{"id":610,"date":"2009-10-13T13:26:43","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T05:26:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/?p=610"},"modified":"2009-10-13T13:26:43","modified_gmt":"2009-10-13T05:26:43","slug":"second-week-of-the-sabbatical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/?p=610","title":{"rendered":"Second week of “The Sabbatical”"},"content":{"rendered":"

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. <\/p>\n

Last week, I was particularly inspired by this TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister<\/a> 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. <\/p>\n

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<\/a> concerts<\/a>, read books (which was on the to-read list for a year now…), and cycle a lot into the wilderness between Hougang and Tampines.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Finally the TED video:<\/p>\n

[kml_flashembed publishmethod=”static” fversion=”8.0.0″ movie=”http:\/\/video.ted.com\/assets\/player\/swf\/EmbedPlayer.swf” width=”446″ height=”326″ targetclass=”flashmovie” wmode=”transparent” bgcolor=”#FFFFFF” allowfullscreen=”true” fvars=”vu=http:\/\/video.ted.com\/talks\/dynamic\/StefanSagmeister_2009G-medium.flv&su=http:\/\/images.ted.com\/images\/ted\/tedindex\/embed-posters\/StefanSagmeister-2009G.embed_thumbnail.jpg&vw=432&vh=240&ap=0&ti=649&introDuration=16500&adDuration=4000&postAdDuration=2000&adKeys=talk=stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time_off;year=2009;theme=not_business_as_usual;theme=new_on_ted_com;theme=art_unusual;theme=the_creative_spark;theme=speaking_at_tedglobal2009;theme=tales_of_invention;theme=what_makes_us_happy;theme=might_you_live_a_great_deal_longer;event=TEDGlobal+2009;”\/]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or colleagues call it “clear leave”, or family calls it “holiday”, or in my situation other more formal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","content-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":611,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/610\/revisions\/611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.jiinjoo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}