Carmen Radeck

Today I pushed the reset button. Reset is a course I took a few years ago, at a time I still was self-employed. The promise of the course was to give my workday a cosmic tune-up. And it did! It totally transformed how I worked each day.

So now as I am a full-time employee I had forgotten a bit to work this way. And since I am still on sick leave this week I felt like revisiting the course so I wouldn’t struggle with busy work and deadlines the day I go back to work.

Since my work situation is a bit different now, working in a company and in a team, I cannot integrate everything like when I worked self-employed. But there are quite some things I can do that I’m sure will make my work day feel lighter, more productive and creative.

For planning a project I want to integrate obstacle thinking as well as define some key actions.

Obstacle thinking is about challenges that can arise and how to overcome them. Mostly they relate to the four aspects confidence (Am I ready?), skills (can I learn this or give it to someone else?), time (what am I willing to give up?) and material assets (how can I do more with less?).

Defining key actions helps to plan the project more loosely and not too detailed and can be used as a guide for focus and setting priorities.

I also want to think about what kind of analogue progress tracker I could use.

Another thing I want to do is to align my work and tasks with my body clock. The most important thing is to use my golden hours (peak creativity, from about 10-12 in the morning) for deep attention, creative work.

Another deep attention work session I want to put in the late afternoon when I usually experience another creativity peak.

I also want to batch processing emails and messages 2-3 times a day for no longer than 30 minutes in total.

I want to block focus hours into my calendar and try to put meetings in the afternoon.

Another thing I want to try is planning my to-do list the evening before and also doing zoom-outs for seeing the bigger picture on a regular basis.

I will report if I managed to integrate those things and their impact on my work day. Stay tuned.

After a documentary about mosses, I walk through the forest with a completely different focus. But not only there, also through the village. Moss is everywhere. On tree trunks, whether standing, lying or stumps, on forest floors, meadows, pavements, front gardens or the roof of the dustbin shed in our street.

Mosses are fascinating plants. Survival artists, although it’s so soft and delicate. It was the first time in ages that I touched the green fluff. The last time I did that was probably as a child.

Moss is a big thing now. It’s being rediscovered. Or maybe really discovered for the first time. Maybe it was just too ubiquitous to get full attention.

But it’s not as misunderstood everywhere as it is here. In Japan for example, it is honored, cherished and cared for in some places. A Japanese moss expert interviewed in the documentary even crawled across the floor to sniff out the mouldy smell of a particular species of moss.

Moss is probably the first plant species on earth that ever grew on land. Its origin is algae.

There are many many different species, even moss that moves on the surface of some glaciers. It’s called „glacier mice“.

Moss that was over a thousand years old was found under a layer of permafrost. The cold couldn’t harm it. Even drought and reactor disasters don’t affect moss. As experiments show it could even be settled on Mars.

Moss has no roots. It lets itself be blown somewhere by the wind and then reproduces there. One species has even made a pact with fox poop, growing on it and mimicking its smell (or stench) to attract blowflies to reproduce.

It’s somehow beautiful to know that maybe we can’t destroy everything green so easily after all.

Sure, with glyphosate. But by the way. One type of moss has exactly the same properties or even the same ingredient as glyphosate.

Strange thing, this moss.

So I have to admit that I don’t have a realistic sense of when I’ll be well enough to go to work again.

Okay, I’ve noticed it myself. This is how I used to deal with illness when I was self-employed. I went back to work when I was well enough.

But now I’ve been employed for over a year, and since I’m still not recovered enough, I had to go to the GP this morning.

She gave me a sick note for the whole week.

I immediately: On Wednesday I will have recovered enough to go back to work.

And the GP: Well, your infection will definitely still be there on Wednesday.

I really have to learn that: It’s good to recover fully, and it’s not necessary to go back to work when I’m still sick. I have a team of great people who will do a great job without me.

And I will be a better help to everyone (including myself) when I come back to work fully recovered.

So I will do my best and do just that this week.

It feels so good to just listen what the body needs and to only do that. Mostly just sleep and rest. And that’s enough. Let the body recover. I mean that’s a lot! Why do more?