Another two weeks of sabbatical in the rear view mirror, another two-week retrospective on what I did, how I felt about it, and what I think is coming up next. This time around, I’m going to move the cut-and-dry statistics to the end of the article and jump into the crux of the retrospective quicker. Let’s get to it!
The first four weeks of my sabbatical were deliberately devoid of plans, intentions, or expectations. This was designed to give me time and space to see what emerged as important (if anything). While I think I could probably continue to bob along in that mode of existence for a long time, I wanted to start an easy transition out of it and into some sessions of deep work over. I knew I didn’t want to immediately dive into the deep end productivity-wise, but I also knew that I didn’t want to just float along as I had been.
Looking back at Weeks 5 & 6
Week 5 included driving to Buffalo (approximately 8 hours) on Thursday and back to Arlington on Sunday. In between those transportation days we were taking part in various wedding celebrations for a family member. Obviously not much “work” happened in that period of time, although I did manage a couple deep work sessions on some writing earlier in the week and a couple of times into Week 6. Week 6 started pretty slowly — possibly because of the recovery from aforementioned travel and wedding — but really started to pick up in the latter parts.
As I wrote about in the latest issue of The Deliberate, on Thursday of last week I somehow got motivated to take care of a bunch of administrative tasks I had been dreading and avoiding for many months. With an afternoon of work I got a bunch of things off my plate and set myself up really well for some things that I want to do during the rest of my sabbatical. A few days later, I’m still riding that motivational high. In some ways that kind of felt like the transition between how I spent the first 4-5 weeks of my sabbatical (recovering,relaxing, etc.) and what I want to be doing next (taking action, doing things, trying things, and diving deep into meaningful pieces of work). It makes sense that a transition like this isn’t something you can necessarily will into existence. I wanted that transition to happen at the end of Week 4 but it actually happened in the middle of Week 6. I’ll take it.
The other thing that’s worth talking about briefly is I tried to officially do three personal experiments in week 5. They all seemed small enough on their own, but when I combined them together they started feeling simultaneously and paradoxically overwhelming and unimportant. This is a lesson I seem to need to learn over and over. Always do one personal experiment at a time — especially if it seems “too small.” By limiting the number of experiments I’m allowed to do at one time it makes them more important and it makes me take them more seriously. When I try to do too many at once it’s easy to let one or more drop off and you end up with a really hodgepodge set of results for the week. As a sort of recovery week from the debacle of Week 5 I decided to not do any experiments in Week 6.
What’s up for Week 7 and 8?
As I mentioned above, I made some decisions in Week 6 that will start to come to fruition in Week 7, 8, and beyond. A quick run through of what’s on my plate for the next two weeks:
Meeting with a personal trainer to talk about some personal fitness goals I have and how he can help me.
Taking my new road bike out for a couple of rides
Using the gym membership I just signed up for — particularly for Olympic weightlifting I recently remembered I thoroughly enjoy
Do a couple of sessions with my golf coach
Obviously, thoughts and intentions about my personal health have bubbled to the fore over the past few weeks and I’m taking some deliberate action in that realm. Other than these things, I’m excited to dig into one specific writing project over the next two weeks — figuring out if the constellation of things I’ve been writing about and care about can be massaged into a book that anybody other than me would be interested in reading. I’m going to take a crack at it over the next few weeks and see whether I can definitively answer that question.
The only added wrinkle is that Week 8 is going to be spent in Cape Cod rather than home in Virginia. This will be Emily’s main vacation for the summer and while I obviously don’t “need” a vacation, that is the headspace we will be occupying together that week. That being said, I don’t think there’s any reason that I can’t keep up with my writing, thinking, and exercise intentions while I’m there. So, other than some of the chaos that travel introduces to a routine, I don’t think it’ll be too different from what I’ve been doing at home for the past month.
After these two weeks I’ll officially be halfway through my sabbatical — which is truly bonkers.
The numbers
Here are some personal stats from the past two weeks, for those of you who find this part interesting. As always, the numbers below take the format of (Week 6 #/Week 7 #):
Average hours slept per night: 7.12/7.9
Average “quality” hours slept per night: 5.17/5.82
Average deep hours slept per night: 2.03/2.02
Average sleeping heart rate: 50/50
Average steps per day: 10,981/11,123
Average weekly weight: 206.77/207.37
Days exercised (out of 7): 7/6
Days read (out of 7): 7/6
Days written (out of 7): 4/5
Days meditated (out of 7): 3/1
On the reading front, this is what I’ve been getting into:
Continued The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
Finished Code Girls by Liza Mundy
Finished Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
Started Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Started Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Started The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, 1680-1790 by Ritchie Robertson
A relatively quiet two weeks in terms of video games and TV:
Still playing a couple games of Starcraft 2 competitive ladder most days while deliberately trying to hone specific skills. Should be entering a Platinum 1 league as Random soon (have been sitting at #1 in Platinum 2 for a few days now)
Playing the daily “Chaos Realm” map on Card of Darkness every day (takes like 5 minutes)
Continuing to watch each episode of season 2 of Ted Lasso as they are released (how good was episode 3, eh?)
A few other things of note:
Published issue #49 of The Deliberate
Published episode #50 of Fields of Work
See you in two weeks!