Way back at the start of the year, I booked myself a knitting retreat for September. I was very much looking forward to communing with other knitters in the beautiful Melmerby Hall. I packed up my bags and took the train up there. Two days later, I was back on the train heading home, feeling myself getting sicker by the moment.
Now I am not an unobservant person, and it has not escaped my notice that I have been on five trips this year, and I have been sick on every one of them. I went to Helsinki to teach and got sick. I went to Johannesburg to teach and got sick; in fact, I very nearly ended up in hospital there. I went back to Finland to teach and was sick again. I went on a lovely holiday to Anglesey, where I did not get sick, but was in fact recovering from being sick. And then, to top it all off, I went on a knitting retreat and had to come home after two days because I was sick. I can connect the dots here, folks. Something is off. My immune system is telling me something.
I think it’s time for me to recalibrate and take a serious look at my resources (including my health) and figure out what is currently sustainable and what isn’t. Luckily, I’ve written a book about how to do just that! All I need to do now is follow my own advice!
When Tatiana Rowson and I began to think about the longevity economy and develop our model of sustainable personal leadership, the concept of recalibration was a central feature. Things change, and when they do, we need to do a sense check. Have my priorities changed? Have my resources changed? A holistic examination of health and well-being is part of this.
“The role of health and well-being goes beyond having a longer working life….This is about having a good quality of life in general, and feeling fit to make choices that bring us meaning and fulfillment. Because when our health resources are depleted (e.g. due to chronic stress, burnout, physical health) it is very difficult to keep up with other resource areas – and be able to do the things we want.” Tatiana Rowson and Kelly Sloan, Personal Leadership in the Age of No Retirement, p.113.
A good look at the last few years, from a well-being perspective, leads me to two observations. First, the BSR (Big Stressful Role) that I have held for the past five years is depleting my health. It doesn’t help that this role is a major student support role, which puts me on the front line of students facing serious issues of mental health, financial crisis, caring responsibilities, and the impacts of Covid and AI. I have loved every minute of this role (okay, a little honesty here: there are some moments I haven’t exactly loved, but there are none where I haven’t felt impactful). The second observation is that all of the business travel I have done since joining the business faculty is wearing me down.
The first observation has actually been easy to fix. My 5-year term in the BSR finished on September 1st, and someone else is in charge of it now. I am proud of the work I did there, but am (mostly) relieved to step back. The second one is a little trickier, but I have made it known that I want to cut back substantially on the business travel. With the exception of the Covid lockdowns, I have been travelling to teach MBA workshops for 13 years now – including short treks to Munich, Frankfurt, Copenhagen, Helsinki, and long treks to Malaysia and Johannesburg. I recently calculated that I have spent approximately 52 weeks total in the same hotel in Johannesburg since taking up my post at Henley. As a first step in the right direction, I was supposed to fly to Johannesburg next week, but one of my colleagues is taking that trip for me. (In turn, I have taken over some of her local teaching.) I won’t be able to stop all business travel, but I am putting my health first this year.
The next step in this process is to make some decisions about what I want to do next. The BSR took up a significant amount of my workload, and now I have to be strategic about what I choose to do with that time. Luckily, our book lays out a process for that too. I have some ideas in mind for experimenting with both my professional and personal identities, but that is another Chapter. Stay tuned.
If you’d like to read our book, I’d love to hear what you think. We are quite proud of it. The book was co-written with my fabulous colleague, Tatiana S. Rowson, and published by DeGruyter. It is available in paperback or ebook. You can find it on Amazon, or ask for it from your local library or bookstore! ISBN: 9783111314440.
A few weeks ago, Tatiana and I gave the opening keynote address at the World of Work conference, where we spoke about the longevity economy and how to make smart personal leadership decisions. Here is a link to a short piece about our talk, which you may find interesting: https://www.henley.ac.uk/news/2026/is-it-time-to-let-go-of-the-ladder In a fun aside, Doug gave the opening keynote address for the first World of Work conference ten years ago! We are World of Work bookends!
And, finally, for those of you who only come here for the knitting content, rest assured that I cast-on two new projects for the ill-fated knitting retreat. The retreat was a bust (for me), but the projects are looking good. Come back again and I’ll tell you all about them!