Sabbatical Day 5 – Work

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Today was one of the few days in my calendar with scheduled work for my company, BERTEIG.  Melanie, Travis and I had a Partner’s meeting (basically board of directors).  Because our fiscal year end is August 31, we spent a bit of time reviewing the financials for the year (thanks Xero for a great accounting platform!) and doing a year-long retrospective.  We also talked about our strategic plans and made some updates to our goals.  Most of the details of that stuff is done with the full BERTEIG leadership team, not just by the Partners.  I can’t really share any details since that stuff is confidential, but suffice it to say that we have some great stuff planned… that I won’t be working on!!! (Sabbatical, remember?)

Aside from that, I spent some time with the family in the late afternoon and early evening.  Walked the dog.  After the kids went to bed, I finished the writing portion of my book titled “I Am Not A Great Leader” and did a v1 cover design.  I’ve sent the full thing to the editor (my mom).  I’ll be releasing it as soon as I get the edits back, get the ISBN number and put it up on Lulu.com.  I’ll be sure to post here when that stuff is finished – actually, I’ll be posting just about everywhere when it is done!  Here’s my super-fast cover design – let me know if you have any feedback.  (I’ll get a professional designer for v2.)

I Am Not A Great Leader - Cover

Sabbatical Day 4 – Kids and Heat

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My day was mostly with kids: I cycled with Verity to school for her first day of high school.  Yay!  I got back home and took a very quick dip in the pool.  Then I took Justice to a oral surgeon for a consultation about his wisdom teeth – no need to do surgery until the school year is over.  Yay!  Then I ate lunch and I spent a bit of time sunbathing and swimming in the heat.  Yay!  Then I cycled back to Verity’s school and picked her up.  Yay!  Then Melanie, Haifa, Verity, Ocean and I went into the back yard and the pool.  Yay!  Then we all went out for ice cream.  Yay yay!!  Then we kinda ate a light dinner and puttered around.  We said evening prayers.  And I took my camera outside to try some night sky photography.  Yay!  I tried getting software to work to “stack” the images – but I couldn’t get it to work.  Boo!

So that’s eight “yay”s and one “boo”.  That’s a pretty good day!

Also, I’ve made good progress in setting up my personal kanban board for my sabbatical projects:

The expedite column is for Melanie to give me work to do while I’m not working at BERTEIG.  I’m hypothesizing that a WIP limit of 5 for the In Process stage is probably about right for me.

Sabbatical Day 3 – The Book

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Well, I’ve had a few hours to work on the book this weekend, but it’s still not ready for final review.  I probably have between 2 and 5 thousand words left to write before it’s properly done which means it’s going to end up being somewhere between 25000 and 30000 words.  Longer than I anticipated – I guess that means I have lots to say?  I’m a bit frustrated because I really hoped to have it out of the way before my sabbatical started (3 days ago), then I hoped it would be done by the end of the long weekend.  Now… I’m going to give myself just two more days to finish the writing.  That takes me up to the first day of my classes on Thursday.  Here’s hoping!

Today was a nice day.  Verity and I cycled to her school as practice.  I hung back about ½ a block so that she would have to lead the way completely.  She had no problems and is now confident about cycling to the school.  It’s a bit far: about 3.5km and at her normal pace about 20 minutes to get there.  I’m sure she will speed up as she gets more familiar with the route and her own capabilities.  Tomorrow we will go again as it is her first day and I promised that I would ride with her.  We have to leave pretty early.  School starts at 8:30, I want her to be there by 8:15, and I want to leave a bit of a buffer even so.  We will leave the house at 7:50.

Justice and I went to the Western campus to pick up our student cards.  It was super well-organized and quick.  We were in a long line, but it only took about 5 minutes to get to the front and just a few seconds for the staff to retrieve our student cards and give them to us.  I’m now the proud holder of a Wester student card which gives me access to a bunch of university services and facilities.  I’m hoping they have a swimming pool that I can use during the colder months when our home pool is closed.  Anyway, Justice and I also had a bit of a laugh at some campus graffiti about “speciesism” with a drawing of a cow.

One of my main administrative wrap-up tasks is complete: I finished submitting all my receipts for my work expenses.  On sabbatical, I hope I don’t have many and so it will be pretty easy from here on out.  It’s also our business’ year-end so it feels good to have them done in a timely manner.  It took a couple hours this afternoon to finish.

Sabbatical Day 2 – A Sunburn and Sore Feet

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Lots more housework today, but a bunch outside too.  I’ve burned my forehead a bit and my feet are sore from standing so much.  I won’t bore you with the details.

Tonight I have to finish up my writing project that I hoped to finish before the start of my sabbatical.  I started work on it nine days ago when I took my trip to Hong Kong.  I wrote about 21000 words on the flights and while at the hotel in Hong Kong.  I’ve edited about half that, and I still have probably about 3 to 5 thousand words left to write.  I was hoping to publish early this week which means before mid-day on Wednesday.  That will be challenging at this point, but is still possible.  Maybe by the end of the week.

Sabbatical Day 1

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Typical busy Saturday with just a bit of weekend in it.

Yesterday I turned off most of the Slack channels with my team so that I won’t be bothered there, and I put an auto-responder on my business email saying I won’t be back for a year!!!

Today I did a bunch of errands, but I also got time at the pool.  I did a little swimming and spent a bit of time in the sun – it was a hot day here in London.  I only spent a tiny bit of time on my math prep, but that’s okay.  I went to see my professors about 10 days ago to get a sense of how I need to prepare for my classes, and basically, I don’t.  I’m still doing a bit of prep, and I bought the textbook for one of my classes (“How to Prove It” by Velleman), but basically, I’m looking forward to starting on Thursday.  Also today, I helped my daughter Verity clean her bird’s cage (gross), took care of my other daughter’s dog (a standard poodle puppy) for a little while, did some laundry, cooked dinner, and best of all, I ate Fruit Loops for breakfast 🙂  I also listened to the No Agenda podcast which is pretty much my favourite source of analysis of current events.

