One of the more interesting people I've met during the sabbatical was Michelle Huang, who is currently starting an artist's creative residence in Japan. One of her tweets that caught my attention recently was the one in my post on existential angst, I think there are some parallels on how we think, but she's done a much, much better job of documenting her journey through Twitter. I'm interested in using her experiences as a bouncing board for my own personal sabbatical:

i bartered a month of rent in exchange for setting up an art installation in the house i stayed in

Designing as a way to sublet is really cool, and not something I've thought a ton about before. Neat!

given that i had spent chunks of my career “optimizing for choice”, moving from one reputable job to the other (investment banking → product, both requiring skillsets so broad, that you can basically “do anything” after), i realized i had little idea of what my ikigai was

I find myself falling into this too, which is why a sabbatical felt necessary.

the hardest part about this by far was managing my own psychology: i felt constant anxiety to produce, and kept weighing opportunity costs, which took away from my presence in my day-to-day work

I feel this at times.

additionally, i felt irrational financial pressure, even though i had enough personal runway

I feel this as well – the pressure is actually more social imo, and needs to be managed by being with a good community.

my second mistake was having too many broad and ambitious interests

I think it is worth pursuing just 2-3 interests at a time.

to this, i added flexibility to the hyperstructure (biweekly focus topics)

when there was a new, unplanned idea, instead of subscribing to previously-defined rigid rules, i would ask myself:

“is this project something i would be proud of finishing at the end of my sabbatical?”

I like this a lot – bi-weekly sounds like a great cadence. I was actually surprised to hear that it didn't work for her, the following section's interesting.

a better way of framing this was to allow myself to “chase flow”

the more i listened to it, the more i was able to sense it, follow it, and become 10x as productive (vs gritting my teeth and grinding through complications). and also have it feel effortless the entire time

Imo I'm pretty bad at listening to this and want to do it more.

i actually became a morning person during this time period (!!)

there were a few months that i'd wake up everyday at 4am – which was absurd to me, given that i never previously identified as a morning person

This was interesting. I think moving to a new country helped her, and it's something I could consider. And I also never considered myself a morning person, I wonder if that's just bad framing.

another thing i found super helpful was having accountability partners

i had weekly 2.5-hour coworking sessions with a few friends who were also on their own respective entrepreneurial + sabbatical journeys

we'd catch up, detail out our session tasks, and check in at the end

This sounds really good! Something that I should implement for Fractal.

after some experimentation, i realized i learn best by 1) actively being engaged on projects and 2) time-boxing these projects

by adding in number 2, i found myself completing many more projects because it would limit scope, and maintain my enthusiasm / reduce burnout

This sounds really good, like a sustained hackathon! Want to work on something like this, maybe not 30 days but 2 weeks.

the last thing i did correctly -and that i intend to do again- was to remember to treat myself kindly and with compassion

there will be bad days (and sometimes bad weeks), and there will be good days. but to acknowledge and create space for the humanness in between is important

+1 on this.

one of my largest takeaways was that more than anything, i loved art and interactive design, something i never got a chance to do in any formal roles

i realized also i get energized by collaboration, and dream of having a mad scientist research lab with friends

This is interesting, I always want to work on my personal vision, not sure why? Is this an ego thing?

But I think I might also be bad at converting people to new visions.

every sabbatical looks different, but TLDR during my 1.5 years, i got to: move to a new country, redefine myself as an artist, create art with my brainwaves, launch an DAO, learn motion graphic design, explore web3, give talks at conferences, meet many incredible people, and more

IMO this is a great way to frame sabbatical, and something I should write for my own as well. E.g.

• Moved to a new city
• Travelled
• Found love of design and travelling
• Experimented with different forms of living
• Made a lot of new friends.
• Built a community space for ~50 people

second, i experimented with a lot of different organizational frameworks to project manage myself and develop my exobrain

main takeaways: high-level quarterly planning, GTD + weekly kanban in @NotionHQ , and knowledge management + daily task tracking in @RoamResearch

there are endless possibilities to an empty canvas – equal parts intimidating and empowering

I have all of these in Obsidian, hmm... but I think Obsidian itself may be powerful enough for this. Though I don't necessarily do a lot for GTD. I think going back to looking at GTD each day would be a good idea, since it keeps the GTD system powerful.

Imo what is missing is: > Quarterly Planning > Kanban for Projects > GTD daily checkins > Weekly overviews.

Overall takeaway from reading: – Use sabbatical to explore radically different living structures – Keep in mind that you have a good financial runway – Think about a project in terms of “whether I'd be proud to have finished it by the end of by sabbatical” – Sleep schedule for a person might not be as fixed as how you thought it might be – Be compassionate with yourself – Think about how to be a better collaborator

Todo: – Habit planning on wake should be #1 habit, not necessarily any other routine. Everything follows from habit planning. – Reinstate GTD – Reinstate Weekly reviews – Use Kanban/sheets to track timeboxed projects to track optional features – Think about how to chase flow – Remind myself of my runway – Use “proud to finish it” as a metric for understanding my sabbatical projects – Keep an open mind about moving to different places to study

— Categorized under: #creativity, #sabbatical, #productivity