Month 2 update: intrinsic motivation, loneliness and learning hard things
A summary of the second month of my year-long sabbatical / career break
Do I want to do this thing? Or am I doing it because I know I should? Do I do too much "work"? Should I rest … harder? Should I do something crazy?
Wait. Why am I on sabbatical again? Should I go back to work?
These were the thoughts that plagued my mind whenever I had a quiet moment to myself (and I had a lot of quiet moments to myself since I am on a sabbatical and all). Luckily, I was connected with so many amazing people who shared similar struggles while on sabbatical to help me get back on track.
Reflections
Intrinsic motivation
For years, thanks to institutions and corporate structures, we have lived in a world of “shoulds”. We should go to school on time, get good grades and find a decent job. In these systems, we have so much extrinsic motivation that drives us:
Your parents are proud when you get good grades or enter a prestigious school
Colleagues and managers praising you for good work and being rewarded with a bonus or salary increase
Consequences and accountability systems to ensure you do your work effectively
In the absence of all of these rewards and consequences — what do we do? We look inwards, towards our intrinsic motivations. For example, drawing because it makes you feel calm but not because you want to be seen as talented.
Despite being a pretty introspective person, I genuinely found it hard to distinguish between my shoulds (extrinsic motivators) and wants (intrinsic motivators). It’s especially hard when I chatted to so many people about their sabbaticals and what they did.
Woah! Water rafting? Should I do that? Wait, you made your whole dining room set from scratch? Should I do that? You started a business that you ended up selling? SHOULD I DO THAT ALSO? Going to Nepal and spending weeks at a monastery sounds good, also…
It wasn’t until I had a lovely coffee chat with Dom, who recently took a sabbatical. Most notably, he took a bottom-of-the-rank role at Fox Studios learning about filmmaking, something he was always curious about. I told him about my struggle with distinguishing what I wanted to do vs what I should do, and he asked me this:
If you were retired tomorrow, how would you be spending your week?
This one question simplified everything for me and it made me realise why I was struggling to differentiate the two so much. The main reason why I struggled was because my “ideal retirement” doesn’t look dramatically different from what I am doing right now. Some people might find it a little boring (some might even categorise it as “work”), yes, but I only would change a few things.
I asked myself what I would continue, start or stop to live my ideal retirement life and I came up with something like this:
I would start exploring curiosities that I always had since I was a kid — the one that’s off the top of my head right now is the gaming industry
I would continue mentoring and chatting to different startups but only if I like the founder and/or feel like I am learning from the experience (either new industry or problem space)
I would stop doing things for income, as a response to extend my sabbatical “runway”
Learning hard things
I am learning to code. Again. This might be my 5th attempt in the last 8 years or so. But I am proud to say that this might be the most effective attempt so far. And there are a few reasons for that:
Project-based learning. Instead of doing a generic coding course, I thought of a few interesting but very easy projects that are fun to do. Each of these projects will allow me to deep dive into different parts of coding — using external APIs, fun frontend challenges, database design and more.
Coding friends. Having friends who code is a blessing (thanks, Michael). 🥺 We did a quick coding day where I could ask him questions while trying to set up git, folder structures and how to actually break the project down.
Being patient with myself. In the past, I think I had pretty high expectations of myself — I thought I could understand coding immediately. As a kid, I only tried to do things I had natural talent in. After trying 4 other times, I simply just accepted that coding wasn’t one of them. But that’s okay and I can still have fun doing it.
It’s a lonely road
People warned me that one of the challenges of taking a sabbatical is loneliness. At first, I was like “Pfft! As an introvert and product manager, that’s the dream. Finally, I can be free of constant Slack messages and work in peace. 😌”
But nope, I really miss bouncing ideas off different people. I miss celebrating wins and simply going through struggles together. I can’t believe I am saying this but I really miss meetings like sprint planning and demos. Setting goals as a team, making progress and celebrating the wins is such a wonderful feeling.
