May was the most mixed and uncharacteristic month of the Sabbatical. To be expected, since I did little preparing at the end of a family-intense April. To compensate for the lack of planning, I did a substantial lookback in early June to conclude that the diversity of dimensions was really the tone in May.

Ten Diverse Dimensions

I aggregated what happened in May into the following ten dimensions, counting the number of milestones inside each dimension:

• 10x Home Improvements Using a New Family Democratic Method.
• 7x Meetings to Prepare My Work Re-entry.
• 4x Big Family and Friends Events.
• 4x Unexpected Support to Kids at Home.
• 4x Books on Lifestyle.
• 4x Contributions to Others and Comunity Around.
• 2x Sports Competitions Followed Live.
• 1x Meeting on Collective Intelligence.
• 1x Post in the Blog.
• 1x Participation in a Bicycle Competition.

Reading this list, I realized these dimensions are a good sample of things I value and, differently, from the other three months where I chose a strong new dimension (conversations then writing and finally visits), this time the mixed dimensions could represent a normal, non-sabbatical, month.

I explore further this idea of a rich normality full of diverse dimensions in the post where I do the balance of my full Sabbatical. I am happy that the initially uncomfortable lack of planning for May allowed me to acknowledge one of the main takeaways from my Sabbatical.

Wallboard for Family Decisions

We used this board to list all the improvements we and our kids have been waiting to see in the house. For example making the sun shades automatic so they can be programmed to open in the morning, better organizing the office or fixing some stuff.

Every post-it is an improvement and they get divided into four columns from left to right: ideas, to do this month, started and finished. We voted democratically for the top ten improvements for May and many were finished.

I was amazed at how something that was really hard to bring everyone together about before, become so easy to manage and engaging. This idea was inspired by this nice article in Harvard Business Review on Agile Families.

Four Books on Lifestyle

This month the books I read where all on lifestyles approaches.

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist by Kate Raworth gives a new perspective on economics and how what it means to know and live within the ecosystem limits. The author now runs an organization to apply these ideas. Visit them at Doughnut Economics Action Lab.

Early Retirement Extreme is a self-published book by Jacob Fisker on how, if you can live with extremely limited expenses, you accumulate financial resources early to allow for a freer and more adaptable lifestyle. The approach includes a calculator for when can you retire! I was unaware of the huge scale of a parallel movement, called FIRE, in the USA. To check more about the topic, visit here the author’s active blog and forum.

Homesick: Why I Live in a Shed by Catrina Davies was lent by a friend. The book tells the personal story of the author while she struggles to find a proper house and ends up living in a shed and how that actually provides a way out of the struggle. It is a very emotional story that gave me a new look at how housing is such a mental and life block for much more people than I guessed. It also connected me to a dimension I miss: being closer to nature.

Tools for Conviviality by Ivan Illich is the only book of this group that is from the last century (1973). I read it because it is somewhat of a classic of the anti-growth movement. It explores in crude and extreme approaches how standardization of education, health and growth-minded economics uses humans in unnatural ways. It was interesting to read but too much extreme. Following the trail to modern times I found an updated approach called Dark Mountain that has a powerful and easier-to-digest manifesto.

Snapshot from May

I selected a few images to give some color to the May resume and, riding along with the less structured approach, differentiate this post from the previous data-driven and analytics posts. This is not a selection of the most important events, just a visual tour.

Benfica, my football club won the Portuguese championship after three years without any title. This time I partied for the first time together my wife, two kids, my father and other six family adults and children. Was a double win!

Going around in a huge lake on a houseboat with friends, remembered how Portugal is such a nice place to live and travel.

My first long bicycle competition with 74 km along the hills north of Lisbon. We were a group of five in the middle of more than one thousand participants, most of them way more professional than us. We were happy we could actually finish it!