9 ms·

Research: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals

140 points by rafaelc 4y ago

oh_sigh 4y ago
How long is the average sabbatical?
- tbalsam 4y ago
  I am coming up on a year in two days, quest-type sabbatical. I was extremely burnt out when I was laid off, and while I had done a lot of work on myself, a lot had piled up and I knew I couldn't job hunt in good faith. I'm autistic as well so it would completely exhaust me on a good day. I took six months to even just start doing 'normal'-ish things. I spent over a thousand hours processing long-overdue unprocessed emotions (i.e. decades old, for some of them), and working on accepting certain parts of myself that I hid behind the noise of work. I was able to come to terms with accepting my own autism. I was able to drop a mental health diagnosis after much personal work. I made a side project that got a lot of good attention and that I have great hopes for. And after just a year, I'm finally able to just start doing little social step things -- like going to a bar for 20-30 minutes just to take in the ambiance. Noise for me is maybe 5-8x impactful compared to the average person due to the sensory sensitivity of autism (could be 10, but building a good estimate is hard), so even with nothing else on the schedule it takes me a good few hours to amp up to (and a day or two to cool down from and decompress/process). I would never have been able to do that with work and all of the demands. In fact, I had to bury the hypersensitivity so deep as a survival mechanism that I didn't think I felt anything sensorially too strongly, but I also felt constantly panicked and dead inside. Now that I'm more in tune with myself, I'll just sometimes, not always, and even more rarely look at some things, even small negative things, and just feel a leap of joy that I even get the chance to be alive to experience it. For me, it was the beauty of all of the red lights in a merging traffic jam on the freeway. That euphoria is hard to capture. It's a lot of work and my retirement account is chomped, but I know the kind of work I want to do that lets me use my autism as a strength and gives me enough time on the side to learn how to keep innoculating against normally overstimulating environments -- it gets better with exposure and time as the brain starts deciding that certain things are no longer "new information". The thing that people forget is that there's an opportunity cost with _not_ taking 3 months 6, or a year+ to work on yourself. It's an exponentially impactful thing. Investing now means you have the rest of your life to reap the benefits from what you learn. It can drastically shape the course of your life. It's all work in the end, but good and uncomfortable work on self. I still am work-addicted at heart, but as I keep working on the trauma bonds that hold me into that particular coping mechanism, I can watch, almost entirely live, the future that I'm likely to attempt to head towards. I've made a lot of progress as a person but there's no reason to work in a holding pattern forever. I have so much to learn and constantly feel like I'm wasting my time and at the beginning of my journey. And I still suffer a lot, too, but that's a work in progress for now. That said, I wouldn't trade how I _feel_ right now for a consistent pattern of misery. I never, ever want to go back to that again, if I can help it. And I'd like to avoid having values to at draw me towards that way of living again. I know this had a few purple prosey leanings at points, it's been a good journey. Thank you for reading this far if you did, and please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Many thanks, and much love! :D <3 <3 <3 <3 :D
azhenley 4y ago
Unfortunately, the research paper is paywalled, and I can't find a preprint.
- korroziya 4y ago
  Try opening it in Brave. Works for me.
  - azhenley 4y ago
    I did. It is still nagging for $30: https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amd.2021.0100 https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amd.2021.0100
korroziya 4y ago
"Our 50 interviewees worked in a variety of private, public, and non-profit organizations from diverse sectors including consulting, design, finance, medicine, education, and technology..." Honestly, Blue collar workers need a sabbatical just as badly and you will NEVER see this occur outside of some exceptional anectdote which I'm sure will be mentioned in a reply to this post.
