I Am User Generated

Great news! My dad, who’s a university professor, has just been granted his first sabbatical. Bad news, my dad is in his fifties and three years from retirement. One sabbatical, in a 40-year career, three years before retirement just doesn’t add up. Like all good sons my lifelong quest is to not repeat the folly of my father, so I set out to find my own equation that granted me a better solution to continued learning while working.

Stefan Segmeister, the world-renowned designer posits this solution: Given the fact that the first 25 or so years are devoted to learning, the next 40 or so to working, and the final 25 to retirement what if we cut off 5 years from retirement and intersperse them into your working years? By this math we’d take a sabbatical every seven years thus pushing back out retirement by 5 years.

Well this seems like a better solution then that of a single sabbatical right before retirement, it isn’t exactly realistic for us who are not owners of world famous design firms.

Knowing that I didn’t want to walk in the same steps as my father, and that I didn’t have the job security to take a year off every seven I decided to start Sabbatical Saturdays. Okay, okay, I know what you’re thinking and you’re right, this isn’t such a radical move but it does give a focus to my weekend. If I take one day off a week to further educate myself then I’ve taken 52 days a year which adds up to taking a full year off over the course of seven years. Essentially I’ve taken the same time as Sagmeister but just done it as weekly commitment as opposed to checking out for a full year every seven years. The sacrifice is simply that instead of nursing a hangover until noon, then doing laundry, then watching TV, then starting in on creating a Sunday hangover, I decided to devote a whole day to learning and completing a project outside my work discipline.

Let’s make no mistake, this is not a day to hang out drink espressos in the sun and pontificate whilst cogitating, this is a time to execute on a specific project. Any sabbatical has a rigorous set of deliverables. So the first part is to define those deliverables and due date. Knowing that I’m a born flaneur/procrastinator I’ve enlisted the help of a faux academic advisor to keep me on track.  I’ll play the same role for them. My “student” is interested in new media’s role in education and the development of critical information age thinkers, so I’ve assigned Peter Drucker, Richard Florida and Neill Postman to compliment the more contemporary authors Daniel Pink and Seth Godin.

Most sabbaticals also involve leaving the nest for a time to get perspective on your surroundings. Well this is a downside to a weekly day commitment as opposed to an extended leave of absence; this doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be followed. Take your Saturday Sabbactical from your local Chinatown or drive to your next neighborhood and work from a café.

So as it stands this is simply a creative experiment with an unknown outcome but worst-case scenario I’ll just wait another 20 years and take a sabbatical like my dad. He turned out okay so I’m fine with that. As it stands I’m kicking around three projects: A portrait cookbook, a book on nutrition and creative output and a film script on the 1968 student revolutions. Sure they’re loose ideas now but hell I got seven years to complete them and all I need to do is devote one day a week.

Good luck. Let me know if you need an advisor and I’ll try to find one for you.

I’m biking across Vietnam to raise money for eduction in the poorest regions of the world. I’m hoping to raise a $1 for every kilometer I ride. I’ll match donations up to $500.

If you’re interested in donating to my chosen charity of Concern Worldwide then you can donate through Facebook Causes or though Twestival Vancouver.

Thanks a lot. See you when I get back.

One of the most insightful Tweets I’ve heard comes from our buddy @kk who said that “Twitter is like being at a party where everyone is on cocaine… Everyone talks and no one listens.” Sad, but all too true. However, this not the reason I first got into Twitter. The reason I first got into Twitter was by following academics and entrepreneurs that I was interested in. Daily I could hear thoughts off the top of the minds of interesting and insightful people who were not publishing fully baked treatises but rather things they were pondering. This helped me to see the patterns in these thoughts and piece together my own knowledge from their musings. This in my mind is the power of Twitter. These Twitter thoughts lead to the creation of Minds on Twitter. Minds on Twitter is a simple site that aggregates all these insightful thoughts and musings. Who’s the one person you follow that consistently gets your mental gears turning? Suggest them to the site or send a @tweetminds tweet to get your inspirational person added to Minds on Twitter. Hopefully you find this a useful addition to the Twittersphere and not just that coked out dude in the Internet memesphere. Hopefully with Rappers on Twitter this is the start to collaboratively building the Alltop for Twitter using only Tweets.