Lessons from parental leave
Image by Shiva Reddy from Pixabay
Tomorrow starts my third week of 100% focus on dad duties. It’s been an interesting time, and a fantastic boot camp for learning better micro-management skills. No matter what task you are trying to accomplish, the only person that can have your back every single time is your past self. Preparation and Routines are crucial. From breakfast to dog walks, you won’t have time to look for misplaced stuff. I have found these weeks thoroughly enjoyable, and it has been the perfect healing that I badly needed for my soul.
The thing I enjoy the most is the instant feedback of a completed job. For as long as I have been working as an acoustic consultant, instant feedback is something I can only dream about except when holding a microphone to a PA system. A typical civil engineering project spans years, and like Steve Jobs said “it is important to own the consequences of your recommendations” to truly develop (paraphrased). His words resonated strongly with me, because even though I have been working since 2008, it is not until now that I can honestly say that I am starting to understand the civil engineering process in its entirety with regards to how a new building is erected. It is not until you have been active in all the stages/phases of the process that you truly understand. Sure, you can do every phase in just a year or two – but not in the same project. Now, I finally have a couple of projects on my CV in which I have been present from the very beginning and all the way to a finished building where people live.
I cannot overstate how big of a milestone that is for an acoustician like me. It gives self-confidence and security. I have now started to own the consequences of my actions, and indeed it takes many years to reach that stage. In my case it took a lot longer than for the typical civil engineer, due to my research education that prolonged everything with at least five years. But education is an investment that you can reap the fruits from later. The growth curve is now a lot steeper than if I would have just kept working instead of learning. But it has perhaps been too steep in the past six months or so.
Sometimes you just need to let some time pass, to see what is going on. And I am confident this is one of those cases. I couldn’t think of a better way to recalibrate, than to take some parental leave. Countless times I have heard people laughing at or talking down the concept of equating parental leave with vacation. “You’ll be busier than ever…”, “it’s a LOT of work…” and “You won’t have any time for yourself, so prepare…”. I don’t get it, these three weeks (and counting) has been the best vacation ever for me. It has been extremely relaxing. However, I do know that I have a special personality trait that kind of flips my stress response. The more intense micromanaging, the more relaxed I become. For example, driving in heavy traffic in a crowded city makes me so calm and relaxed. I am so focused on the task at hand that there are no mental resources left for any other thoughts whatsoever. It’s like the flip side of meditation where relaxation comes from no thoughts at all. But in my case, I am so focused on a single task that the effect is pretty much the same. I love every little bit of that mental state. It is where I belong and where I can be the most productive to myself and everyone around me, and the community at large. Not many people that I know of would compare Kathmandu in rush hour with Zen-like inner peace, but for me it is like a spa treatment for the soul. And on the flip side, the better things work, the more stressed I become. It’s sometimes very annoying, but when the shit really hits the fan, it can be quite useful. I am exceptional in handling the early stages of a system, when nothing works, but as the system matures and begins to run on its own without hiccups, my stress level rises accordingly. It feels like it should be the other way around…
A prerequisite for good performance in highly taxing micromanagement settings is that you are prepared and have routines. When I am on my motorcycle in heavy traffic, it is like an extension of my body. It has become natural from my thousands of hours of practice, so I have always been well prepared. I am pretty sure that acoustic consultancy can feel that way too, given enough active time with the task. I am getting a taste of it now.
It is somewhat remarkable though that I can find the same type of relaxation with extreme micromanagement when I am on parental leave. Because I have zero practice or experience with that!