In DC mid-level bureaucrats can be easily identified by their furious typing on government issued Blackberries. I proudly displayed my DC bureaucratic status symbol until I had to give up the phone two months ago when I went on the road. Now I am back in DC waiting for my next "job" to start.
Without my government cell phone or significant job responsibilities I've had a lot of mental down time. This is much to the chagrin of my wife who is still fully engrossed in PHD school and has to field questions like "hey what do you think about current Pakistani policy in the Pashtun tribal areas of Waziristan?" Or "did you know the Ford Shelby Mustang has 663 horsepower, comes in dark blue, and is only $65,000 bran new?" To which she patiently responds, "That's great honey and when are you starting your new job again?" So I've come up with a few guidlines for family survial of "transition" down time.
- Use the slow time to think about strategic life decisions. This can vary from family to family, but for me it's questions like "where do we want to live when we retire?"
- Read a good book (or two...). My views on reading are already laid out here. Downtime is great for this.
- Clean your house. I haven't been too serious about this one but my intentions are good...
- Try a new restraurant. Again, good intentions, but no results on this one.
- Collect the lessons learned from your previous job and make plans for applying those at your new job. Every transition is an opportunity to start over and improve on your previous success (or learn from failure!).
- Explore your city. Since my wife is in school and I don't have a job, I drop her off and then go find something to do until she is done. The American History Museum in downtown DC got a few visits from me when we were doing this.
- Relax. You'll have plenty of stress later to make up for it...
Transitions can be tough but if you find ways to channel your mental (or in my case restless) energy you can benefit from the downtime. Here's to the future.
How do you spend your transition downtime?
Without my government cell phone or significant job responsibilities I've had a lot of mental down time. This is much to the chagrin of my wife who is still fully engrossed in PHD school and has to field questions like "hey what do you think about current Pakistani policy in the Pashtun tribal areas of Waziristan?" Or "did you know the Ford Shelby Mustang has 663 horsepower, comes in dark blue, and is only $65,000 bran new?" To which she patiently responds, "That's great honey and when are you starting your new job again?" So I've come up with a few guidlines for family survial of "transition" down time.
- Use the slow time to think about strategic life decisions. This can vary from family to family, but for me it's questions like "where do we want to live when we retire?"
- Read a good book (or two...). My views on reading are already laid out here. Downtime is great for this.
- Clean your house. I haven't been too serious about this one but my intentions are good...
- Try a new restraurant. Again, good intentions, but no results on this one.
- Collect the lessons learned from your previous job and make plans for applying those at your new job. Every transition is an opportunity to start over and improve on your previous success (or learn from failure!).
- Explore your city. Since my wife is in school and I don't have a job, I drop her off and then go find something to do until she is done. The American History Museum in downtown DC got a few visits from me when we were doing this.
- Relax. You'll have plenty of stress later to make up for it...
Transitions can be tough but if you find ways to channel your mental (or in my case restless) energy you can benefit from the downtime. Here's to the future.
How do you spend your transition downtime?
I like relax, not clean the house so much, I've done that enough already. I'm sort of into horses right now on my down time. Re-living my childhood!
ReplyDelete