Project 364 – My :odyssey (Part 1/4)

The first quarter of Project 364 was shaped by … stress! Wait, what? Free time – and still stress? How does that even work? “Well, you clearly did something wrong there!” many will say. And yes, I actually did. I had plans. Many of them. “Now you can finally do all the things you always wanted to do.”, “Be careful not to fall into a hole when a big part of your daily work suddenly disappears.” and “Do you already have plans for what you’ll do next year?” were the sentences I heard the most. So I felt well prepared for all that free time:

• My pile of not-yet-installed home automation components finally wanted to be worked through.
• Our basement should finally be cleared of old kids’ stuff and things that should be sold, gifted away, or donated.
• Wednesdays were planned hiking days. I wanted to drive a bit further away, do longer tours, be out in nature.
• And besides all that, family should be the priority: more balance for activities with wife and child.

But after the first weeks, when only that one single stroller had been sold, the second hiking day had already been cancelled because of the weather, and I had zero energy to deal with home automation, frustration kicked in. When would I finally relax? This year was supposed to be used for relaxing!

At the end of March, a big event was coming up: my :odyssey. It’s a 3-day workshop around self-reflection and personal growth by Heidrick & Struggles for executives. So what was I doing there? Right in the middle of my sabbatical year, and without any leadership role beyond parenthood. My good friend Simon had been raving about this event for quite some time. He himself had stumbled into it by pure chance, and it had sustainably changed his life. When he heard about my time off, it was clear to him: “Toby, you have to do this. This is exactly what you need for this year.”

How right he was became clear to me on day 2 of the :odyssey. Let me say up front that I’m deliberately not going into detail about what actually happens during an :odyssey. Any spoiler would take away a piece of the exhausting, intoxicating, enriching, and clarifying experience of this event for future participants. And even though, for me as a private person, it was “a hell of a lot of money”, I can only recommend booking it if you really want to look deep inside yourself and truly develop further.

The hosts Kathrin, Boris, and Jens are a team of top-level coaches with very different areas of expertise, who have created a truly unique workshop. With a supervision ratio of 4:1 (3 high-class coaches for a maximum of 12 participants), the absolute place that really feeds the soul at the Baltic Sea, and the intensive program, a quasi-explosive mix is created. In that mix, every participant can take exactly what they need. On top of that, in an almost magical way, within hours, 12 complete strangers turn into a close-knit group of like-minded people. They entrust each other with their deepest secrets and support one another in a very natural, self-evident way.

After the first few hours, I briefly talked to Kathrin to get feedback on the question I had brought with me: “What will I do professionally next year?” We were supposed to go into a session with this pre-prepared question, and I was unsure whether it was formulated well enough. After a short conversation, she was very clear with me – I paraphrase from memory: “To answer this question, you need creativity. But right now, you cannot have that. Your nervous system is continuously in fight-or-flight mode. That blocks any creativity. You first need to manage to calm your nervous system down.” Mind. Blown.

Shortly before the :odyssey, I had already discovered 4-7-8 breathing for myself, a breathing technique that helps exactly with this: regulating your own nervous system towards rest mode. And within a short time, it became clear to me: Kathrin was totally right. I was in fight-or-flight mode. Continuously. For a long time already. Every single day consisted of “I have to survive” reactions. How far this actually went only became clear to me much later in the year. I intensified the 4-7-8 breathing after that (3 × 10 minutes per day). And it helped.

The next game changer was a small group coaching session with Jens. This session revolved around a personal development square. A “stumbling block” (a trait you yourself see as a weakness) should be turned into a strength by developing a counter-strength. As I said, I don’t want to spoil too much. When it was my turn to present my stumbling block to the other participants so they could formulate counter-strengths for me, I said something roughly like this: “Well, I don’t really have anything meaningful for you. Maybe we just skip me at this point. Or you just pick one of these four points.”

The weaknesses I had worked out (even before the :odyssey) were the following:

1. I was not able to endure conflicts in my closer environment.

   These conflicts didn't even have to involve me directly. It was completely sufficient if someone close to me was involved. My wife, my son, my co-founder, my friend at work, … suddenly it was always my problem, my stress, my worry to resolve it.

2. I could not stand having made a mistake.

   Yes, exactly, me, the guy who always preached "failure culture". Who forgave every employee for taking down the production environment. Who was there for every disaster to deal with it together. I could not allow myself any mistakes. Not even the smallest one.

3. Other people’s emotions jumped over to me quickly and intensely.

   When my son got angry, I got angry too. When my wife was sad, I was sad too. When my colleague was dissatisfied, I was too. And all of that within a very short time and always full blast. I made the problems of the people close to me my own.

But my fellow participants and Jens did not brush off my "small problems". Jens even suggested tackling all three issues as one overall topic. And after a short while, it became clear: as a counter-strength, what I needed was self-love.

Exactly this moment at the end of March 2025 set so much in motion and, in retrospect, brought me so far already. But more about that in part 2 of my Project 364 report.