The Value of Not Productive Time - a Retrospective on Vacations w/ Derek Huether

Derek meets the ocean.

A Retrospective on Vacations

If you love your work and are very driven, the idea of “vacation” can be a daunting thing. In this episode of SoundNotes, Derek Huether and Dave Prior hold a retrospective on how they each coped with the challenge of non-productivity time over the holiday. If you count yourself among the vacation challenged, this conversation may provide insight into why you need to take the time, why you need to protect the time BUT why your version of taking a break to restore yourself doesn’t have to fit the standard definition of “vacation”.
 

Show Notes

• 00:08 Podcast Begins
• 00:17 Topic Intro - a Retrospective on taking vacation
• 00:52 Derek explains why he took his first vacation in almost 2 years
• 02:07 Pre-vacation anxiety
• 03:12 If you get grumpy when you don’t have too much work to do “YOU NEED TO GET AWAY”
• 03:52 When your sustainable pace is an unsustainable pace
• 04:10 Some of us are wired a little weird and there is no “balance”
• 05:11 Sometimes having too much to do can be a positive
• 06:03 The dopamine rush of getting something done… how much sleep do you really need
• 07:33 Debating the argument for getting “enough” sleep
• 09:14 Derek’s Kanban board for vacation activities
• 11:06 What Derek reads on the beach for relaxation (feel free to roll your eyes)
• 12:00 How “the damn ocean and seagulls” prevented Derek from relaxing with his DevOps books on the beach and how the Beastie Boys saved the day
• 13:20 If you are reading work related books on the beach, aren’t you still at work?
• 14:10 When you take time off from work and your hobbies are work related
• 15:48 Finding your own way to satisfy the need to unplug, take a break and get refreshed
• 16:38 The restorative joy that comes from watching seagulls attack people
• 17:08 Pomodoro Timer
• 17:22 The weight of vacation guilt - for doing work, or for not really taking “vacation”
• 18:20 Why would you want to go on vacation and be remorseful when it is supposed to be a reward
• 19:14 Derek’s trick of reserving play time as a planned activity
• 20:15 Having intentionality and discipline to carve out time for creative fun stuff
• 20:48 Super not productive time may be recovery time and that is part of being productive
• 21:30 Giving yourself permission to be not productive and then protecting that time
• 21:55 What happens when YOU don’t respect your not productive time
• 22:20 “I have to respect it” and take the time without carrying the guilt
• 23:04 Dave’s resolution to get less done in 2017 and trying to create a small vacation every day
• 23:45 Derek’s quiet time (with coffee)
• 25:10 Meditation … it’s not about emptying your mind - it’s about not dancing with the thoughts that arise
• 26:20 Derek’s version of meditation - post-its and coffee
• 26:50 It’s a way of looking at your though and saying “yeah, but not right now”
• 27:02 Wrap up thoughts, it’s okay to suck at vacation, it’s okay to not do stuff, protect the time with discipline, acknowledge that you derive and need the time, and don’t let other people tell you how much time you should take
• 27:56 Podcast End

Links from the Podcast

Visible Ops Handbook http://amzn.to/2jzVqKM DevOps Handbook http://amzn.to/2iTX8FM Ariana Huffington "The Sleep Revolution" http://amzn.to/2k2ySik

Contacting Derek

You can reach Derek on the LeadingAgile site at https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/derek-huether/ On Twitter at https://twitter.com/derekhuether Or on his personal site at http://www.derekhuether.com

Contacting Dave

You can reach Dave on the LeadingAgile site at https://www.leadingagile.com/guides/dave-prior/ On Twitter at https://twitter.com/mrsungo Or on his personal site at: http://drunkenpm.net

Submitting Questions for Upcoming Coaching Q&A Podcasts

If you have Agile related questions you’d like us to discuss in an upcoming podcast, please send your question to Dave at dave.prior@leadingagile.com. You can send the question in the body of an email, or you can send an mp3 of wav of you asking the question and will include the recording in a podcast on your topic.

LeadingAgile CSM and CSPO Classes

For information on LeadingAgile’s upcoming public CSM and CSPO classes, please go to: www.leadingagile.com/our-gear/training/

Meditating Project Managers

Steve Winters and Matt Payton are Digital Project Managers who work MetalToad. One of the coolest things they are working on right now is a series of experiments they are planning for 2015. Each month they're going to change up something specific in how they live and work to see what impact it has. In January they've decided to take on meditating for 20 minutes each day.  I am going to join Steve and Matt and commit to meditating for at least 20 minutes each day during January and I want to challenge you and other PMs to join us as well.

If you'd like to check out the interview I did with Steve about the experiments you can find it here.

And if you'd like to read his blog post on what they have planned for 2015, you can check that out here.

Steve mentions in the post that one of the reasons he thinks meditation will be beneficial is that PMs have a lot of stress in their lives and this could be a great way to help with that.  He's right. It will. I've been meditating almost daily for close to 10 years now and it has had a MASSIVE positive impact on every corner of my life.

If you're interested in participating, please reach out to Steve and let him know you be joining in. We'll be using Insight Timer and there will probably be an Insight Timer Meditation group set up for meditating PMs so we can all offer each other support.

If you're skeptical about meditation and can't really see the point of sitting and still and not doing anything for 20 minutes a day, you might want to check out this, or this, or this.

One of my teachers once said something to me about meditation that has stuck with me and seems more true every day. She said, "I sit every day because of what happens when I don't."