18-22 Feb | Two Books on Sustainability
2023-02-2225-28 Feb | The Role & Power of Stories
2023-02-28At the end of the 3rd week I invested time into doing a balance, also because the end of February is near and I want to have a good plan for March. I decided to look back at two dimensions Conversations and Time Allocation.
Conversations and Topics
This dimension was not core at the start of my Leave but as become it for very positive reasons. In these three weeks I had ten conversations on my Sabbatical and Life Management ranging from 30 to 180min with a total of nine persons.
Everyone I talked to was already identified with easiness in exchanging thoughts and in their 30’s or 40’s. On the other hand, they had different professional, family, country and career backgrounds. Also, our relationships varied from close family to recent friends or work colleagues.
- To Monitor: keep the right balance between similar types of conversations and diverse backgrounds. The 1st supports increasingly solid explorations and the second challenges its validity.
- To Improve: I would like to expand to people I am less used to sharing thoughts or deep ideas. Maybe in this case I need to create a more structured environment and safe zones. These conversations create powerful ties, would be nice to have them with more people around me.
- To Keep: doing it. Is just super.
I also got written or message feedback from another 10 people. Was less immediately rich and dynamic but I think there is some different angle to it I would like to explore later.
Time Planning and Allocation
One of the key dimensions of looking back is for sure time allocation since one motivation for doing the Sabbatical is to have more time for different experiences and explorations.
Looking at the weekly time allocation results (see more images below) I concluded:
- To Monitor: Used only half of the planned hours in Sabbatic Explorations due to reactive Support to Family and Friends.
- To Improve: It has been difficult to have at least four blocks of 5h straight Sabbatical explorations (did ~2x per week). Only in these sprints can I really write and create something new… more than the total hours per week, I should prioritize this!
- To Keep: time planning method has allowed me to decide and feel safe in the middle of this kickoff and so many reactive events. It also gave me a way to plan some habits like sports. I really worked!
| Category | Week 1 | Week 2 | Week 3 | Week 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sleep | 48 | 53.5 | 54 | 58 |
| Sabbatical Explorations and Conversations | 26.5 | 15 | 17 | 40 |
| Household Family Shared Routines. | 28.5 | 39.5 | 20 | 32 |
| Wide Family or Friends | 23 | 38.5 | 48 | 21 |
| Dedicated time for Children | 26 | 8.5 | 19.5 | 11 |
| Sports or Personal Leisure. | 11 | 5 | 8 | 6 |
| Work at Eviso | 5 | 8 | 0 | 1 |
How did I track time?
As is clear from the images, I used a “full 24h calendar filing” approach. I have used many methods and technologies for time logging and schedule planning but this one was simpler than I expected and combined in a single method the planning, the ongoing event adaptation and the time calculation.
Setup and technology
- I used Google Calendar keeping just one task at each time there is no hour duplication.
- Used color in all events and mentally assigned a color to a category
- Added Time Spent extension to Chrome to automatically sum the hours per color
Method and routine
- Created recurrent events and adapted each daily event on-de-go for sleep and some household routines.
- On Friday or during the weekend, filled the 24h for one, if possible two, weeks in advance.
- Adapt the planned events to reality with no more than 48h delay (is easy to forget and lose control).
