Evolving my definition of growth during my sabbatical
I’m now about 18 months into this new journey, and while the freedom is incredibly empowering, it was also initially daunting with a “dilemma” of too much choice.
Applying some structure and loose goals were critical to my continued development and progression, but in a different way.
Note: while I mention setting “goals” above, in reality I defined themes that guided me, rather than explicit deliverables. I do find myself mapping short-term goals to these themes to understand if they fit my still evolving north star.
Theme 1: Be more creative and learn non-technical things
So much of my development since I became an adult has been focused on professional pursuits. I wanted to expand my focus to some areas that would challenge me differently.
Photography
I take a lot of photos: 6K in 2021, 10K in 2022 and somehow, 25K during 2023
Given that level of increasing commitment, I wanted to get better at adapting to various shooting environments, including night photography, astrophotography, landscapes, etc
I will admit, some of that rapidly increasing photo count is due to trial and error, but I’ve also learned that editing is half the job, and can help you recover questionable outputs, which might be a life learning as well 🙂
Language learning
I never understood the privilege of having English as my native tongue, until I traveled to far flung places in Asia, South America and Europe, where it was the de-facto backup language
That being said, my new home is Portugal and I want to fully embrace all that means, so I’m 5 months deep into learning Portuguese!
Theme 2: Slow progress is still progress
Even as I was slowing down in other ways, one area that I stubbornly found myself still doing too much too soon was physical fitness.
CrossFit
I am a man of routine, and I started CrossFit thinking it would enable me to maintain consistency in working out, even as I moved between Barbados, Manchester and Lisbon
That being said, CrossFit kicked (and continues to kick) my butt – sometimes my weights felt comical compared to others around, but it also made me focus on my own progression as the measure of growth, which was helpful in other contexts
Hiking & Biking
Hiking is now one of my favorite things. The amount of random weekdays that I found myself up a mountain, or along a lake, or freezing my butt off on a snow capped hillside were substantial, and also helped me take on my fear of heights
I also FINALLY learned to ride a bike y’all! Although it’s not as useful in hilly Lisbon
Theme 3: Get back to learning by building
Earlier in my career, whenever I wanted to learn more about some trending tech, I built something like an app or website with it. As I’ve progressed in my career, I’ve found that most of my recent exposure to emerging tech has felt more theory driven than practical.
Generative AI
I consumed a lot of Generative AI content, and even earned a Prompt Engineering certificate, but it was only when I tried to build something end-to-end with it, that I truly understood its potential and its limits
Blockchain & Smart Contracts
I’m currently mid-flight on a Ethereum Blockchain Smart Contracts course, and I’m really pumped to continue to dive deeper from a more technical perspective
Infra
Building is more than just ideating, scoping and developing, you also need to figure out what infrastructure to use to deploy it, which can be tricky, expensive, a security risk, etc
I dove headfirst into building “serverless” applications with Amazon Web Services Lambda, as there’s nothing quite like taking something that’s been running on your laptop, and getting it live in the “real” world
I’m certain my themes will evolve over time, as will the goals that they inspire, so I’ll continue to periodically share updates.