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Jacqueline Jensen

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Lessons Learned Experimenting With a Structured Sabbatical

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A guest post by Jacqueline Jensen, author of Travel Isn’t the Answer: Live With a Sense of Curiosity, Passion, and Awe Anywhere and Everywhere. Jacqueline is currently on a structured sabbatical in Europe.

Americans are infamously terrible at using the paid time off they get from their jobs. Over the past fifteen years, American workers have been taking less and less vacation. Project: Time Off, an initiative to promote taking time off, found the American worker’s vacation usage had fallen to 16 — nearly a full week less than the average between 1978 and 2000.

Project: Time Off calls this time America’s Lost Week.

Our focus on demanding work and career chasing doesn’t leave much room for time off to focus on other things, much less a balanced everyday lifestyle where values like curiosity, passion, and awe are at the top of the list.

What if the best way to advance your career is to take some structured time off? Welcome to the rise of the early-career gap year. The idea of taking a sabbatical to pursue personal and professional priorities on your own time is gaining steam.

Here’s what the modern-day sabbatical looks like: Talented professionals are choosing to take a structured sabbatical in between gigs and leveraging their job security to work on passion projects full-time.

I first heard about this idea when I visited Recess Labs, an experimental entrepreneur-in-residence program in New York City for talented people working full-time on unconventional projects. Unlike a startup incubator or studio, the program doesn’t take equity from participants. Recess Fellows are provided a structured work day, demo days, collaboration sessions, and a strong culture that supports the curiosity and experimentation of its members to build their passion project, even if it isn’t a venture-backed startup.

“One of the most unique features of Recess, relative to similar entities in the startup ecosystem, is that it’s open to a wide variety of side projects,” said Sib Mahapatra, founding fellow at Recess Labs. “Some of our fellows are working on ideas in retail, cryptocurrency and logistics with the potential to be major businesses – but we also have fellows who are writing novels about tech. The point of the program is to encourage people to work on things they personally want.”

Inspired after visiting Recess Labs, I made the decision to embark on my own structured sabbatical while living in Europe. My structured sabbatical centered around three focus projects:

  1. Writing my first book and launching a pre-order campaign.
  2. Taking my interest in learning to code to the next level with a 5-month online Intro to Programming course.
  3. Creating more space in my daily life for growth in my mental and physical health.

Initially, the idea of taking a structured sabbatical uncovered some doubts and fears:

What if I failed in my focus areas? When I returned to full-time work, would employers be ok with my time off? Would those around me think I was being lazy? Would I be able to stay on track with my goals during my structured sabbatical?

At the same time, I felt growing excitement and momentum build around trying out this idea. Leaving behind my day job to invest in myself stirred up feelings of power, innovation, and joy. How will I know if these passion projects gathering dust might be something incredible if I don’t dedicate time to try them out?

“It’s important to understand that doing your own thing doesn’t mean you’re aimlessly jumping into the ether, though ’taking a breather’ can be part of your motivation,” explained Sib. “If you have a plan, discipline, and runway to execute on it, you can custom design time to meet your goals and collect the information you need to make better long-term career decisions – and that’s a really powerful thing.”

I use three tools to keep on track and celebrate wins along the way:

  1. Accountability check-ins. I have a handful of communities online that I utilize for meaningful goal-setting each week. One is a public Slack community where I post goals alongside other community members. I also have designated “accountability buddies” for more private 1-on-1 check-ins. The more accountable I am, the more progress I see in my goals and the more support I feel from those around me.
  2. In-person meetings. As a digital nomad, I often find myself in a brand new city. I kicked off my structured sabbatical in Berlin, which ended up being the perfect place to connect with like-minded and creative individuals. Putting in-person meetings in my calendar each week has helped to keep me talking through my sabbatical even on days I have doubts about what I am doing. These meetings are also a key way to accelerate serendipity. I write more about that here.
  3. Journaling. I started to embrace journaling a couple years ago, but I find that during my structured sabbatical, it’s one of my most powerful tools. In addition to a twice daily check-in using a 5 Minute Journal, I free-write, mind-map, and doodle in a Baron Fig Work/Play notebook.