I also created a list of things I want to do during my sabbatical:

  1. Family Time
    1. Spend time with each of Melanie, Justice, Haifa, Verity and Ocean on a scheduled basis, one person per day of the week
    2. Start holding devotionals or firesides
    3. Help Haifa and Justice get their driver’s licenses
    4. Help Melanie with her household backlog
    5. Work on our family tree
  2. Personal Stuff
    1. Complete 6 courses in Mathematics at University of Western Ontario: 2 in the fall, 4 in the winter terms
    2. Lego projects including an architectural project, a Harry Potter project and updates to my workroom
    3. Coin sorting (mostly pennies) for my coin collection
    4. Study French – I would like to be able to teach in French by the fall of 2019
    5. Complete reading “Elliptic Tales”

I won’t get everything in that list done, but it would be nice to make progress on everything!

All-in-all, a quiet start to my sabbatical.

Arts and Family

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Melanie has signed us up for pottery classes starting in late September. We will go with Verity and Ocean. I haven’t done any pottery for decades. I think we will have fun doing it as a family. Haifa, Verity and Ocean have been doing pottery lessons for a while and they created some really beautiful stuff. We will be going to The London Potters Guild facilities.

The London Potters Guild

664 Dundas St, London, ON N5W 2Y8

(519) 434-1664

https://goo.gl/maps/fPEaUse1aNH2

Sabbatical Planning: Email and Slack

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My sabbatical starts soon and before it starts, I have to make sure I have reasonable expectations and policies to handle my email and my engagement on Slack with my colleagues. I’ve had a few suggestions here and there, but I haven’t really finalized anything.  Currently, these two tools are used mostly as follows:

Email

Currently, I use email mostly for communication outside my business.  In particular, I use it for notifications of various sorts (e.g. LinkedIn messages, admin system messages, etc.), hearing from vendors and partners (e.g. newsletters, technical announcements), arranging logistics such as meetings with clients or partners, occasionally for sending proposals (although mostly this is done by other people than me now), and that’s about it.

Slack

Slack is huge for our business.  I have seven private groups, twenty-five public groups (about half really active), and lots of direct messages too.  I’m “on” constantly and usually reply in minutes to anything relevant.  Sometimes I go longer.  Current uses of Slack are around all sorts of information-sharing, decision-making, polling, arguing, concerns, FYIs, social things, etc.  As a dis-located group, with only occasional in-person meetings, Slack covers a lot of ground for us!

My Question

So, what would you recommend?  How should I get prepared to handle email and Slack during my year-long sabbatical?

In Other News

Next week I have brief interviews with the two professors at Western in whose classes I will be starting in September.  I’m looking forward to meeting them and discussing my concerns and abilities for starting back in school in a challenging field such as mathematics.

Sabbatical Countdown T-30 Days

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I recently finished catching myself up on my basic differential and integral calculus.  I actually think I understand it better now than I did when I took calculus in high school and in university.  I may be fooling myself 🙂  I finished reading and doing many exercises in Quick Calculus 2nd Ed. and I can highly recommend it for anyone who wants to brush up on their calculus.  It’s fast-paced, focuses on core concepts and techniques, covers both theory and application, and does it all in a slim easy-to-consume volume.  Of course, it doesn’t have the depth of something like Stewart’s Calculus which is a common textbook, and I’m peeking into that too, but it satisfies the requirements of getting back up to speed after a time away.  I’m also continuing to use Khan Academy for further practice and depth, and will continue to do so probably throughout at least my first term back in school.

I’m also just at the start of brushing up on linear algebra, which I have very little interest in.  I kinda have to force myself.  I’ve got an old textbook called Linear Algebra with Applications.  I also downloaded two linear algebra texts onto my iPhone, and I’ve still got a bunch of Khan Academy units to do… but I have to push myself harder because of my lack of interest.  It’s not that I don’t see the applications… I do… it’s just that linear algebra has so many numbers!!!

That’s not a contradiction: I love mathematics, but I’m not a big fan of numerical manipulation (calculation).  The difference is that mathematics is about seeing relationships, structures and concepts whereas calculation is simply about getting formulaic answers from numerical data.  Calculation is boring to me (usually) because it doesn’t represent an intellectual challenge.  As a result, I hate doing bookkeeping.  On the other hand, I love designing complicated spreadsheets.  And, back to mathematics, I like doing proofs and other activities that represent problem-solving and discovery.  I love learning about cool relationships between mathematical structures and concepts.  And the numbers don’t matter except incidentally.

Preparing for School

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I’m working on getting ready for school. I will be taking two classes starting in September: Mathematics 2155 “Mathematical Structures” and Mathematics 3020 “Introduction to Abstract Algebra”. Both of these cover material I am broadly familiar with, but… My calculus and my linear algebra are very rusty. So, I’ve been using Khan Academy and a couple of old textbooks to try to catch up enough so that I’m not out of my depth when I start. I’m comfortable with basic differential calculus now, but I do need to memorize a few more standard derivatives. I’ve just started on integral calculus and linear algebra.

I’m really tempted to also start a few more “projects”… I’ve got a hankering to study French (again), do some electronics fiddling, and even try my hand at some sculpture (inspired by our recent family trip to Paris).  But, I need to be realistic about my capacity.  I’ve still got lots of work to do before my sabbatical starts including training, client consultations, and handing off more things to my colleagues.  Then, when September comes, I’m going to have to make sure that I’m completely focused on family and school.  After that has settled in, then maybe I can bring on another project or two 🙂