About a month and a half ago I blogged about how I plan to approach recovery from a previous injury. At the time I laid out the following focus areas:

• 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 happy to say that I’m making progress on some of these, but not all! For me it’s been more about my general awareness and how I’m feeling day-to-day vs. keeping a strict structure on my physical activity. A few areas that I’ve improved on:

• I’m much more mindful of rest and exercise and when one can support the other.

• I’ve included 10 minutes of slow yoga in each evening, which has been a game-changer for my mental health. That 10 minutes of wind-down each evening is one of the things I look forward to each day!

• In my free time I’ve started reading much more and continuing to grow out my podcast library.

One thing I didn’t budge on is my 5:15am wake-up time and I glad I didn’t! The only time I adjust for this is if I’m on vacation.

Throughout this process it’s made me realize one thing about myself: I thrive on routine. When I have a solid routine in my life, everything else moves much more fluidly.

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!