While I think it’s a great idea for a sabbatical to have structure, I’m also finding a key for my own growth is not being so reliant on structure. I want to feel content satisfaction as often as I can, not like I have successfully checked off a to-do list. It was a big adjustment for me to leave a full-time job where I was seeing success often and decide instead to venture a bit more into the unknown by working on projects where I may fail.

“Being daring is all about trusting yourself to handle the results,” writes the team at First Round Capital. “A shocking number of people in tech know they’re brilliant, know they’re capable, but don’t trust themselves to know what to do if they get fired, fail spectacularly or just want to switch gears towards a more fulfilling path. Shifting your confidence from one area of your life to another gives you the safety net you need to take more chances.”

I am in the first weeks of my structured sabbatical. So far, I can see a lot of growth in myself and I am proud of the work on each of my projects. I still have room to go further in shedding my attachment to traditional career growth for validation. It’s a process and I am allowing myself to try out new ways of thinking.

If you aren’t in a place to spend months on a structured sabbatical, how can you reclaim more of the time you have now for passion projects? How can you get connected to a space of experimentation, play, and even welcomed failure? I’d love to hear from you!

Jacqueline Jensen, Author ofLive With a Sense of Curiosity, Passion, & Awe Anywhere and Everywhere.

Jacqueline Jensen is a digital nomad, former venture-backed startup founder, speaker, and recognized community builder. Jacqueline’s next ambitious project is publishing her first book. Watch her TEDx talk “Playing nicely with fellow entrepreneurs pays off.” Jacqueline’s interests include travel, yoga, entrepreneurism, startups, and learning to code. You can connect with her at @JackieMJensen or on LinkedIn.

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Writing Your First Book: Lessons from The Lean Startup

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A guest post by Jacqueline Jensen, author of Travel Isn’t the Answer: Live With a Sense of Curiosity, Passion, and Awe Anywhere and Everywhere.

“What is the hardest part about writing a book?”

As I’ve read interviews and talked to writers, their answers range from challenges landing a publishing deal and feeling overwhelmed as a slow writer, to fears around vulnerability and the struggle to shed self-doubt. Will people read the book? Will my ideas resonate with anyone?

Most writers I have come across tell me writing a book is both extremely rewarding and at the same time one of the biggest challenges they have ever taken on.

When I decided to write my first book, I came across an ideation framework that made perfect sense to me as a former venture-backed startup founder. Even better, many of challenges I heard from experienced authors seemed to be helped along with a new approach, too.

The idea is simple, but powerful: Test your idea for a book before investing too much of your time actually writing the book.

In the startup world, we call this The Lean Startup methodology. Tech entrepreneurs around the globe have followed principles introduced by Eric Ries, an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business.

Rather than create a product – or write a book – in isolation, Ries says that by getting ideas out into the world as quickly as possible, we rapidly see what works and can discard what doesn’t without too much invested effort.

While it may make sense to some of us to start with an idea for something we think people may want and then spend time building it, there’s a better way. What if we publicly shared the idea in its most basic form to hear what people think? What if we chose to create smarter, not work harder?

This rudimentary form of an idea is called an MVP. In the tech world, a “minimum viable product” is a version of a new product that is used to collect the maximum amount of validated learning with the least effort. In this new world of writing my first book, my book’s MVP would take the form of a 30-day pre-order campaign to gather feedback about the idea.

I connected with the team at Publishizer to get started on creating the campaign. We explored how we could move fast and embrace the idea of failing quickly, which for someone new to publishing like me felt both a little scary and incredibly bold.

“We are a NYC-based startup and crowdfunding platform that has helped hundreds of authors get published,” said Lee Constantine, Head of Growth at Publishizer. “Authors have used Publishizer to earn over $1 million in funds. Our goal is to enable exciting new book ideas and help authors land an advance-paying publisher. We launched in 2014 and graduated from 500 Startups Batch 13 in Mountain View, CA. We pride ourselves on working with world-class thought leaders, speakers, coaches, investors, and people doing interesting things.”

Within weeks, I had a Publishizer campaign page ready for the pre-order launch on September 15, 2017. I filmed a video explaining a bit more about the book idea, worked with a designer to create a book cover, and conducted research on the potential market. I even asked a creative I admire to partner with me. Carl Richards, New York Times Sketch Guy columnist, agreed to write the foreword and produce original sketches for the book!

