Around this time last I year I blogged about injury, surgery and recovery. Nearly a year later I’m finding myself in a similar position and trying to heed my own advice. This time, I’m trying to be a bit more curious and consider a new path for my recovery.

I’ve always been someone who sticks to their fitness routine regularly. Over the past few years I’ve prided myself in my ability to get exercise every day, close my rings (I’m an Apple Watch fan) and keep up my physical activity. I’ve blogged in the past about building a routine that sticks. My routine is a rock in my life that’s filled with the chaos of being a father of two young boys and working for a fast-paced technology organization.

I’m realizing that I’m aging, and even in the past few years it’s been harder to keep up with my routine. My mindset to combat this was more exercise - in particular as our office is reopening I now have access to a real gym (and not a home gym!). I’m excited to be a bit more dynamic in my exercise routine, but as I have started I’m realizing that I’m doing more harm than good to my body. It’s time to take a break, reassess and start again.

Starting tomorrow (the day after Labour Day, nonetheless!) I’m committing to 1-2 weeks of breaking my routine to focus on my recovery. My initial plan includes:

• Avoiding any exercise and workouts whatsoever. Even light exercise I’ll be skipping. My exception will be 10 minutes of slow yoga each evening as a wind-down mechanism.

• Changing my regular wake-up time. Normally I’m up around 5:15am, however recently I’m finding it hard to make that time. I’ll be challenging my previous approach and letting myself naturally wake-up and go from there.

• I’ll be focusing a lot on mental health and meditation during this time, and finding ways to utilize any free time in a creative way.

I’m quite nervous about this change and the short term and long term impacts it will have on my overall health. Will I be able to pick up my routine again? Will I gain weight? How will my mood feel with less exercise?

I’m writing this post on my blog to make a commitment and keep myself honest on trying this path. I hope to post again later this month, if not sooner, on my lessons learned and how I’m feeling about this experiment!

Nearly 4 years ago to the day I blogged about a series of life changes that shaped how a lot my time would be spent in the forthcoming years. My oldest was approaching his first birthday, we had purchased our first home and I had just started my new role leading our engineering team at Salesforce.org. It was most certainly the start to what would be a crazy number of years in my life.

Henrik and Rupert enjoying a welcome basket from my new team!

Fast forward to May 2021 and while there are many things that are the same (we’re still in our same home in Port Moody!), lots has changed. The boys are going to be age 5 and 3, we’re on the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic and, most excitingly, I’m advancing my career and trying something new! This week I started a new role at Salesforce with a focus on engineering skills and people development for our technology teams.

I’m excited to take this next step in my career. During my growth as a technical leader I have always gravitated and found interest in the people development aspect of management and I’m thrilled to be able to focus more of my energy on these types of initiatives for other leaders in the industry.

In addition to taking on this new role, I’m committing to posting more content on my Twitter profile about engineering and technical leadership. Be sure to give me a follow or check out my Feed for more information!

It think we can all agree that the start of 2021 has been much like most of 2020. With so much going on in the world, it’s hard to keep your mental health stable and focus your energy on what truly matters.

Winter walks with the boys have been great for mental health!

2020 was a transformational year for me, one in which I’ve blogged extensively on:

• Managing mental health and wellbeing during a pandemic

• Taking a sabbatical and stepping away from work

• Dealing with ongoing injuries and surgeries

I went through a lot of growth last year, both personally and professionally. I setup systems in my life that helped me foster that growth. I read more. I took online courses. I focused on my fitness and wellbeing. I invested a significant amount of my time and energy focused on myself, my achievements and ultimately scratched an everlasting itch to always be getting shit done.

As 2021 has progressed and, in particular, as my work has become more demanding and intense, I’ve taken a bit of a different approach.

I’ve been doing a whole lot of nothing.

This isn’t to say that I’ve been phoning it in. In fact I find myself more engaged in my work these days and I’m really enjoying the challenges that it provides. But beyond that, and to act as a counter-balance, I’ve been focusing on spending a lot of down time at the end of my day and on weekends. No reading, no writing, no courses, no deliberate growth activity. Just hanging out - going out for walks, watching TV & sports, playing video games and spending time with the family.

Brené Brown has blogged, written and podcasted (is that a word?) extensively on the concept of “play” - time within your life where you do things with no particular end goal or achievement. It’s been refreshing to apply some of these techniques to my life and has an added benefit of connecting closer with my kids.

One thing that I haven’t compromised is my physical and mental fitness. I still meditate every day. I get at least 60 mins of activity each morning before my day starts. But what I have done is put more downtime into my exercise. For example, a few times a week I only do yoga and stretching to allow my body to relax, rest and recover.

There is a part of me that’s concerned that with such large investment in my growth in 2020, that I’m starting to slow down. Life is short! But ultimately I feel growth and learning comes in waves and there will be a time again soon in which I have that lust for personal growth again. Today I was inspired to write this blog post, so perhaps I’m already starting to turn a corner!

But until then, I plan to continue to have a lot of unstructured downtime with my family and “play” more. For your own mental health, I suggest you do the same!