looking at you, “actually, nobody cares.”

For Hara, this act of slowing down is not laziness — it’s leadership. In other words, your next great idea might not come from another meeting, but from watching paint dry. As she put it with characteristic humor, “Living bored is good for you. Maybe it’s a t-shirt I should wear.”

“Boredom or not doing anything gives you something so that you can recover. You can actually start performing at a much higher level than you could otherwise be doing. That has been the big breakthrough for me. I have not been very good at it.”

In a nutshell, the recipe for relaxation is simple: “Personally, I think everybody needs to find their ways of being a bit bored.”

Redefining Leadership Culture

If individuals can learn to rest, can organizations? Huovinen believes they can. 

The coach advocates for concrete recovery spaces — ‘rest rooms,’ as he calls them — where phones are banned and silence is mandatory. 

Besides environmental interventions, Huovinen talks about the culture. “Leaders need to lead by example,” he says. “If leaders never take breaks, if they send emails at midnight, they’re sending a subconscious message that rest is not acceptable.”

Hara points out that bosses carry heavy responsibilities, including inspiring staff performance, and perhaps that’s partly why fewer entry-level workers aspire to rise up the ranks these days.

Her view is backed by a 2024 study by Korn Ferry that showed that the youngest generation of workers say they would rather be individual contributors than middle managers. The trend is called “conscious unbossing,” which sheds light on the unrewarding aspects of being a leader.

A cultural intervention can go both ways. “Companies need an environment where it’s okay to care about people,” she said, explaining that as a leader, she values when employees are open about what’s hindering their performance — sleeplessness, family challenges, or other stressors — so that adjustments or support can be made proactively.

Caring can start with something as simple as lifting your eyes from the keyboard. “It’s beautiful when someone looks at you and asks, ‘Are you fine? You look tired,’” she says. Or how one busy day, someone made her happy with a quick comment: “I just wanted to make sure you have time for lunch.”

Hara is also critical of what she calls the culture of fake busyness. “I don’t want to hear that ‘I'm so tired because I'm working so hard, I'm some kind of a working hero.’ It is not the discussion I want to have,” she said. “I've been working in different environments, and there are these working heroes who label busy as being great -- nothing to do with getting the result or not. To me, this is fake performance.”

For her, being human is not a weakness but a strength. “Why praise a superhuman idea of working with little sleep? It is great that you don't need more than three hours of sleep. Good for you. Unfortunately, I need my nine hours.”

In the era of AI, Hara sees new challenges emerging. With information overload and constant digital stimuli, our attention is more fragile than ever. “In the future, perhaps AI agents will get most of our work done for us and we can focus on farming tomatoes or carrots,” she said, half-jokingly, “but the unpredictable toll of mental strain from using AI is not yet well researched.”

‘Work hard and rest harder’

The irony of high performance, Huovinen reminds, is that it thrives on idleness. Elite athletes and musicians practice for roughly four hours a day — and spend the rest recovering, socializing, and reflecting. “If we try to push eight hours in a row, we lose productivity,” he said. “We should work hard and rest harder.”

That may sound indulgent in the world of quarterly results and KPIs, but science backs his point. A 2022 study in Current Biology found that after prolonged mental effort, people tend to make decisions favoring short-term relief over long-term benefits — a biological safeguard against cognitive fatigue. In simpler terms, exhausted leaders make worse strategic calls.

Perhaps that’s why Salli Hara’s quiet morning walks feel so radical. In an economy obsessed with acceleration, choosing to slow down is both a personal rebellion and a strategic advantage. As she puts it: “Nobody is making me run. I choose when to be active — and when not to be.”

About the Experts

Heikki Huovinen is a Finnish performance coach specializing in cognitive fitness, executive development, and high-stakes performance under pressure. He has coached senior leaders, elite athletes, and Formula 1 drivers.

Salli Hara is the CEO of Prysmian Group Scandinavia, a global leader in energy and telecommunications cable systems. She has over 20 years of experience leading multinational teams across the Nordic region and Europe. Prysmian Nordics operates across seven countries, with five factories, 1,250 employees, and over €1 billion in annual revenue.