During this process, I have felt the same fears, doubts, and challenges as the experienced authors I look up to. I realized my initial urge to plan every step before unveiling a finished book was because I was stepping into the unknown. I wanted to avoid failure. However, the secret key to creating something awesome is to get the feedback necessary early on to make it great!

During the creation of the campaign, I reminded myself over and over that the goal wasn’t to create a final product. My focus was to share budding ideas, create a space for feedback, stretch my assumptions, and show up with a learner’s eye. Bringing the “experimentation-first” mindset I cultivated at tech startups has been just what I needed jump start momentum in this new adventure.

How have you tackled new creative projects? What have you learned by sharing ideas before they are fully baked? I’d love to hear from you!

JJJacqueline Jensen is a digital nomad, former venture-backed startup founder, speaker, and recognized community builder. Jacqueline’s next ambitious project is publishing her first book. Watch her TEDx talk “Playing nicely with fellow entrepreneurs pays off.” Jacqueline’s interests include travel, yoga, entrepreneurism, startups, and learning to code. You can connect with her at @JackieMJensen or on LinkedIn.

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Interesting Talks – London

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A Guest Post By Jacqueline Jensen, Community Evangelist, Piktochart*

interesting-talks-londonFor most working professionals, establishing a supportive social circle is a tough feat. In the case of digital nomads like me, we opt for living, working, and traveling in cities around the world rather than making our homes in one city. Creating and maintaining meaningful connections while only being in a community for a small time is a tall order.

I started my journey as a digital nomad when I lived, worked, and traveled in Europe solo for four weeks in early 2015. By the end of that journey, I’d never felt more excited and fulfilled – I was hooked and wanted to explore more! I loved the challenge of visiting inspiring places while at the same time establishing a routine I needed to stay productive in my career.

Today, after 16 months without a traditional “home,” my days look different than they did in the past. My ideal day starts by getting up early and heading to a neighborhood coffee shop. I put in time working from the coffee shop until lunch time. From there, I seek out a market to buy street food for lunch and to pick up some groceries for dinner. After dropping off groceries, I like to do something interesting in the city – head to a museum for a few hours, shop in an area known for boutiques or go to the park. I head back to my Airbnb apartment to work until dinner time. Then, I will work on passion projects or side projects.

A day like this doesn’t leave much room for cultivating a reliable social circle, but then again, what work day does? I also haven’t been as intentional as I would like to be about connecting with others in new cities.

While I was recently living in London for a month, I attended the 300th Meetup celebration for a successful local group called “Interesting Talks – London.” At each of the group’s gatherings, attendees listen to talks on personal development, psychology, and other interesting topics. With over 19,000 members, this group is the largest Personal Development and Psychology Meetup group in the world!

The topic that night was an interesting one for me personally – how to create and maintain an amazing social circle in your community. The talk was given by the Meetup’s organizer, Matt Kendall.

“We are surrounded by people all the time,” said Kendall. “But with more people using their phones and other devices, we are losing our ability to connect with one another. Even being in a crowd can feel lonely, and the people you really want to see are just too busy.  When you have a poor social life, it can lead to isolation, fatigue, depression, and low self-esteem.”

After hearing Matt’s talk, I left with a plan for how to set goals for being more social in the communities I visit.

From fast-paced digital nomads to those who just landed in a city for a new job, or for busy professionals who want to expand their professional networks, here are three tips for building a strong social circle that anyone can try:

  1. Get clear on what you value in a social circle. I enjoyed an exercise Matt told us about during his talk.

    Think about the six top values you want in your social circle. Essentially, which are six traits do you look for in new friends?

    For Matt, his top values included traits like reliability and being open to adventure. When it comes to reliability, he seeks out people who show up when they say they will. An activity with your social circle is more fun when everyone is excited about it, he said. If someone is always the first to cancel, chances are this person isn’t as excited about the activity as you are – and it’s ok to leave them off the next invite list. Because he loves adventure and new activities, Kendall said he’s looking for friends who enjoy trying new things too, not those who get stuck in patterns weekend after weekend. To him, having a social circle that joins him in trying new things is important to keep him on track and not stuck in a routine.

