“Find your rhythm” was my motto for the first week of my sabbatical. Rhythm finding has been my wife’s recommendation, who had already started her sabbatical in September 2020. She is a music teacher and knows that “rhythm is how musicians connect and play with one another“, as Alex Lavoie has beautifully phrased it in a blog post.
One starting point was to break with old routines and to disconnect from my work context. January 01 was a Friday. So, I decided that for the first six months of 2021, Friday would be the first day of a week. My “new” Monday is Friday… Changing the structure of the week has proven to be very helpful to break the old rhythm quickly.
Breaking with old habits is simple in a sabbatical: the calendar became nearly empty. The number of pulses per bar decreased drastically. The cleaned-up schedule slowed down the tempo. I felt relieved to have a blank calendar after 79 quarters of busy schedules.
There were only two regular meetings left: one with my new coach whom I selected based on three interviews. I’m grateful that SAP offers a great coaching and mentoring experience with many colleagues contributing a part of their work time to this network. For me, it was essential to have a coach with a perspective from outside the headquarters location, from one of the acquired companies and with a product management mindset.
The second regular meeting left is with the lernOS leadership guide crew. I shared the outcomes of my “submarine project” prototypes on “First Time Leader Circle” at the last Corporate Learning Community basecamp in October 2020. I wanted to check whether the approach resonates with peers from other companies. And yes, about ten people were interested in starting scaling the procedure with a lernOS leadership guide’s co-creation. We have now established regular meetings. Freelancers, coaches, leaders, and HR experts from diverse companies meet and work together. It has been an excellent co-creation experience so far, and I feel that we have built one of the energy spaces that I was looking for my sabbatical.
Having a nearly empty note sheet in front of me also offers the opportunity to build new habits.
Hence, I’ve also started two more experiments to establish a new morning routine: writing morning pages and practising meditation. And the good news is: I’ve stuck to the new routine and it offers me clarity, calm, and joy. I’ll report on these two elements in one of my next posts.
To support the habit-building, my elder daughter suggested buying a wake-up light. So, now even if January was a month with very cloudy, rainy, and snowy days, I woke up each morning with “sunlight”. That’s a massive difference to the previous iPhone alarm clock sound.
The “sunlight” is my trigger to get up and start my new morning routine. On the way to my room, I make a cup of green tea. The tea is my reward for the meditation practice. It sounds simple, yes, it is, and it works so far. My sabbatical offers space and time to build new habits. I’ll share more insights on how to build, break, and change habits on this blog.
What is one new habit that you have built in January?
