I did not go to Switzerland to disconnect. Amanda and I had a wedding in Flims, and the trip had been planned for a while.
The timing happened to be useful.
The week before we left had become an unexpected family week. I was moving meetings, apologizing for my schedule, and trying to keep work from waiting on me. There were Wahoo planning conversations that could move without me, which was good. I told one team I was glad they had done exactly that.
There was still plenty I wanted to move myself.
One research thread had a useful set of quantitative data. My response was to set up weekly interviews too. I wanted us spending more time actually talking with customers instead of only looking at the numbers. Another conversation about SYSTM had landed on the kind of approach I had been looking for. I wanted a little time to prepare something useful before I brought it to the team.
This is the normal problem with taking time away from work. The work is interesting. I want to be in it. A customer says something useful and I want the next interview. A product conversation finally gets somewhere and I want one more hour with it.
Then real life makes the decision for you.
The family week had rearranged the calendar. I was telling people I could not make things, asking teams to keep moving, and trying not to turn every personal problem into somebody else's work problem. They did keep moving. That was good management and mildly annoying to the part of me that likes being involved in everything.
Then I got on the plane.
“Just landed in Zurich,” I wrote the next morning while bumping an Apply call until I got back. It was a very small attempt to admit that a normal workweek was not going to fit inside this one.
Switzerland made that easier. Amanda and I walked around Zurich, took the train toward Flims, and got outside in the snow. I still answered a note from a running friend looking for an old Garmin. I had several, plus free Wahoo RIVAL watches. Work, running, and the trip were all still in the same inbox.
The time difference created a useful wall. New York was asleep for the first part of my day. By the time everybody was fully online, we were already doing something else. Work still existed, but it could not fill every open minute unless I worked hard to let it.
I did not.
When she asked how Switzerland was going, I gave the more honest answer.
“It's great. If nothing else the time zone change is letting me disconnect from the work and dad stuff.”
Friday was a ski day. The sun was out above a layer of clouds, so I took the obvious goggle selfie. I had not fixed anything. I had just gotten far enough away to stop looking at all of it every minute.
That was enough.
I have never been especially good at separating work from the rest of my life. I like the work, and most of my friends are builders, runners, or both. A product idea turns into dinner conversation. A run turns into a customer conversation. A trip becomes a chance to look at how somebody else designed a train, a hotel, or a ticketing system.
Usually I like that overlap.
This week it had become too much overlap. Family was heavy. Work was full. I was trying to be useful in every direction and mostly succeeding at keeping every part of my brain occupied.
Switzerland changed the inputs. Snow. Trains. A wedding. Walking around Zurich with Amanda. Looking down at clouds instead of a calendar.
None of it solved what was happening at home. Distance does not do that. It just gave me a few hours where I was not attempting to solve it.
I was already excited to come home. I ended the note the way I usually did: “We shall run again :)”
Then I put the phone away and went back into the snow.