I hate going to conferences, it's extremely stressful and I can't sleep in hotels. So I'm trying to get away with as few conferences as possible, giving lots of

I hate going to conferences, it's extremely stressful and I can't sleep in hotels. So I'm trying to get away with as few conferences as possible, giving lots of local talks. However, conferences are extremely important to get to know the community, especially during early career stages. People get known and invited for contributions to things like special issues or international research projects by going to conferences, and it's important in many disciplines to find like-minded scholars. Sometimes this is not obvious from the publications, we recently organized a conference at our place and I realized that I agreed with another researcher on almost everything even though we thought we disagreed. It turned out that our backgrounds and terminology were just a bit different. This happened in the humanities where personal contacts are more important, I'm sure it's different in STEM fields. Another reason is that it has become impossible to follow all publications even when you're highly specialized. Conferences serve to give you an overview of other work and make it less likely to get lost in the swamp of publications. There are trends in science like anywhere else, and you better know them if you want to get funding and be at the forefront of research. However, I personally experienced during Covid that online events can be the second best thing and they would be much better in terms of the CO2 footprint. That's something to think about and in the future more events will be hybrid for sure. However, online events cannot replace conferences. The reasons are the same as in business, I guess, first it's way more likely someone records you without your consent online (and it's also hard to decline when you're asked), and second, there is no good way to chat to specific people afterwards. As for sabbaticals, I don't get them as a postdoc but they can be extremely helpful for writing books. Professors are often bogged down with administrative burdens and teaching, and the purpose of a sabbatical is to free them to allow them to sit back and think about foundational issues. Funding for senior research fellowships somewhere else while temporarily suspending teaching duties can be even better.