Permanent sabbatical?

[Edward K. Ream]

My sabbatical has been a great success. It has freed me from the endless grind of feature requests and bugs. I can explore what I want for as long as I like. Why not continue the "sabbatical attitude" indefinitely?

My mantra for Leo now is, "There's no rush. It will wait." Yes, Leo can be improved, but there is no great urgency. For the first time, I see that Leo is fundamentally complete as it is. Right now.

Priorities and schedule

At present, my priorities for projects are, from highest to lowest:

- Fixes for recently-introduced bugs.

- Fixes for bugs discussed in recent conversations.

- Supporting leoInteg (Leo for vs-code)

- Improving the newbie experience.

- (Maybe) Supporting Leo in Jupyter.

- Cleaning Leo's code base for future devs.

- General exploration and background learning.

Balance: I'll devote a few days every week to bugs and easy feature requests. The rest of the week will be for exploration.

I have started to allocate larger blocks of time to music and exercise. Those breaks help me to improve Leo, so the new balance is pure gain.

Summary

The sabbatical has created a new appreciation for balance in my life. The result has been new priorities and a substantial increase in my productivity. I'll likely retain those new priorities for the rest of my life.

The result could be called a permanent sabbatical. All comments welcome.

Edward

[Jacob Peck]

Some folks call it 'self care' -- it's very important.  Keep doing the awesome work, but most importantly, keep doing what nourishes you intellectually, emotionally, and personally.  That's the key to productivity -- enjoying all the things /around/ the work.

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[Edward K. Ream]

On Tuesday, April 6, 2021 at 10:13:27 AM UTC-5 Edward K. Ream wrote:

My mantra for Leo now is, "There's no rush. It will wait."

...

At present, my priorities for projects are, from highest to lowest:

Soon after writing this I saw that the priorities were too detailed. They didn't create enough psychological room for exploration.

The only relevant distinction is between urgent/necessary work and exploration. Imo, what counts as urgent should be left vague. Sometimes its easier to do something than not. But in general long-standing bugs have no urgent claim on my time. They have waited a long time. They can wait longer.

Summary

Opening a space for exploration requires discipline. Otherwise it doesn't happen.

Edward