What do with a few months of time

You are able to take 6 months off. What do you do?

Think about it for a second. You are given the luxury of taking a few months of not being employed, not working for anyone else. You don't need to worry about money too much and you can afford to just do whatever you want (within reasonable financial boundaries). What would you do?

I am very grateful to actually be in this situation right now so for me this question is not a hypothetical one but its exactly what I need to answer. And by writing about it I hope to become more clear on my goals as well as give the people around me a glimpse into my thinking.

The initial reaction to this question often is: go travel the world. See different countries, different cultures. Relax and enjoy your time off before you come back to a job.

That is definitely a good option and something that I would also like to do at some point but there are a few reasons why this isn't what I want to do in my current situation. When I planned to take this time off I had this pretty clear vision in my mind that I wanted to change something about how I live my life in the long run (yes, yes, midlife crisis and such). There are many parts of myself I’d like to improve, but I never had the time to focus on them while working full-time. My hope would be that if I actually have some time to focus on these things I could change habits, build systems, improve skills and learn a lot about the world and myself. These outcomes would ideally last and make me more relaxed and productive in the long run. Having this kind of focus is not something that I see myself having while traveling. My most productive environment is the one that I am used to. Where I feel safe and where I have the people I love around me. That is the main reason why explicitly decided not to spend the majority of this time traveling but at home.

My goal is to come out of this time better aligned with the person that I want to be. This person is relaxed, in control of the controllable aspects of their life, curious, healthy & trained, well connected, loving. By growing closer to this person I want to improve my general wellbeing while being there for others. This should set me up for an even happier life longterm. All that while not taking myself too seriously. Its all just a fun ride in a weird timeline (and we might get sucked into a giant bagel at some point anyway ¹).

But what exactly do you want to improve? And how?

Most people want to improve in one way or another, nobody is perfect (thats a fun game by the way ²). The question however is which areas to focus on and how to work on them. I don't have a perfect plan for how this is going to work but I want to have a rough model and refine that along the way.

Lets start by defining whats in scope and what is definitely out of scope. Whats clear is that I want to focus on the things that I can influence. Stephen Covey describes the concepts of the circle of concern (all the things you worry about), circle of influence (the subset of things that you can actually influence), circle of control (the even smaller subset of things that are directly in your control). The idea is that you shouldn't worry too much about things that you can't influence and focus more of your mental energy on things you can control. E.g: don't worry about world politics too much unless you are a politician and can actually change it. Rather worry about yourself and the things you can directly influence. Over time your circle of influence might actually grow, giving you more opportunities and decisions.

I therefore want the focus to be on myself and the things I can directly control. I want to reduce focus on the things that I can't control. So what are those things? Lets try to divide and conquer by figuring out which areas my life is composed of. Here is a rough overview of my current understanding:

• Knowledge - My understanding of the universe and the things within it
• Skills - Behaviors that I have learned to execute allowing me to tackle specific situations
• Habits - Recurring behaviors that I can execute without thinking about them
• Control - My ability to monitor aspects of my life and act towards changing these aspects
• Relationships - The relationships I build and maintain with other people
• Health - How my body feels and is able to handle everyday struggles
• Projects - Larger topics that I want to work on for achieving a specific outcome

These areas are sadly not cleanly separable but overlap heavily. They are surely also not complete. But thinking about these areas can give me some focus on how to improve. Within those areas there are many subtopics that I can work on. Next I will need to record the current state within those areas and define what exactly is not aligned with who I want to be. Or in other words I will define goals that I want to reach. All of this will become part of my personal operating system that I want to grow throughout the next few months. More on what exactly that means in the next post.

Don't take yourself too seriously

I think by now you should get a picture of what it is that I am trying to do in this time. Improving specific parts of my life in a sustainable way. However I am also old enough to know that no plan ever turns out the way you think it will. So its important that I stay flexible and don't put too much pressure on myself. I still want to enjoy this awesome opportunity and have fun throughout it. Thats why I am going to stop here, go outside and enjoy the rainy weather.

Thank you for reading, enjoy your day and smile a little (it's healthy),

Niki