I started my time off 21 days ago. And even though time is already passing, it feels like I just took off my shoes and rediscovered what it feels like to not wear sturdy shoes every day. And in doing so, I am observing what it feels like not to function at all.

Right now, I'm in Bali, my former home, where I spent 12 years of my life. I wake up in the morning without a to-do list and ask myself: should I go for a walk today? Read? Eat? Meet someone? Or are there bigger questions I want to address today? It's amazing how quickly, despite everything, my inner critic pipes up: have you made the most of your time today?
Apparently, my brain is not yet familiar with the concept of „deliberate unproductivity“.

I really like my job, sometimes perhaps a little too much (certainly if you ask people who are close to me). My work is deeply rooted in my identity – so deeply that I sometimes forget about other parts of myself that have very little space in my everyday life.

An important question for the coming months is therefore: Who am I if I am not constantly fulfilling my professional role, if I am not keeping up with the pace of a busy life?

A team that makes time out possible

I am fully aware of how privileged I am to be able to afford this break – financially, family-wise and professionally. And I know that it would never have been possible without my team: keeping an eye on my postbox, continuing to schedule me into projects, and accepting as a matter of course that I would not be contributing to the community for three months. The reactions were overwhelmingly positive:

„Finally!“ – „You have to do it!“ – „I'm proud of you!“ I hadn't expected so much support from my colleagues. And I'm really grateful for that.

Why now?

The first spontaneous answer: I was very tired. Counselling is a profession that requires a lot of presence – emotionally, mentally, in group processes and in a world that is not content with small challenges at the moment.

At home, it's more of the same: a single mother of two almost grown-up children, daughter of a mother with dementia. Lots of responsibility. Lots of love. Little respite.

And the second very important answer: because now is a unique opportunity to spend time with my children – perhaps for the last time with this intensity – to travel together, to search for traces of the past in the country where they spent the first years of their lives. 

What the next few months will be about

I don't have a bucket list or a secret to-do list.
But I have a research question:

What emerges when I am not functioning? Who am I without roles, without the logic of usefulness, without the focus on permanent effectiveness? What issues, what thoughts, what desires and motivations rise to the surface?

If, in the end, I take away just one feeling – a moment when I felt alive or curious or surprisingly free – that's enough. Perhaps even more than enough.

And what does that have to do with my work as an organisational consultant and coach?

Indeed: a great deal.

I help people make important decisions, dare to make changes, find out how to best allocate their limited energy, and courageously listen to what really suits them.
I can only do this if I practise following what my heart tells me, even in the face of internal and external resistance: pausing, reflecting, regenerating, reordering.

This time out is not a quit.
I see it more as an act of self-preservation.
An investment in presence and energy and in the central relationship in my life, which means not only responsibility but also meaning for me – so that I can continue to hold spaces in which people and organisations can develop for a long time to come.

I want to return – not as someone who has „figured everything out“, but as someone who once again trusts that life and work should not be defined solely by productivity.