A Garden Leave Retrospective: Hope is Not a Strategy, But Origami Might Be

When my “gardening leave” began, I didn’t dig in the dirt; I am not an outdoorsy person. Instead, I decommissioned my proudest career achievement, the original Site Reliability Engineering book, and refactored its pages into a basket of origami flowers.

For those unfamiliar with the term, “gardening leave” is a distinctly European concept. Employment contracts typically have a mandatory notice period, regardless of whether the employee or employer initiates the process of parting ways. During this time, the employee is still technically employed, but is often relieved of day-to-day operational responsibilities (i.e., they now have lots of opportunity to tend the garden). When the time came for me to leave Google, I spent a number of weeks on gardening leave.

After years leading engineering programs, I stepped away to write and create independently full-time. This site is supported by readers: when you buy books or tools through the Amazon links here, I may earn a small affiliate commission at no extra cost to you.

Co-editing and program managing the creation and publication of the SRE book was a defining highlight of my career. I had accumulated multiple extra copies of the first edition over the years. I rationalized that as the release date for the completely reworked 2nd edition approached, I would take one copy of the original and sacrifice it in the name of art. Rather than letting this piece of my career history gather dust, I chose to transform the pages into a symbolic garden. My goal was to occupy and exercise my creative brain while honoring the memories of my 19-year career working in Big Tech.

Below, I present my one-of-a-kind art project and reflect on some key professional principles and best practices that my foray into SRE Book origami reinforced for me.

1. Applying SRE Principles and Best Practices to Origami

As someone who believes strongly that you can SRE anything, I quickly realized that folding an origami garden is fundamentally a systems problem.

Microservices and Whole-Systems Architecture

In software engineering, a robust system relies on modular components interacting seamlessly. I approached the flower garden with a whole-systems view: each flower that I folded acted as an individual “microservice,” contributing its own unique geometry and color to the overall stability and aesthetics of the basket. On its own, a single piece of folded paper is simple, but assembled together, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

Designing for Resilience

I intentionally selected forgiving, self-correcting origami folds over rigid, brittle designs. I started with two origami flower designs that I found on YouTube. You’d be amazed how many origami flower videos are out there! Some methods are extremely fiddly, complicated, and require a degree of precision I didn’t have the patience for.

In systems design, complexity and brittle architectures break catastrophically under unexpected stress. In papercraft, delicate structures collapse when handled. Trying a few options and then scaling up the more resilient folding patterns ensured that slight misalignments in the makeshift origami paper wouldn’t ruin the final flower, or the overall garden.

Canary the Deployment

I most definitely canaried a few different approaches to help me quickly understand what would scale and what would fail. For example, early in my SRE Book origami project, my direct painting technique proved to be way too messy (for both my hands and counters). I found that colored markers were much more effective.

Later, I attempted a sunflower design that turned out to be exceedingly frustrating and fragile. Rather than pushing forward and scaling up with bad architecture, I ran a quick postmortem  and subsequently turned down that method. I kept the sunflowers I had previously created in the garden, but didn’t invest more effort on them, since that form-factor wasn’t working out as well as I had hoped.

It’s OK (Sometimes) To Start with a Janky Solution

Normally, I wouldn’t recommend taking on “tech debt” by implementing a janky solution. However, I found in this art project that there was a time and place for imperfect solutions because the stakes were low.

I decided not to make perfect the enemy of good enough with this project since I was essentially its only real user. When my initial approaches to origami flower assembly proved problematic (glue stick is terrible!), I “MacGyvered” the pipeline using children’s art supplies. I foraged for mini wooden clothespins, tape, and pipe cleaners to lock flower stems in place and keep production moving.

As I was nearing the end of the project, I noticed that the pipe cleaner “stems” that I was using to attach the flowers to the basket were showing through on the outside of the wicker in an effect that resembled roots in dirt. I wanted to cover it somehow. A helpful friend suggested sewing an elastic cover for the garden. There was only one problem with this solution: I cannot sew … at all.

Instead, I channeled my inner MacGyver. I bought a pretty piece of green fabric and secured it to the outside of the basket with a mix of pipe cleaners and binder clips. I gathered up the excess fabric and cinched it with a knot. Definitely janky, but it was effective and looks pretty nice, don’t you think?

When you are effectively building an MVP or prototype, a janky solution can be an efficient, low-stakes experiment that you can learn from and evolve. Execution and active course-correction are what deliver a better working system.

Striving for Continuous Improvement

Tracking my paper preparation pipeline shows how continuous improvement transforms manual toil into greatly increased throughput:

• V1: Naive & Manual (Freehand Eyeballing)
  I started by tearing pages out of the SRE Book and freehand-cutting them into square shapes. The results were imprecise, slow, and generated significant waste.

• V2: Tooling & Standardization (Ruler & Text Lines)
  To improve consistency, I introduced basic tooling. I bought a ruler, marked measurements with a pencil, and used the book’s printed margins and text lines for structural alignment.

• V3: Scaling Throughput (Batch Processing)
  Once the measurement template was established, I scaled throughput by batching. I moved from cutting a single page at a time to prepping five pages simultaneously.

