Sabbaticals

Thoughts on Sabbaticals

2024.11.18


I am now four months into my Sabbatical.

Have you ever been in a new job or a new house for only a few months or a year and it already feels like forever?


Chapter 1 - Calendars

I had a wonderful time at Flash but one of the odd things was how much we had to live by our calendars. You would need to "find time on someone's calendar." You would "hop off" meetings and "hop into other meetings" with the same people. If you had a busy week you would have to "block off" chunks of time or other people would steal it and you wouldn't get a single thing done that week.

I often didn't even know what day of the week it was. I would just wake up, look at the calendar, and know exactly what the next 9 hours looked like - in 30 minute increments.

The day after I was gone I looked at the calendar widget on my phone that displays the whole month's calendar.


And it was empty.

It was remarkable how jarring that feeling was. When you live your life in 30 minute blocks and then realizing that you don't have anything planned until that dentist appointment next month.

I don't think living by a calendar is wrong. I think time blocking can focus your attention and dramatically increase your output - and usefulness to the world. What I DO think is wrong is only ever living that way. It's been nice living without a calendar-mind. But it doesn't mean I plan on living this way forever.


Chapter 2 - Vacations

I went to Minnesota! I went to Wisconsin! I went to Michigan! I went to California!

When you go from limited time to unlimited time you think you're going to constantly travel. It feels like it's a mandatory part of the experience. You know you'll never "get it out of your system" but it's something that is on everyone's Sabbatical checklist.

Travel. Check.


Chapter 3 - Do whatever I want, whenever I want.

One of the most exciting things about stepping away from work is the notion that you can do whatever you want whenever you want.

There are various ways that I've gone about fulfilling that. For a while - not every week, but for many weeks - I decided that Wednesday was my long hike day. I would drive off to the mountains, spend multiple hours going on hikes that were miles and miles and miles.

"Wow! Now that I don't have to be on constant calendar meetings all day long, I can actually go to the mountains. I can hike whenever I want!"

Last Wednesday was my "Long Hike Day." It's in my calendar. But I felt like sitting at my desk and working.

Another related concept is that you can just change your mind for when you need to get something done.

Last Monday, I was working on a family budget spreadsheet. Yay! But then I found out that my wife and three-year-old son were going to the zoo. And I thought, maybe today is not a budget day. Maybe today is a zoo day.

And it was.

But after a while there are other things that regain importance. If you want to do something useful, have a work community again, build something cool - you know it won't last forever. And that's okay. There are times in life that you can be flexible. There are times in life when you have to do hard things and the list of "have to dos" is longer than the "get to dos." Life is supposed to have these phases.

Next week family is in town - Wednesday is blocked out as "Long Hike Day"

and it will be.


Chapter 4 - The Realization of Finitude

One of the things that you will be tempted to believe as you go on Sabbatical is that you can do anything and everything you dream of.

You can go on hikes on every Wednesday.

You can do as much reading as you'd like.

You can do as much writing as you'd like.

You'll have enough time to get better at writing computer code, which will come in handy when you start an entire new company while also making time to enable your wife to start a new company.

And by the way, you'll probably also be fluent in Spanish within a year as well.

Obviously, I didn't think all of that would happen but when you have time on your hands, you can think of all the fun things that you'll finally have time for.

Then, ultimately, you have to turn back to remember Oliver Burkeman's advice: that you're probably not going to be able to do any of it anyway and you should feel bad.

But I'm not sure that's exactly the point of his work.


Chapter 5 - Exercise

Well, at least I've been able to be more consistent with that.

So that's nice.