🏆 Helen's Sabbatical Beginnings - FAQ

First two weeks of time off - themes, questions, and content recs

👋🏻 Helen here coming to you two weeks since I hit pause on my professional life. As a reminder, I left Guild at the end of May to take a beat - be a full-time mom for the summer and take a much-needed sabbatical before finding and diving into my next adventure.

Since then, I’ve received many questions about what it’s been like so far and what I plan to do with my time. So, this week, I’m doing a frequently asked questions edition of our newsletter.

What exactly is your plan for your time off?

My time off has three themes: giving back to the community, health, and connection. I think of these as the big puzzle pieces that I will prioritize fitting in and the rest will be smaller pieces of the jigsaw puzzles. Those smaller ones will include household projects, reading, and more writing. I’m trying to keep the grain size of my goals in perspective to optimize for the big things and avoid the smaller things taking over what I actually want to focus on.

🥖 Giving Back - Community Loaves

Bake for Community Loaves - One of my 24 for 2024 goals was to start volunteering more in the community. So I finally signed up as a volunteer for Community Loaves - an organization that enables home baked goods to be donated to local food banks. I’m excited about this because I love baking and wanted to be able to do good with it as well as introduce my kids to community service. So next week, we are going to start baking cookies and bread to donate to HopeLink. I’m excited for the house to smell of baking!

Reflections: It has been hard for me to find time and mental space to incorporate giving time into my life that was not for the kid's sake (ie, Girl Scouts, school volunteering). So I’m looking forward to being intentional about fitting this in - with or without my kids participation.

🩻 Health - Physical and Mental Wellbeing

For physical health, I am focusing on lifting weights 2x a week, picking up tennis and trying out acupuncture to relieve some back pain that I’ve been experiencing in the last few months.

For mental health, I’m trying meditation (using Peloton app), taking the Yale Happiness Class (as recommended by Adam during this sabbatical), and doing regular hydrotherapy and facials - putting my spa membership to good use.

Reflections - it has been harder than I anticipated, prioritizing extra workouts and adding them to my flow. I imagined that I’d spontaneously make time to drop into a yoga class or go on really long jogs or walks - however, unless I schedule it and plan for it, it doesn’t happen.

👭 Connection - Kids, family, friends, and colleagues

Kids - I was able to get extra time while the kids still had 3 weeks of school left. So I have heavily leaned into end of year school volunteering. I have tried to do both big and small things - from picking up kids from school (which I rarely do) to chaperoning an elementary school trip to the zoo - I have tried to embrace as much of the kid stuff as I can and soak it all in.

Family - I’m prioritizing time with family in big and small ways. My goals include calling my grandparents once a week (I’m so lucky that I have 3 living grandparents), taking a trip with my dad to Memphis and Nashville, seeing my sister and her family, taking a trip with each daughter and leaning in and enjoying our planned family vacations throughout the rest of the year.

Friends - In the hecticness of life, I haven’t been able to catch up or spend time with friends. So I'm leaning into face to face time with friends as much as possible. So I’m going on walks, throwing dinner parties, driving to get coffee, and doing some amount of virtual chats as well. So far, I have had 3 leisurely lunches with friends, multiple coffee dates, park walks and spa days with friends.

Colleagues - Since so much of my team has been impacted with layoffs last month, I’ve carved out time to review resumes, brainstorm career paths forward and provide some amount of outlet and space for my former co-workers. These have been such meaningful touchpoints of connection for me especially as I contemplate a potential path forward in coaching.

Reflections: As an extrovert, this is an easy part of my sabbatical to lean into. In fact, I have learned that I want to do more kid activities and walk and talks with friends than there is time in the day. So I’m trying to put some structure to the days using Calendly to schedule, blocking times that are NOT for connection and giving myself grace to say no to some of the kid activities and events that are happening. I also have to remind myself that just because I now have more time to give, it doesn’t mean that my time is free and I shouldn’t give it away. It feels counterintuitive to stay intentional while taking time off but it’s necessary for me.

