In Adam McKay’s 2021 satire Don’t Look Up, two scientists discover a comet hurtling toward Earth. Their warning is drowned out by noise and distraction, until the plea “Just look up” becomes a rallying cry. By then it’s less about fear than awakening. A refusal to stay small, busy, and numb. Looking up becomes rebellion, the act of noticing what everyone else ignores.
Founders face their own version of that tension. When the pace accelerates and stakes rise, the instinct is to keep your head down and execute. Yet the very moment when pausing feels least possible is often when it matters most. Looking up, literally and figuratively, may be the smartest, most rebellious move you can make.
Neuroscience backs it up. In The Molecule of More, Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long show that an upward gaze activates dopamine, the molecule of pursuit and imagination. Looking down engages our “here-and-now” chemistry, what is known, controlled, or within reach. Looking up expands the mental horizon. It fuels curiosity, planning, and creativity: biology’s reminder to wander beyond what’s in hand.
But our systems aren’t built for that. From education to entrepreneurship, we’ve created environments that reward precision and control over curiosity and imagination. It’s a pattern Tom Goodwin challenged in Forget Coding, We Need to Teach Our Kids How to Dream, arguing that the future belongs not to the perfectly optimised but to the imaginative, the agile, and the curious. We teach children to code before we teach them to dream, and many founders forget that the same instinct to dream once built their first idea.
Reconnecting to our imagination is only the beginning. The real work is learning how to turn it into a way of life. Harvard researcher Francesca Gino calls this harnessing of creativity “rebel talent”: curiosity with discipline, creativity with purpose. Her work shows that great innovators turn openness into action, asking better questions, seeking diverse views, and wandering beyond their expertise. It’s not rebellion for its own sake; it’s curiosity with structure.
The end of the year offers a natural moment to practise that kind of constructive rebellion. Take a real break, not to plan, but to pause. Let ideas percolate instead of forcing them. Protect unstructured time, read outside your field, talk to people from different avenues of life. Wander. Rest. Your next idea or company might not come from working harder, but from allowing yourself to look up long enough to connect the dots.
“A designed pause is neither indulgence nor escape; it is leadership at its most intelligent”
A designed pause is neither indulgence nor escape; it is leadership at its most intelligent. When everything in you says keep your head down, dare to do the opposite. Step back. Lift your eyes. The next horizon may already be waiting above your current line of sight. They say the sky’s the limit. But for those who dare to look up, it’s only the beginning.
The article was published in the 8th edition of Forbes Luxembourg.
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