Structure. Discipline. Routine. When redundancy strikes, how does your day look? After a career of any length of time, you become set in your ways. Regular meetings, getting up at certain time. Abusing the free coffee, until it becomes another type of addiction. Probably too much information, but even visits to trap 3 (yes we all have our favourite cubicle….) are regular-ish.
Suddenly this familiarity, this comfort blanket of schedules and alerts 15 minutes before the meetings start is blown away. Gone. Time lies before you, at least until the last episode of that box set is finished. By the way, any recommendations greatly received, especially as I am struggling with GoT withdrawal symptoms.
So what do you do? Sitting in your pants watching Netflix ceases to become socially acceptable after 3-5 days. You need to buy food, as food groups other than cereal are required in order to avoid scurvy or rickets.
My plan was actually quite simple: I bought a white board.
At the centre of this board is my vision. Let’s call it Carl 2.0.
Then I split that into quadrants.
Mind
Body
Spirit
Environment
Following that, I add in activity plans that support my personal development in each one of this 4 areas.
The idea is to spend some time on at least one activity per quadrant per day.
At some point, I will break this down, explain some of the stuff I have done. After 3 months of garden leave, I have been reasonably successful in making this into a routine. I am up before 7 more or less every day. I achieve something every day. I am not bored, I have a sense of purpose.
The irony is that I have done very little gardening.
On the Swiss rock and roll 
Hey Carl! Good to ‘hear’ you. Highly recommend you investigate the Three Principles (mind, consciousness and thought) ‘unearthed’ by Scottish welder Syd Banks…explore the three principlesmovies.com website, watch Michael Neill TEDX Why are we not awesomer’, read a copy of his book The Inside Out Revolution and I look forward to reading the posts that are prompted by this way of understanding the human experience. The part of this understanding I felt moved to share is that we don’t have to force away negative thoughts, pro-actively select positive ones: the way our system is (intelligently) designed is that thoughts come and go of their own accord (unless we throw our consciousness at them and fixate on them, building them into tangled beliefs etc). Once you know that is the ‘nature’ or principle driving the system (just as gravity is a principle) – the effort and angst will naturally fall away. Happy discovering Megan x
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Inspirational stuff. Could be applied to retirement as well as redundancy. Thanks for sharing.
PS. Who’s in Trap 2? (Lime Meadow Ave 1988-93)
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[…] are so many tools and processes to help you do this. My method, as mentioned in an earlier blog, (https://ontheswissrockandroll.com/2017/09/05/quadrants-of-my-life/) worked for me, but the back of a fag packet might help! One thing I have done quite a few times, […]
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