💡What has surprised you in the first two weeks?

1. It was easy to get busy really fast. Between end of school activities for both kids, my hunger to catch up with as many people as I can, and do at least one thing for myself every day in the wellbeing category, I have not yet figured out how to live life on kairos time. While a part of me yearns to jump in and fix this, I’ve decided to let this be for now and let myself go at this pace for another week or so, before I step back and re-examine.

2. I don’t miss work. Given how closely tied my identity is to being a professional, I thought I would miss thinking about work problems. Instead, I miss the people, but not the day to day. I don’t know what to make of it right now - perhaps it hasn’t been long enough yet.

3. My kids are really excited to have me around - I hoped this was true, but it’s really palpable in a special way. I love that they want me to pick me them up from school, that they are asking me to chaperone their events, and outwardly appreciate my extra presence. I remember feeling so needed in their infant years, but now I can appreciate that these are formative years and me being around right now is a gift I can give to both them and myself.

🤔 How are you adjusting to time off?

I’m not gonna lie - this is a big change for me. I love working and being in the professional, informational worker world and derive much personal value from it. So, I’m a work in progress in terms of figuring out what this means for who I am and what I stand for.

The questions that swirl for me include: Am I a stay-at-home mom now? Is that good or bad? Will my working mom friends still be able to relate to me? Will the stay-at-home moms’ friends make time to fit me into their schedules? Will I be employable after this break? What if I like this break more than I expect? Who am I if I’m not a product person and a leader?

All I know so far is that it is okay to ask these questions, and the fact that this moment is uncomfortable means that I’m going to learn from it in more ways than I currently understand. I know in my heart that learning to just be in this moment and pausing the hamster wheel that I’ve been on is important. What I hope for myself is not to accidentally get into some other race.

📚 📺 📻 What are you watching, reading, listening to?

Reading: A Court of Thorns and Roses series by Sarah J. Maas

I’m late to the party, but this is a perfect summer read that combines my favorite fantasy themes of power, politics, love, and resilience.

Listening on Audible: How to Know a Person by David Brooks

A friend recommended this to me and it’s on Bill Gates summer reading list - this book has great reminders of how to practice the art of active listening and great conversation.

Watching: Bridgerton Season 3

This show has very few redeeming qualities, but I’ve read all the books and seen the first two series, so I will also finish this one. Seasons 1 and 2 were much stronger, so if you haven’t started this and have other content options, I’d pass.

Podcasts: The Daily (NYT), Good Inside (Parenting), Greeking Out (with kids), Acquired (Tech), Happier (Wellbeing), Finding Mastery (Leadership)

As I’m spending more time in the car, these are the podcasts that I turn to if I’m not listening to a book on Audible.

❓What are you going to do after your sabbatical?

The 100% truth is that I don’t know yet. Here is what I do know:

• I love being a product maker - and I have also learned that I prefer to do product work in person than remote

• I love being with people - so whatever I do next, will either involve me being a people leader or being in a position where I am spending time coaching and supporting people to be their best

Other than that, I am going to see what learnings I have throughout the summer, where my conversations lead me and stay open to the possibilities ahead. This breather feels like an important moment in my career and life, and I intend to take advantage of it as best I can.

👓 Resources

Adam and I talk a lot in Mind the Beet about what it’s like to balance career, parenting and life. Given the longevity of our careers, we are both strong proponents of taking our retirement with us on this journey. If you are looking to learn more about this approach, here are some past articles:

• Burnout & Boredom: A Manager’s Pandemic Retrospective on Mental Health (Adam)

• 👨‍💻 Defrag.exe: Adam on Sabbatical

• Adam's Field Guide to Happiness: The Secret to Amazing Paid Time Off 🏖️🏃‍♂️🧘‍♂️

• 📸 Behind the Filter (Helen)

• 🪴Living a Learner's Mindset (Adam)