Ceasing Radio Silence

Radio Silence is established just before an attack to ensure that the enemy doesn’t detect you and counter-attack first. I’ve been in radio silence on this blog since August. The last post described some of the manuscripts and rough ideas I was working with at the time as I homed in on the new book, whichever one that would be. The enemy? Well, without realising it I think I had maintained radio silence against the enemy within, and that enemy is the inner critic, imposter syndrome and underlying resistance. I’m sure others feel these too.

So, it’s mid-October and in a couple of weeks I will be in a one-week Sabbatical where I will be pushing forwards with the new ideas that are emerging. As I write, I am still hovering around at least four book ideas – these are either in outline or part-written. I’m holding judgement on which one will emerge during the week. I guess that’s another form of radio silence.

The blog will also come to life during the week as I use it to Work Out Loud. In the next ten days I will be revisiting the blog posts from earlier Writing Marathons and writing retreats to embed the learning from those experiences.

The aim is to have three themed time zones in each day:

• Consumption
• Reflection
• Creation

The first part of the day then will be consumption – research, reading and exploring ideas. Then the second part, reflection, will be a time for meditation, silence, music, walking and open thinking. The third part, later in the day will focus in on creation. This will be the part of the day where new material appears for one or more of the books. The order of these will be open to experiment but it is intended to reflect my experience of what works best. In a world that thinks we are all larks or owls, I have discovered through experience that my most creative and productive time of day is between 4.0 pm and 6.0 pm. Not sure which bird represents that, but it’s time that I am intending to be in creative mode.

I will be using After Action Review (AAR) at the end of each day to adapt the process. I’ve been preparing for this for some time now and am really excited and looking forward to it. This is a very different sort of Sabbatical from the one I intended to be doing around now. In the pre-COVID world I was going to take a month to travel, connect and create. That’s not possible – so “travelling” will instead happen in the consumption phase when I am “travelling” with ideas through books and in the online space.

As a tiny experiment (influenced by discussions with my own coach Ian) I’m interested to see how it works. Feedback will be posted here.