Gap year @40— 5 things I learnt in the first 90 days

I am on a gap year in 2021 to explore how I want to spend my 40s and craft my life 2.0.

In my earlier updates, I shared what I learnt from doing nothing for the first 2 weeks of the gap year, my realization to have presence (versus productivity) as the foundation for life 2.0 and life experiments I kicked off to gain presence.

This update is about what I have learnt in the first 90 days of my gap year.

My first 90 days turned out differently than what I expected. I had planned to immerse myself in one life theme each month with a 70–20–10 learning approach, reflect, learn, and then move on to the next theme — neat plans, messy reality. The first 90 days turned out to be a set of experiments to build presence — 21-day phone deprivation, morning pages, serendipity hours, no news. In parallel, I finished a post-graduate diploma course, spent many blissful hours with kids, reading, writing, investing, hiking, life chats with new and old friends and often, just did nothing. Here are my top 5 learnings.

1) It will never be done. Is getting done even the objective? — Even a gap year has finite time, and there is never enough time to do everything one wants to do. My no phone/ news experiment made me realise how much of what automatically fills my life is just noise. Switching off the…