When you need a timeout, what do you do?

Sometimes you just have to get off the grid. Deadlines loom, tension builds, phones keep ringing and, if you’re in an office, the stuff in the inbox keeps piling higher and higher. You have no personal zone, no space, because the e-mails and calls come zinging your way at warp speed. When I see photos of the cubicles in which so many people work the day away, I wonder what the benefit/risk is of so little privacy.

I heard a distressing interview yesterday in which a woman said that when she was a new mother trying to hold down a full-time office job, she would sometimes go into the bathroom and lie down on the floor for a 10-minute nap. That’s how desperate she was for sleep.

Many of us have figured out how to post a Do Not Disturb sign in our lives. Some of us are better at it than others.

I read recently that LeBron James of the Miami Heat reads books before games to help him focus and relax. It must work, because he recently led the Heat to the NBA championship. According to published reports, along the way James read “The Pact,” by Jody Piccoult, “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria, and “The Tipping Point,” by Malcolm Gladwell.

Some of the stories about James’s reading-to-relax habit strike a somewhat patronizing tone, as if it’s surprising that a player who can jump can also read. But the guy went straight from high school into the NBA, skipping college. I figure he’s just catching up. And he’s found a way to get off the grid for a few hours before a tough game.

For LeBron, playing ball is a job. For Barack Obama, being president is the job and basketball is the escape. Playing basketball helps him unwind, grab a timeout, recharge his batteries. He can push back and it’s all in the name of the game.

In a piece called “The Audacity of Hoops: How basketball helped shape Obama” in Sports Illustrated, Alexander Wolff wrote that the game has played a big role in forming the president’s character. Craig Robinson, Obama’s brother-in-law and a former Oregon State coach, says that basketball is why the president “is sitting where he’s sitting.”