Let’s start with the truth. When I was a freshman in college I had to call a friend to ask them how to boil water to make spaghetti. Truth! The only thing I ever had cooked in my life was scrambled eggs and that’s because scrambled eggs and popsicles constituted my senior year in high school diet.

When I was first married, and cooking at least some meals, I would write everything down to figure out what time to start things to make them all come out on time. Sadly, this included reheating canned vegetables. I was starting not at square one but at square negative one (or ten)!

My mother did a lot of baking when I was growing up. Her cookies seemed to always be around and her cheesecake was a feature at many family events. Banana breads, sour cream coffee cakes, chocolate cakes—she did them all and did them well. And, for whatever reason, neither my brother nor I ever helped. He was a big fan of licking off the spoon and scraping out the mixing bowl but that’s as far as we got.

When my mother died, I was 25 and my oldest son just over a year. Mom’s wooden recipe box, filled with index cards in her handwriting, was a treasure that I took home with me. Every card held a memory. Every card touched my heart. They still do to this day. During the first difficult year after she died, I began to try some things that she had made, watching my little boy enjoy the things that I had loved as a child. Can you get a sense of continuity from a cookie or a bowl of spinach borscht? I think you can. I know I did.

As the years have passed, I have become very comfortable in my kitchen. I’ve learned a lot on my own and even had a birthday gift of a cooking class at the Culinary Institute. I’ve found pleasure in bringing family and friends together over a good meal and I’ve found joy baking for, and with, my kids and, now, my grandchildren.

Today I was baking bread. It’s not a difficult thing to do. And as I was doing it, I thought, as I often do, about why I do this and what it means to me. So much of the time our work in leadership has intangible or long term results. We influence, we shape, we envision, we build, we support, we grow and we hope to see results at some point down the line. The outcome is often far in the future or one that we will never see.

But when I knead the dough, it rises and I can bake it into a golden brown loaf, it is a tangible result that just feels so satisfying. Today my dough was too sticky and I needed to add more flour as I was kneading. And I thought about how important it is for us to recognize and listen to all of our senses, to know how things feel and to make changes if they don’t feel right. It’s that same lesson we all know, to trust our instincts.

Baking takes thought and patience. It’s more exacting than cooking, where you have bit more leeway in amounts and ingredients. Baking is chemical, this plus this equals this. If you don’t use the right elements, the result may not be the one you expect. The same for leadership, not that there is not room for creativity, because there absolutely is, but that you have to remember that all the pieces are necessary to make a successful whole.

I am not suggesting that the key to your leadership is baking. What I am suggesting is that, as leaders, finding a way to realize tangible results in a life filled with intangibles can be refreshing and renewing. Whatever you do that frees you, helps you fill your full heart.