Top Shelf

the goodbye email

Have you gotten a "good bye, stay in touch" email from someone before? It usually says something like "I'm leaving the company, it's been great working with everyone. Please stay in touch using my personal contact info."

Being on the receiving end, I never got a lot out of that email. It seemed a bit... hollow? Sometimes I even wondered why they were sending it to me. I mean, we worked together like one time 5 years ago.

Having left my company to start my master's program, I found myself in the same position of figuring how to say bye. How can I sum up almost 10 years in a single email sent to a huge cc list? How can my message be both personal but also shared with multiple people? I needed to find the PERFECT way to make my exit.

The tag I added to the end of all my emails for about 2 months before my last day.

I started a couple months out by adding a small note in red to the bottom of my email signature. That was great for transitioning work, and sparked some good conversation ahead of time, but the actual goodbye email was still a challenge. What should I include? How long should it be? Who do I send it to? Should I be funny, serious, or heartfelt?

I ended up drafting a simple message and included a light hearted but thoughtful meme. When I started adding people to the distribution list, the significance of the email totally changed. It turned out that writing the goodbye email was less about the people I was writing it to, and more of an opportunity for me to get closure.

As I added someone's name to the list, I held that person in my mind for a moment; I thought back on our relationship, what I learned from them, and the business challenges we conquered together. It became an opportunity for me to be grateful and appreciate how everyone shaped me into who I am today.

I thought about how each person sparked joy in my life.

A perfect mix of humour, vulnerability and uncomfortable moments, this quote from The Office was a perfect addition to the email.

This was, in a way, a Memento Mori - a practice of reflection on mortality. It gave me a sense of meaning and helped me recognize that time is a gift. I could clearly see a phase in my life was ending, and that a lot of my relationships would change and shift. It's not often we actually get an opportunity to know this is happening before it happens. The "goodbye email" became a reminder that every day, every moment, is precious. What a beautiful opportunity to appreciate everyone in my life.

Here is the email I sent to the work colleagues that helped shaped me. I'm certain there are many people I missed.

Upcoming Focus

physical space to manage time

I've lost a clear time and space separation in my life. It used to be that I was either "at work", "on-call", "at home", or "on vacation". I had mostly clear boundaries for what I would or would not do in each of these buckets. I'd write newsletter's and edit videos while "at home", and I wouldn't check or answer work emails while "on vacation".

With school being seemingly all pervasive, it feels like I always have a backlog of things I should or could be doing without a clear school/home separation. Things like admin tasks, booking tickets, studying, meeting with friends, Facetime, and group projects are all getting jumbled together. I've found myself allowing noisy tasks and busy work filling my time and bumping out time I want to spend doing something more meaningful. Sending a low priority email is easier than writing a newsletter. And greasing the squeaky wheel on my chair IS super important... right?

Spaceship You - Setting up a different physical space for different tasks

My upcoming focus is to use different physical spaces for different tasks. Similar to the Spaceship You video that helped me get through work-from-home during the pandemic. I plan to go to a particular library or cafe where I only allow myself to write trip updates and newsletters for friends and family. My hope is that the ritual of going to and being in the space will, over time, make it easier to stay focused on that particular activity I want to be putting time into without getting distracted by other tasks.

Learning

getting the most out of collaboration time

A meeting (or in my case lecture) is only as good as the pre-work and follow up that I put into it. At work I was able to avoid a lot of meetings by being thoughtful about the agenda and providing pre-read material. Just doing the leg work on that would almost always result in a couple 1-on-1 short discussions that resolved the issue.

But not every meeting (or lecture) can be avoided. I only just finished my first week of school, but I have found reading through the lecture slides makes the actual lecture more interesting and productive. Anything from a skim of the major topics to an in-depth read with googling and cross-referencing textbooks is helpful.

What it's done for me is create context, gives my sub-conscious time to digest and understand the content, and come up with thoughtful questions for discussion in the moment. What's the point of showing up to a meeting to just have someone present material to me? If I can't question it and understand it inside and out, I can't really internalize it and make it my own.

Whether it's a 15min scroll through the slides, or a 2hr pre-read study, any amount of time that can be given to meeting or lecture prep multiplies the effectiveness of time spent in discussion together.

Cool Gear

leatherman style PS

Although I don't actually own it, I wish I had it. I have my simple pocket knife which has come in handy so many times living in a dorm without tools. Being able to fix little things like clogged shower drains, wobbly tables and scraping off calcium deposits from my sink is super empowering and has helped make my space my own. But I had to borrow tools to unscrew the nuts on my mini-fridge door to change the side it opens on…

Saying Bye and New Routines (Ep.7)