Week 1 Summary
It is now been a week since I left Boyum (feels more like a month mentally but in a good way) so wanted to give a status to further explain why I did this in the first place as I’m sort of circling in on it myself now 😀.
Work/Life Balance Status
As I mentioned in my leaving post, this was the main reason for leaving. I mentioned that it was off, but in more detail, it was properly like 95% “work” and 5% “life”. This does not mean I was 95% of the time at the office, or at a computer at home, but more that, almost all of my waking time, was spent, thinking about work stuff.
After this week, my work/life balance is even more off, but on purpose, and reversed to 99% “life” and 1% “work”. The original plan was more 80/20 but reading comments of my leaving post about remembering to fully wind down, in the beginning, made me reconsider so thanks to those that pointed that out as they were 100% correct.
So right now I am simply “denying” my creative mind any “work”, just noting down ideas that pop up instead of pursuing them, and since I cut the tie to Boyum-work, I can’t touch that stuff anymore as I don’t have access (which is so liberating 😀). I’m essentially doing a “work/creativity detox”
Instead, my mind is “learning” that it is OK not to be “doing” and it is good to just “being”…… And I feel it is working 😀😀😀
That being said, I know the end goal is “balance” and at some time I need to release my inner “creativity beast”. I will let it free down the road once the rest of my being is ready to “tame” the beast in a matter so it does not start dominating again.
99% “life” details…
So what does a 99% Life look like for me? It is a good mix of Exercise, Mindfulness, Sleep, and Social Experiments
Running
In the past, I had a run 3x2k every week in the evening where I did not have the excuse to “not have time”. For this first week I switched this up with an experiment to instead do a 2k run every morning @ 07:00. This has been really great so I will continue this morning routine 😀…
Walking
I’ve done extra walks as part of mindfulness, and always enjoyed walking but in the past, they always ended up in work thoughts (I test this by checking if I can listen to an Audiobook while walking, and in the past the work thoughts made me need to turn it off and switch to music as I could not follow the plot admits the thoughts)… This week it was finally possible to have a 15k walk with little to no work thoughts which was so nice just enjoying the trip… I even tried walks without any music, but that became a bit “boring” (need to experiment a bit more with that, perhaps mixing it up with mindful music)
Fitness
Beyond runs and walks, I’m trying a fitness center routine 2-3 times a week but have not yet committed to a schedule not knowing if it is for me yet, or more running is better suited for me… Time will tell.
Knees
Other good news is that my knees that I was very worried about as they have been an issue in the past could not handle all this extra activity, but so far, so good (I do some special 5-min training for my knees before each morning run to help with that).
Sleep
I have for many years gotten way too little sleep (4-6 hours) but somehow still managed, so I set a goal to hit the magical 8 hours of sleep. To be more scientific about it I wear my newly acquired Apple Watch to be and tried with a fixed 23:00 – 07:00 sleep schedule. I’m not quite at 8 hours, only hitting it 2 times this week with an average of 7h, 18min
It seems it is “hard” to sleep that much for me, and ironically I’ve felt less refreshed on those days, so I might be more of a 7h is optimal kind of guy, but I will try to keep the 8-hour goal at least one more week
Mental wellbeing
I’ve started the “Mindfulness for Beginners” book during the week. It is a short book with only 1-2 page chapters, but it is the kind of book where every single word is carefully chosen and has a deep meaning it feels, so I am not as far in the book as I expected, needing to re-read a lot or abandon reading altogether if my mind where somewhere else… I need to accept that this is not a “read this and you are mindful” thing, but more like a new way of learning to be more present while reading, so I’m very much looking forward to more of this book knowing that I might need to read it multiple times…. But already now I feel like it has given me a better perspective on all of this.
Social Wellbeing
One of the great fears in this journey is the eventual lack of social interaction. It still is, but this week was packed with 3 lectures (“Quantum physics”, “Blazor” and “App Development with Swift”), one role-playing session, and 2 boardgame/escape room sessions… This is by no means a normal week of social for me, and the coming weeks are much less scheduled, truly testing if I will feel the lack of social interaction (don’t worry; as an introvert, there is not a huge demand 😉), but I’m also forcing myself to do “things I normally would not do” to get perspective and train my “worst case scenario brain” that not everything new is scary…
PS
Thank you so much all for the kind reaction to all of this on LinkedIn. I knew I would get reactions on leaving, but I had not dreamed of that much love and respect for the decision, and the wise words from various people on the journey I’m now on… Not a single comment has been mean or negative, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you again for your understanding.