- tbalsam 4y ago
  Agreed, the wealth disparity gap in this country is disheartening. I have a similar story and felt so much shame at first in drawing from my savings to do so -- especially with some visits to third world countries and some of the harder parts of that life. Tightly knit family structures do allow for this kind of sabbatical more often, but I do support initiatives like UBI for this (and other) reasons. Not to make it political as to which solution is best -- this is just one reason where I think it offers a good solution (all else being equal).
neilv 4y ago
One software company I worked had a benefit that, in your sixth year, you could take a paid sabbatical. IIRC, it was a month, which was still a nice break, but you probably aren't going to have time to write a novel. I heard of people using that sabbatical to pick up consulting work. (This was before FAANG salaries, so even top engineers and managers might need the extra money, such as for kids' college, more than they need to travel or take up watercolor painting.) Professor friends who've done sabbatical, it's much longer than a month, and seems to be a change of working scene. There's no teaching load from their university, but expectations that they'll be doing research/writing of some kind. They might do it while visiting a different university. Regarding the class equity the article mentioned, a paid contiguous month off might be something a company could swing for all employees, as acknowledgement and incentive to stay 5+ years. A paid few or more months off would be a different matter to do.
- cweagans 4y ago
  A paid three month sabbatical after 5 years for somebody making $150k/year would be an extra $625/month. With the costs of other benefits, it's really not that much different and would be relatively straightforward to work into a benefits package.
  - haimez 4y ago
    Except basically everyone who takes that sabbatical immediately quits after it’s over. Seriously.
    - neilv 4y ago
      For the contemporary tech industry reason of job-hopping being the best way to boost your salary, but a 3-month sabbatical is worth sticking around for?
    - feoren 4y ago
      Gosh, if only there were any way to prevent this. Like, and I'm just spitballing here, but what about: making your workplace somewhere they actually want to come back to!? We've really internalized the idea the every job always has to completely suck ass, huh?
the__alchemist 4y ago
I've got one of these scheduled. I'm going to quit my job in August, and focus on my own projects, as well as the mentioned rekindling connections. A mix of practical (engineering/electronics) projects, and more out-there things like computational chemistry simulations.
- colanderman 4y ago
  Starting my own in one week. Similarly a mix of the three types discussed in the article. Started out simply as dissatisfaction over pay cuts -- but each day I'm realizing how incredibly burnt out I am -- which I've previously somehow managed to forget each weekend.
  - the__alchemist 4y ago
    The managed to forget each weekend piece resonates with me.
famahar 4y ago
I just quit my job every few years for a 6 - 12 months. The only reason I work is to save money so I can be free for a year to pursue my hobbies, art, literature, education, friendships, recharge my mental health, physical body, and explore the wonders of life without my energy being sucked away half the day by meaningless work. I'd be a husk of personality if I didn't have this time to think slowly about life with full mental clarity. There was a month where I would wake up daily and go for an extremely long walk or bike ride and just sit next to the river for hours. Some of my best thoughts and ideas came from doing this. There was no work drama or deadlines ruining this thinking process.
- wise0wl 4y ago
  In my next life I think I will do this. I decided to get married and have kids, so this one is mostly spoken for---but next time round I am doing the sabbatical thing.
  - CGamesPlay 4y ago
    It’s OK to spend your sabbatical with your family.
    - hackernewds 4y ago
      The antithesis of a sabbatical - having crying, yelling babies and a laundry list of chores and tasks
      - nick123567 4y ago
        Sounds like you really like your family
        feoren 4y ago
        Sounds like you haven't had children. It's pretty universal. It's incredibly draining literally every minute that they're awake. You have no time nor mental power left at the end of the day. For years.
rr808 4y ago
Its great if you want to leave your job. Spend a few months looking for a new role then go back to the old company if you can't find anything better.
tayo42 4y ago
I'm on a work break now. At the moment I have two thoughts about it. Sabbaticals are like a nuclear option for recovery, and I feel like never should have let my self get to that point that I feel like I needed one. When I return I should find some kind of better balance. Another part of me feels work will always suck and I should figure out how to not work for as long as possible, using corporate jobs to fund long breaks. I heard this described at an anti-sabbatical.
