The penultimate retrospective of my sabbatical! How often does one get to use the word penultimate in its proper context?! #blessed

Week 13 Notes

Throughout my sabbatical I’ve kept up my (roughly) biweekly coaching sessions with a local founder. This week we decided to bring some of the work we’ve been doing together to the rest of her organization via a leadership workshop and some light touch advisory. I had to do a bit of administration to get that all sorted out but I’m stoked to dive into this soon!
Dentists are my least favorite medical professionals to visit. I love my actual dentist. I had a routine cleaning and emerged without any cavities. Victory.
Met up with a work colleague (👋 Alastair) for dinner while he was in town for a project.
Lots of reading and thinking, but not much writing other than some entries in my Zettelkasten system.
Normal training week: 1 hour easy bike, 40 min Fartlek run, 1200 yard recovery swim, 1 hour technique-focused bike, 40 min long run, 2.5 hour long bike.

Week 14 Notes

Chatted with a graduate school friend who is embarking on a career shift into coaching to share my perspective on the coaching I’ve done across my career so far.
Preseason hockey is here! Watched a few Detroit Red Wings games. Can’t wait for the regular seasons to start soon.
I published issue #50 of The Deliberate wherein I asked for feedback on my draft book proposal
I celebrated my sixth anniversary at The Ready!
Recorded episode 52 of Fields of Work with Max
Went for a hike with Emily along the Potomac River just outside of DC.
Lots of reading and thinking. Even less writing than last week, though.
Fitness training week: 45 minute easy bike, 40 minute running lactate threshold heart rate test, 1200 yard recovery swim, 30 minute easy recovery run, swimming t-pace test, and then 20 minute functional threshold power test.

What Has My Attention

Triathlon training continues being something that’s going really well. In Week 14 my coach scheduled a bunch of baseline fitness tests, so it was a bit of an atypical training week. Endurance training often means long workouts and relatively low intensities but fitness testing is generally relatively short workouts at extremely high intensity.

I shared a very rough draft of my book proposal with my newsletter subscribers and got so much great feedback. It’s always tough to submit a piece of work you care a lot about to criticism and to be honest I haven’t really dug through the feedback comment by comment, yet. I need to do that soon. I also need to decide how I want to proceed with this project, overall. Is selling a book proposal really the best move here? Or is there another path forward…?

As I mentioned in my Week 13 Notes, I’m doing a little bit of actual work work here and there. I’ve been paid my normal rate throughout the sabbatical but once I return to work I won’t be making my full rate unless I’m actively working on a project. I don’t really want a gap in my income so I’m doing a little bit of work now to lay the foundation for what I’ll be working on when I get back. Honestly, it has felt really good. I have a serious itch to dive back into this work (while also simultaneously wishing my sabbatical would continue forever? Feelings are weird.)

Recap of Reading & Other Media

Started and finished: A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload
Finished reading: The Art of Leadership
Still working on Annals of the Former World, Reinventing Scale-Ups: Radical Ideas for Growing Companies, Noise: A flaw in Human Judgment, The Count of Monte Cristo.
Keeping up to date with: new season of Bob’s Burgers and Ted Lasso
Still watching, but behind: What We Do in the Shadows, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Tiny World
Started watching: All of Nothing: Toronto Maple Leafs, Y: The Last Man

Personal Metrics Recap

As always, the format below is (Week 13 metric/Week 14 metric):

Average Hours Slept Per Night: 8.37/8.1
Average Quality Hours Slept Per Night: 5.98/5.7
Average Deep Hours Slept Per Night: 2.18/2.27
Average Sleeping Heart Rate: 48/46
Average Steps Per Day: 10,125/12,616
Average Weekly Weight: 206.3/206.4
Days Exercised (out of 7): 7/7
Days Read (out of 7): 7/7
Days Written (out of 7): 3/4
Days Meditated (out of 7): 2/1

Sleep is great.

Looking Ahead to the Last Two Weeks of My Sabbatical

Oh God, it’s here. The end. How do I squeeze all the sabbatical juice out of these last two weeks?!

I’m getting LASIK done this week. I’ve worn glasses and/or contacts since I was in 5th grade. It’s going to be wild to be able to see without assistance.
I’m talking to a tattoo artist about my next piece and hopefully getting it scheduled. It has been a few years since my last one and I’ve been working on a concept that I’m excited to see an actual artist take a crack at.
Triathlon training continues!
A tiny smidge of work in order to make everything go smoothly when I’m back since I have two workshops in my first week and a third one, in California, the following week. Gotta get my ducks in a row.
The final weekend of my sabbatical I’m going to be spending with my family in Michigan. Excited to give Emily the full Michigan-in-fall experience. A visit to the cider mill and the procurement of copious donuts are obviously at the top of that list.
Making some decisions about how to proceed with my book project. I’m starting to sense that trying to jump straight to selling a book about these ideas might be trying to take a shortcut that I’ll end up regretting. Or that’s just my brain trying to wiggle out of the hard work of actually finishing a thing. Either way, I’d like to make a decision about how to proceed.
Finally, I gotta finish The Count of Monte Cristo before this sabbatical ends. It has been hanging around forever and finishing it would feel like a real accomplishment. I’m over 60% of the way through it so it should be doable.