Second week of “The Sabbatical”

Or colleagues call it “clear leave”, or family calls it “holiday”, or in my situation other more formal people like to refer to “garden leave”. Either way, I still prefer it as a sabbatical, mini-sabbatical, hiatus, get-your-life-in-order-and-find-new-ideas time.

Last week, I was particularly inspired by this TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister on the power of taking time off. Stefan argued that we should periodically take breaks in our working lives. He does 1 years out of each 7, and quotes that 3M allows for 15% time off and Google 20%. One thing about time-off is that you have to actively treat it as a time off (so therefore I disqualify since I still check office email every day zzz) to pursue certain things that would enlarge your world view, perhaps increase your ability to do your job better when you’re back.

Originally I had 3 weeks, but looks like circumstances beyond the scope of this post has shorten it to 2 weeks. But all is well. My break consists of two parts, Part 1: Get your life in order and Part 2: Find new ideas kind of sabbatical, and I intend to share a lot of these new ideas on my (until recently) fairly neglected blog. Now Part 1 wasn’t that boring. I finally managed to clean up the blog with a new wordpress version and theme, added a simple mobile version (esp. for you iPhone-whores), cleared up issues for a number of outstanding customers, deal with the banks/post office/what not. Even managed to do weeknight concerts, read books (which was on the to-read list for a year now…), and cycle a lot into the wilderness between Hougang and Tampines.

Today onwards, it’s part 2. From subsequent posts onwards you’ll see some new ideas I’ve found around town just these two weeks alone, or sitting around thinking.

Also, if you wanted to take part in the Meet Ong Jiin Joo 2009 contest, better be quick as my available time is narrowing If you’re in Klang Valley area, I’ll be home again this weekend. Dinners are for family, time is otherwise flexible.

Finally the TED video:

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