Now half way through my inaugural sabbath year I’ve gained a lot of understanding about the benefits and difficulties of an undertaking like this. As I transition from six months of not working back into my career I face a few more adjustments and learning opportunities. In some ways it will be difficult to try to continue to sabbath while also working a demanding job, but my suspicion is that will actually be easier for me than parenting full time. Without much else to share in this update I wanted to turn to a topic that usually comes up quickly when I mention I’m taking time off of work – that of money. As we’ve told family, friends and people we just met about our sabbath year situation, some outright ask ‘how can you afford to do that?’, others joke ‘wow, you must be rich’ and some have the question
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by being selective about where I direct my energy, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than if I split that energy across many different goals. More details about the process are in this blog post and you can review the results from past years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 & 2017). 2018 Theme: First Principles Lifestyle The idea of first principles thinking is to remove preexisting assumptions and to build towards a conclusion from the ground up, challenging and testing every brick as you build. A first principles lifestyle would be one in which all aspects of that life are chosen intentionally because they are the most effective ways to achieve a person’s goals. A life in which everything has been stripped back to the foundation and rebuilt intentionally.
At the beginning of 2017 I wrote about my focus for the year. I’ve posted a few updates throughout the year (quarter year, half year & three quarters) and now is the time to do a final review. 2017 Theme: Sabbath Year Self Grade: 8/10 After learning in the past that having multiple goals dilutes focus and causes competition for a limited amount of time, I decided starting last year to focus my goals (challenge, habit & exemplar) around a single topic. For 2017, the theme was centered around the idea of a sabbath year – a year of rest. I found that centering around that topic worked really well. My efforts towards each of the three goals contributed in part towards each other and they feel very much as three notes of the same chord rather than three diverging items. I think there is still room to improve how much of my
In 2017 I named Eric Liddell as my exemplar for the year, someone I wanted to learn form. After spending time learning more about Liddell, one item seemed particularly relevant to put into practice – his approach to races. Liddell was one of the most fiercely competitive people I have ever read about – once running so hard to win a race that he had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital afterwards. At the same time he was incredibly compassionate to his competitors. There are numerous accounts of him sharing a friendly word before races, lending his gear to another racer that forgot theirs and praising the other runners after a race. He would mentioning their best aspects and how they very well could win the next time. It seems a dichotomy to be equally caring of a competitor’s heart and unrelenting in his own physical performance. As
Each year I focus my attention on a few named goals as a way to be more intentional about the pursuits I direct my energy towards. The way in which I do this has evolved over time and these release notes serve to document the changes & most current process. Review Of v1.4 v1.3 contained 4 items that in practice went in different directions and resulted in overcommitment. For v1.4 I emphasized focus on a single topic, which the challenge, habit & exemplar would all relate to. The full details of v1.4 are located here. I found that structure to be very successful in 2017. The three items played off of each other well to point in the direction of the overall theme. Rather than feeling that each hour was contributing to only one goal and a whole other hour would be needed to contribute to the next one, there was
One of my favorite parts of camping is the bidirectional appreciation it inspires. On one hand, camping allows me to go deep into the wilderness, to exist amongst vast forests, rocky cliffs or sprawling landscape, and to appreciate the beauty of things untouched by people. At the same time, the primitive living conditions I take on when camping make me appreciate the comforts of home; clean water I don’t have to filter or carry, climate control and food that has not been freeze dried, among others. For nature, my appreciation is enhanced because my mind becomes focused on something I am otherwise so removed from that I do not take time to reflect on. With the comforts of home, my appreciation is enhanced because my mind becomes focused on something I am normally so immersed in that I do not take time to reflect on. After returning from a camping
A vacuum begs to be filled. Given extra time and energy, projects that were once low priority enough to not get started will seem urgent enough to focus on. Around 2015 I changed how I stored my digital pictures from folders by topic to yearly folders with files named with the datetime they were taken. Everything pre-2015 is has stayed the old way, while everything 2015 and onward has been the new way. One evening this week, while looking for a photo of when my first son was born, in 2014, I got the itch to do the housekeeping work to update all of the old photos so everything was organized the same way. It was a few hours in before I stopped to ask myself why. Projects like this are popping up like weeds. All of a sudden it feels of the utmost importance that I go through all
With the start of a new year, I take the time to set my focus for the coming year. I believe that by focusing on fewer goals, I can achieve results that are exponentially greater than the sum of the results from doing many things. I detailed my 2017 focus here (read that first if you want more context) & did a quarter year update & half year update as well. Here is how I’m progressing since then. 2017 Theme: Sabbath Year 2017 Challenge: Define & Launch A Sabbath Year We launched the year on July 13th and are now three months in. I’ve written some about the progression of my thought process, and I’m sure things will continue to change. There is more detail in the posts I’ll link below, but for now I want to sum up two thoughts I’ve had a lot lately: It is really hard to have ‘sitting-in-a-hammock-reading’ type rest
Taking time off of work to rest is not something that would seem on paper to be difficult. However, three months in, I feel this is one of the most difficult challenges I’ve ever undertaken. This is surprising considering that list includes finishing an Ironman, surfing Mavericks, hiking Mt. Whitney, winning a marathon, launching a multi-million dollar business, and having three kids in as many years, to name a few. This is going to be a low-note of a blog post. I don’t want to sound negative or ungrateful, but it is important to me that I write honestly. Part of the reason I blog about the challenges I attempt is so that other people can learn from them and hopefully implement the ideas better themselves in the future. With this experiment of a sabbath year in particular, I plan to repeat the process again in 7 years, so learning from the difficulty
The last three weeks have seen free time redirected to sorting, culling, packing, storing, transporting and unpacking. For the second leg of our sabbath year we’re putting our belongings into storage & relocating to the East Coast. Moving always seems to be more work than I anticipate. I remember in college once thinking I could empty my half of the dorm room in time for a 6pm dinner, only to find myself finishing for a 6am breakfast instead. Between each move I half-forget the difficulty and my optimism returns. This time I tracked where we spent our time – data is the surest cure for optimism. (On the subject of data, I also took the opportunity to document every possession our family owns on a spreadsheet that includes 19 columns of details: purpose, size, weight, cost, would-sell-for, etc. I also did a bit of work on the topic of price-v-time