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Burnout was probably a factor in my decision to take a 1-year sabbatical (as of June 2020, so I'm almost 3 months in). > I never thought I’d take five months o
by kaycebasques 5y ago
Burnout was probably a factor in my decision to take a 1-year sabbatical (as of June 2020, so I'm almost 3 months in).
> I never thought I’d take five months off, without being able to explain to a future employer what I was doing. It felt like too much.
I'm very specifically phrasing it as a sabbatical, to hedge against this worry. I think the general population has a vague idea that a sabbatical isn't wasted time. In reality this is probably time for me to recover from burnout, too. But since there seems to be stigma around "burnout" I'm avoiding the whole topic by phrasing it as a sabbatical. I have no guilt about this because I legitimately am taking time to build those things I've always wanted to build, study those things that I know I should study but never had time for, and all those other life things that I know I should prioritize but can never find the time/energy to do when I have a full-time job.
I did cheat a bit this month, though. I got an opportunity to do some contract work with a startup for 1-month (3 hours every day, 7 days a week). There may be an opportunity to work with them again in the coming months but for now I am definitely returning to my own projects starting in September. If you can find short-term gigs like that I'm finding that it's a nice balance. Kinda keeps one-foot in work world and keeps my marketable skills sharp, but then I can go off and do my own thing again.
I've heard a few people say that you need more than a few weeks to recover from burnout. I think there's a lot of wisdom to those statements. I think it takes a few months of completely disconnecting from work pressure. I doubt I'll need a year. I'll probably be itching to get back to a job before the year is up.
More on why I took a sabbatical: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical/prologue
Week-by-week updates if you're curious: https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical https://kayce.basqu.es/sabbatical
- kilroy123 5y agoEarly this year I came off a 2 1/2 year sabbatical. It might take a long time to recover. Depends on the person.
- holler 5y agoWhat did you do to fill your time in that 2 1/2 years? Did you get bored or find yourself wanting to return to productivity?
- cbeley 5y agoI got a few "Won't you get bored" or "I'd get bored" comments before I started my career break. I honestly don't understand it. I like software engineering (despite burning out), but there are so many other things in the world. I'm a year into my career break and I still don't get the "boredom" comments.
- JohnFen 5y agoI've always been mystified by those sorts of comments as well. But perhaps I'm just fortunate. I have enough things that I want to do that I could easily fill a decade with them.
- anyfoo 5y agoCount me in. It's baffling to me, I don't think I'd ever run out of interesting, fulfilling things to fill my free time with. Quite the opposite.
- kilroy123 5y agoSome of that time I was bored. Really bored. I think that was a good thing and it helped me think deeply about a lot of things. I mostly filled the time with traveling the world. I made it to all 7 continents, so I put that time to good use. When COVID hit, that was too much. I was losing my mind from nothing to do. I started coding again, built an art website and newsletter. Then I started studying and landed a job 6 months ago.
- holler 5y ago> I mostly filled the time with traveling the world. I made it to all 7 continents, so I put that time to good use. That sounds pretty cool! What were some of the highlights or places you enjoyed? What's the art website?
- yonig 5y agoRead through much of the blog. Thanks for sharing. 3 months in seems pretty soon to start working again. Did you always have the itch to do contract work? During the sabbatical or otherwise?