So how do I actually get this feeling back? Well, I’ve started an accountability buddy system with two of my friends. One of them is focusing on content creation and the other one is studying machine learning. Every 1 to 2 weeks, we do little demos of our previous sprint, help each other prioritise and keep each other accountable.
What did you actually do, Jenny?
Things that sparked joy ✨
Sketching more often! If you read my first update, you may remember that I struggled to complete pieces. Mel provided some amazing advice around simply just doing daily studies and putting a time limit on them. My interpretation of this advice was to essentially integrate it with something I do every single day — drinking coffee. Recently, I’ve been bringing my sketchbook to little cafes across Sydney and just sketching things that catch my eye. 💜
Appreciating the mundane. If I told you about what my day to day actually looks like — it might sound really boring:
“Oh, I went to Cabramatta today, had yum cha and went to a lot of different fresh fruit stores”
“I had a coffee at a cute coffee shop and just walked around the city since it was nice and sunny”
But when I look at these photos, I see beautiful sunlight highlighting this gorgeous building, a ceramic cup that brought me so much joy and how wonderfully chaotic and organised Vietnamese grocery stores are.
For next month
Explore
Chances are, I am in either one of these 3 places during any time of the week: UNSW, my comfy home or WeWork. Since uni semester is over very soon and I have a break from teaching, I’ll be able to actually get away from the computer more and take my camera out for adventures. Perhaps more day trips or just reading in a cafe on those rainy days.
Shoutout
Listen to me talk about ego and external validation
Last year, my friend Rachel and I sat down to talk about a concept inspired by one of our favourite books: Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday for her podcast, The Bliss Bakery. I usually hate listening to myself talk but Rachel did such an amazing job as a host; I genuinely loved the topics we talked about. Please support her and give it a listen! 💜
Let’s reflect together 🙌
The one thing I really valued over the last 2 months is how this community (yes, you) have helped me so much with progressing with my goals. So I have a few questions for you (some might be more applicable than others):
If you retired tomorrow, how would you spend your weeks?
What’s something hard you’re trying to learn and what has helped you?
How do you keep yourself accountable on things you’re working on by yourself?
Share your thoughts below.
Hi Jenny! I’ve been enjoying your newsletters especially as it is SO relatable! I’d moved back to Sydney from SF having worked at Twitter for a few years, burnt out and had to seriously reevaluate what was meaningful to me.
I took a sabbatical last year and it was the best thing I’ve ever done - learned how to handstand, became a qualified horticulturalist and got pretty good at growing my own veggies in the garden.
Like your recent newsletter, it took me some time to shake off some quite embedded and toxic extrinsic motivators, or at least I’m more aware of them now.
I’ve returned back to work this year in a PM role with a different attitude - I’m no longer focused on promotions, or income and other external motivators, which is probably quite the privilege, and I’m grateful for it. I’m now more concerned about doing work that gives me energy, and that allows me to delve deeper into my hobbies.
If I’d retire tomorrow, I’d be in my garden with a cup of tea, my husband and dog, admiring the new buds that have formed on the veggies and flowers I’ve grown from seed. (I try and do this every morning since starting work).
Last year during my sabbatical, I was adamant on not focussing my energy on learning new skills that could see me further excel in my career. Rather, I was more focused on doing activities that made me reflect on my relationship with myself, especially how I respond to failure and fear. Learning how to handstand was that for me — I got a coach, and had regular weekly lessons. It was fun and enjoyable and random, and weird but it was exactly what I needed!
To the third point - the things I’d succeeded with during my career break weren’t due to keeping myself accountable - I found that it happened organically because I’d created enough space to understand my motivations in doing it in the first place. It’s a lot of hard work, but I guess that’s the point. There’s no easy solution or hack, just spending loads of time with yourself, and your thoughts.
Anyway, I love reading your journey! The best encouragement I had during my break is to walk the mystical path with practical feet, and it feels like you’re doing just that!
Thankyou for sharing and being vulnerable 💗 looking forward to more thoughts!