  1. Determine where you are currently sitting for each value. Once you have your six values set, Matt suggested determining where your social circle currently falls for each value on a scale of 1 to 10. If you value a social circle that is positive thinking, think back to your last five activities. How positive were they? Did you leave the group activity feeling positive or negative? If this value ranks low right now, but you value it highly, consider seeking out activities that are focused on positive thinking like a meditation workshop or a volunteer opportunity. Using the ratings, you can see where you’re coming up short – and seek out more connections who share those values.
  1. Utilize tools for fostering connection. Three of my favorite resources for connecting with locals are EatWith, Sofar Sounds, and Meetup.
    • Think of EatWith as a supper club where you get to enjoy an intimate dinner in a local’s home with strangers. It’s a great way to meet new people and try interesting cuisine.
    • Sofar Sounds is a secret gig where 3-4 performers play intimate sets for the small audience. The focus of the gathering is the music, so it’s a much different experience than heading to a neighborhood bar where a band is playing and glasses are clinking. For music fans, this is a unique way to support small artists while meeting like-minded people who savor live music.
    • Meetup has groups that are ready to plug into – no need to start from scratch. Enjoy hiking? There’s a Meetup for that. Want to learn to code? Hang out with others who want to learn too!

Attending this Meetup in London made a powerful impact on how I plan to structure my weeks as I continue to be location independent. Being intentional about engaging with the communities I am visiting is important to me, and I can’t wait to give these three tips a try!

How do you get to know others in your community? Do you find spicing up your social circle and breaking routine a challenge? And, if you are a digital nomad like me, how do you balance your location independence and your need for connection?

Jacqueline Jensen, Community Evangelist, PiktochartJacqueline Jensen is the Community Evangelist at Piktochart. She is a recognized storyteller and relationship builder. As Community Evangelist, Jacqueline shares Piktochart innovation with various groups at conferences and summits worldwide. Jacqueline enjoys meeting users around the globe.

*Piktochart is a Pure Performance Communications consulting client.

Jacqueline Jensen, Community Evangelist, Piktochart

Join #PRStudChat on Feb. 16th for a Discussion on #Creative #Content to Excite Your Community

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PRSTUDCHATToday, creating and distributing content goes far beyond just sharing your own messages and company news. Your content must be relevant, meaningful and useful to capture your audience’s attention. According to a Marketwired survey in November 2015, PR and marketing professionals plan to increase their content marketing programs by 64% in 2016. According to the same survey, 79% of these professionals have a content marketing plan in place. Content marketing has become an important part of your communication program, and your storytelling requires a strategic and creative approach.

Piktochart LogoOn Tuesday, February 16th, at 8:30 p.m. ET, the #PRStudChat community will gather to discuss Creative Content to Excite your Community. Joining us that night will be special guest and co-moderator, Jacqueline Jensen, who is the Community Evangelist at Piktochart.  Jacqueline will lead the discussion on content marketing topics, which will include:

  • Creating visual content with a more hands on approach.
  • Discovering new design techniques for content creation.
  • Raising levels of engagement with interactive content in different communities.
  • Approaching content development strategically and more cost effectively.

JJA Little More About Jacqueline Jensen … Jacqueline is the Community Evangelist for Piktochart, a former venture-backed startup founder, and a natural born doer. She thrives at the intersection of content and community, and has been a relationship builder, podcast producer, event planner, problem solver, social marketer, project manager, and TEDx speaker.

A Little More About Piktochart … Piktochart was founded in 2011 by Ai Ching Goh and Andrea Zaggia when they realized Infographics were quickly growing in popularity. They created Piktochart so anyone interested in content strategy and visually attractive communication would be able to easily design professional-looking graphics.

A Little More About PRStudChat … It began with a simple question asked by Angela Hernandez, then President of PRSSA at Central Michigan University (CMU). “Is PR Right for me?” A follow up blog post by PR 2.0 expert Deirdre Breakenridge inspired a series of direct messages on Twitter between Breakenridge and fellow PR industry pro, Valerie Simon. This was an important question and one that should be explored beyond one student or one blog post. Why not build a community to help students across the country, and even the globe, learn from the experience and perspective of industry professionals … A community where everyone can learn and grow together. Read more