Conscious Ambition Tips: Bring the idea of sabbaticals closer in to your day-to-day now
A few tips for bringing the idea of sabbaticals closer in to your day-to-day now.
Right Ambition. Name a long-held personal ambition you keep deferring. How can you take a smaller action around that now in these final days of summer? How can you bring it “closer in” (make it a smaller possibility) to make it a reality?
Right Time. Don’t think you have time? Do a time study (per Laura Vanderkam) to identify where your time is going and to identify where you might want to make a shift. This is an interesting study by Pew Research that shows how we generally use our time.
You can also try my exercise: Where Time and Wish Time. Where are you spending your time? Where do you wish you were spending your time? What’s one small shift you can make toward where you wish to be spending your time. Resolving this—getting into better alignment where you don’t feel friction in where you are spending your time—can reduce feelings of time pressure.
Right Effort. Plan bulk recovery nights. This research out of the University of Georgia supports taking an evening or two a week for bulk recovery: “It’s very beneficial to plan evenings where you can use your entire 5 to 9 to relax or work on a hobby. When you do that, the next day you’re in a better mood, you have better energy and you’re able to get more work done…. Our research shows you get more bang for your ‘recovery buck’ by securing two or three good nights a week versus one extra hour every night.” You can think of these as your weekly sabbaticals.
Laura Vanderkam’s research also shows the benefits of getting out of the house a night a week. Doing something energizing doesn’t deplete us; it actually gives us more energy.
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Sustainable Ambition offers a strategic approach for pursuing our professional and personal goals in a way that is motivating, meaningful, and manageable from stage to stage, rather than be all consuming in a way that compromises other important aspects of our lives or sacrifices our well-being.