• V4: Algorithmic Refactoring (The Diagonal Fold Method)
  Near the end of the project, I discovered a major process breakthrough. I realized that by trimming the jagged spine edge and folding the rectangular sheet diagonally, the natural geometry automatically formed perfect squares of varying sizes. It also shaved a bunch of time off the process.

In a single moment of process refactoring, I eliminated the tedious ruler-and-pencil measurement steps altogether. It was an important  reminder: the most impactful optimization isn’t doing toil faster. Instead, it’s refactoring the system to eliminate that toil altogether.

Pre-Order the 2nd Edition of the SRE Book on Amazon.

2. Applying Program Management Principles and Best Practices to Origami

I led large scale projects for over two decades. In program management, it’s typically impossible to establish the optimal workflow when a project commences. I like to keep it simple and just get started. From here, I can develop a prototype, hypothesize, experiment, course-correct, and scale. 

Prototyping & Pipeline Dependencies (Order of Operations)

Before scaling my flower production, I had to develop a prototype and evaluate the pipeline’s order of operations. One critical question was: Do I paint/color first and fold second, or fold first and decorate second? Testing revealed that decorating flat paper before folding preserved the paper’s structural integrity and allowed colors to blend naturally across the folds. 

I later found that when the flat square of paper was folded, certain segments ended up on the outside, and certain segments ended up on the inside. Some parts of the paper were not visible at all. When I wanted to evolve my process so that I could be more intentional and precise in decorating the flowers, I took the time to investigate what ends up where. From here, I found that if I folded and then unfolded the paper, I could add targeted color, or a specific word or phrase inside and out without wasting time on the bits that wouldn’t show. Taking the time to systematize that improved my flower quality considerably.

By mapping the folds, I was also able to effectively attach additional bits of paper to the outside and turn a tulip into an orchid.   

Limiting Degrees of Freedom

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for creative projects, but you can still limit your degrees of freedom to maintain velocity. Rather than attempting dozens of distinct papercraft styles, I honed in on an approach that scaled well. I noticed that the five-petaled “poinsetta” that I found on YouTube looked nice, but was toily to make. However, each individual petal was easy to fold and could be adjusted easily to different sizes. I then combined different amounts of these single-petal building blocks into individual flowers and bouquets.

Defending Calendar Boundaries

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time allotted to it. Having a fixed window during gardening leave provided a firm time constraint for this art project. I established a rule of sustainable velocity: do a little bit every day to maintain steady progress toward the finish line without burning myself out.

4. Mindfulness Through Origami

Beyond the technical and program management lessons, this project served a more human purpose.  It helped me to step back and process a major career transition.

Unbinding Corporate Identity

After 19 years at a single company, it’s easy for your personal identity to become intertwined with that of your employer. For me, engaging in a tactile, physical craft provided a mindful way to start to let go of those psychological bonds, reflect on a treasured chapter of my career, and honor the memories gained along the way.

Embracing Non-Deterministic Play

Traditional software engineering demands strict determinism and predictable behavior. In contrast, art thrives on unexpected happy accidents (to channel my favorite pop artist, Bob Ross). Don’t be afraid to experiment. For example, I pieced together small, randomized paper squares and strips into patchwork sheets, which introduced a manageable (and fun) bit of non-determinism that seemed appropriate given the AI-era we are in. 

I doodled directly over printed SRE text with children’s markers. I tried not to take things too seriously and poked a little fun at things like corporate jargon. I created some origami flowers covered with three-letter acronyms (TLAs!), SRE lingo (e.g., ACK, NACK, SLOs, PTAL, LGTM), buzzword bingo, and “prodverbs” (e.g., you should treat your machines like cattle, not pets). 

I also had fun sketching playful words that reminded me of key people and programs (e.g., “UNICORNS”, “JETPACKS”, “RAINBOWS”) across the pages. This proved to be a very cathartic part of my origami art project.

Find Ways to Let Go

Removing the pressure of OKRs and program deadlines allowed my mind to wander, ask “what if?”, and simply enjoy the act of creation.

I chose a new theme for my flowers each day including things like:

• Programs I led
• My favorite managers
• Favorite teammates
• Inside jokes
• Offices I visited
• Places I traveled

There is Value in Art

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My long-time collaborator and friend, Niall Murphy, once told me that I have a tremendous sense of ceremony. He’s totally right. I used this opportunity to mark the occasion of a grand career transition with something of personal significance. I turned the pinnacle achievement of my career into a metaphorical garden. I learned a lot about myself and reminded myself that not only does art imitate life, but work influences life in a profound way.

In the end, I used about three-quarters of the pages in the SRE book in my origami garden. On the last day of gardening leave, I chopped up the remaining pages into squares. With my process improvements, it was super fast and easy. If the mood strikes, I can make more flowers. 

Maybe I’ll set-up an origami table at SREcon …

Pre-Order your copy of the 2nd Edition of the SRE Book on Amazon.

Tending the Garden (A Photo Gallery)

In addition to having a tremendous sense of ceremony, I was also known as “The Paparrazzi to the Typing Pool” in Dublin SRE circles. I love to take pictures and so, of course, I documented the process of turning the SRE Book into an origami garden. I hope you enjoy the gallery! The photos are presented in chronological order, so you can see how the project progressed.

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