Neal Schore is an elite executive coach whose new book The 25th Hour is about finding something all of us want: more time in our days. Bookstores are flooded with productivity guides to help you manage your inbox and cut back on unnecessary meetings, but focusing on efficiency won't move the needle as much as looking inward will, Schore argues. In his book, he writes that what's really eating up our precious time and energy is our anxiety, stress, and uncontrolled emotional responses.
In the excerpt below, Schore shares the unexpected strategy that helps his clients tackle the all-too-familiar experience of bouncing back from rejection.
We’ve all been there. You experience a painful setback that sends you spiraling. Not a major life crisis — the kinds of disappointments that your average overachiever perceives as the end of the world, but really aren’t. Maybe it’s learning that you didn’t get that job you really wanted, or that the top three colleges on your list all rejected you, or that your romantic partner wants to take a pause, or that you didn’t get that perfect house you bid on, or that your boss passed you over for a promotion and chose a colleague instead.
Disappointments like these can set off an emotional storm, dealing a harsh blow to your ego while triggering your worst fears. This mental state of misery verging on despair is a problem in and of itself, maybe an even bigger one than the original disappointment, because it prevents you from moving forward. Although it might not seem like it, you have the power to recover from the setback or even come out farther ahead; others in similar situations do it all the time.
But to make a comeback, you must think calmly and rationally, and you must feel motivated to act. Unfortunately, all you want to do right now is flop down on your bed and bury your head in a pillow. So what can you do? How can you shake yourself free of the misery and switch your rational, problem-solving self-back on? Simple: You throw a party.
Your assignment: be miserable
I’m talking, of course, about a very specific kind of party: a “pity party.”
I first came up with this tool many years ago while working with Isabella, a sales manager. One weekday afternoon as we chatted on the phone, she told me she was having a tough day on account of something that had happened at work. She was stuck in a storm of negativity about her job and doubting herself as a professional — she couldn’t work, and she could barely think straight. She couldn’t even get it together enough to use the tools I’d taught her.
Stepping back for a moment, I realized that we couldn’t address an emotional storm like that in a rational way, using words. I wondered if I might have more success by taking a more experiential approach and having her fully give herself over to her emotions rather than trying to manage them. Isabella was a high-functioning, solutions-oriented, high-achieving kind of person. I suspected that if I encouraged her to wallow in her misery, she’d quickly become bored. She’d manage to see outside her emotions, put them behind her, and think more rationally.
I told Isabella that we would take a new tack. She was to set a timer, and for the next four hours, she was to throw a pity party for herself. As the minutes ticked away, she was to allow herself to be absolutely, positively miserable. She wasn’t to use her tools at all. Rather, she could do whatever she tended to do when she was miserable. Maybe it was binge-watching reality TV, or scrolling endless shopping sites on the web, or curling up in a fetal position in bed and putting the pillow over her head. She was to perform an activity like that while thinking about how upset she was about what had happened at work. She was to think about every fear that her situation aroused, every resentment and frustration she felt. She wasn’t to fight the devil any longer. Rather, she was to let the devil own her.
But here’s the catch: Those four hours were all she had to be miserable. The moment her timer dinged, signaling that her pity party was over, I expected her to snap out of it and use her tools to manage herself. She was also to text me to tell me that her pity party was over and to confirm that she was moving forward.
We both hung up, and I went about my day. I was expecting a text from Isabella at six in the evening, but to my surprise, my phone pinged at about five, a full hour before her exercise was supposed to end. She said that she’d wrapped up her pity party early. She was done feeling bad and was focused on moving forward, using her tools to manage her emotions.
Several years later, though, I encountered another client — a senior leader at a large entertainment company named Susan — who was stuck in an emotional storm even more powerful than the one Isabella had encountered. Susan had some personal stuff happening. Meanwhile, her boss was overbearing, overly taxing, and overly dependent on her. All of it was overwhelming. Like Isabella, Susan’s emotions were running too high. “You know,” she said, “all I want to do is drink some root beers, eat junk food, and get in bed while watching some crappy reality television.”
That comment reminded me of Isabella’s pity party. “Susan,” I said, “here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to go drink root beer, eat junk food, and watch crappy television, and you’re going to do it while lying in bed. For the next two hours, and for only two hours, you’re going to go have the most unbelievably incredible pity party in the history of humankind.”
“Two hours isn’t enough,” she said. “I need six. I need 10!”
We wound up settling on a five-hour pity party, after which she was to call me and agree to move forward.
Like Isabella, Susan didn’t complete the assignment. She told me that she’d found it too hard to do absolutely nothing for so long. She wasn’t built for it. Eventually, her inner drive and determination had overpowered everything else, and ever since she’d proclaimed her pity party over, she’d flipped back into action mode. Thinking through her situation, she’d begun strategizing how she’d handle her relationship with her boss in a way that would serve her interests. She would focus on managing herself instead of trying to manage her exhausting boss.
By temporarily indulging these emotions, and giving in to a pity party, you’re mobilizing your built-in conscientiousness to fight back. By allowing yourself to feel awful and giving yourself a defined timeline for doing so (no more than four or five hours), you can become more aware of your emotions and step outside them.
You start checking your watch, saying “Okay, I have two hours left of my pity party,” “I have 90 minutes left,” and so on. All of a sudden, you’re less focused on your problems and more focused on time. You’re thinking in a practical, rational way — even if just a little. That, in turn, leads you back to your rational self. You can reset, and get back on track.
From The 25th Hour: How to Thrive (And Gain Ridiculous Amounts of Time) by Getting Out of Your Own Way by Neal Schore. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Avid Reader Press, an Imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