shubhamjain 4y ago
Just want to offer a counterpoint. I took a sabbatical last year after working continuously for nearly nine. I felt I had it, I deserved a break. I just wanted to quit and see what happens. First few weeks were great. I travelled a bit, worked on my personal website, wrote a lot of articles, but gradually I sunk into this loop of doing-nothingness. I started playing video games all day, or surfing the internet. For some people this might not be an issue, but as a person who has always thrived on challenging and creative work, malaise started hitting me very soon. Despite having all the time in the world, my creative spirit sunk to an all time low. All the wonderful things I had planned were not happening. I do think it was a great learning experience, but I want to offer some advice. If you're going to take one, here are a few things you should do: 1. Think of at least one major thing you would want to work on. This could be travelling, photography or your side-project. It could just be watching movies, too. I think humans like having a routine and have at least one thing to dedicate themselves to. 2. Don't plan too many things. I wanted to get fit, learn to draw, write, read and in the end, I quickly ended up doing nothing. 3. I think we tend to chalk up lot of mental health issues to our work. I don't deny this could be a possibility, but if your work isn't insanely demanding, you don't need to quit your job to fix those issues. 4. If you're planning to work on your project, you need to ask yourself why you can't do it now. Even with most demanding jobs, dedicating some time to a side pursuit isn't a hard ask. I do plan to take another one, but instead of quitting when I am frustrated as hell, I will do it when my creative spirit is high, and I am feeling more positive about my life.
- WastingMyTime89 4y ago
  From experience, having taken a four months sabbatical after a particularly draining three years bout of work, what you were experiencing is normal. I think people underestimate how much time it takes to actually get ride of all the stress they have accumulated. The first two-ish months, I spent most of time buming around. I too got to a point where I thought I was wasting my time but it downed on me that it was actually a good thing. I had finally reached a point where I felt the need to do something more fulfilling and from there on, I naturally started filling my time with things making me more happy. > 4. If you're planning to work on your project, you need to ask yourself why you can't do it now. Even with most demanding jobs, dedicating some time to a side pursuit isn't a hard ask. That's illusory for a lot of us. I can and do find some time for side pursuits because I refuse to let my work fill up my whole life as it could but taking on a significant side project would come at an unaffordable cost to my family life.
irrational 4y ago
My work offers a 6 week sabbatical every 5 years. I've had 3 sabbaticals. I've spent all of them working on projects around the house that my wife has dreamed up. I spend most of the sabbatical looking forward to going back to work where I can get some rest and relaxation.
- rypskar 4y ago
  6 weeks every 5 years? Is that on top of normal vacation or instead of vacation? In large parts of Europe 5-6 weeks is the normal annual vacation
  - irrational 4y ago
    On top of. We get 10 holidays + 1 floating holiday each year. We get a week off each summer. We get paid Fridays off during the summer. Plus we get a paid time off day each pay period (so, 26 days each year). The paid time off days can be saved up and roll over from year to year. Not including the Fridays off, I could take approximately 16 weeks (4 months) of vacation this year if I wanted to. And this year is not a sabbatical year. In a sabbatical year, I could potentially take off nearly 6 months (6 weeks of sabbatical + 11 holiday days (about 2.5 wees) + 1 week off in the summer + 12.5 weeks of paid time off = 22 weeks = 5.5 months. If I add in the Fridays off in the summer, it would be more than 6 months off.
- davemp 4y ago
  I did a similar thing recently taking ~6wks to get a big renovation project underway. It wasn’t really ‘relaxing’ but it was a great way to get a lot of TODO monkeys off my back and gave me more of an appreciation for different types of labor.
marginalia_nu 4y ago
I took what was supposed to be a year in 2016. I came back after like 9 months. I wish it was all "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately", but in earnest I was going through a bit of a rough patch and felt like I needed more time for hobbies and projects. I felt like I was drowning in duties and obligations and had no time for anything I wanted to do. I had a bunch of stuff planned, didn't do any of them, but came back a different person with new and healthy perspectives on life. I don't think more time was what I needed at the time, but that is a hard notion to challenge if you're working a full time job. I actually had plenty of time for what I needed, which was to improve my balance in life. Have more hobbies that weren't all screen-based, to hang out with people that weren't all socially awkward engineer types. I realize this is a bit of a luxury, but if you need it and can afford it, I would recommend taking an extended break. It's difficult to have true opinions about life if you haven't actually lived it. You can read about it all your life, but it's nothing like that.
lampshades 4y ago
I took a year long sabbatical during COVID (been back working for a year) and the taste of freedom has made me really not want to work anymore.
com 4y ago
I started a paid six month sabbatical in December 2019. It worked out a bit different to what I expected, for all of the obvious reasons, but was still very good. I followed some advice from my collection of personal and professional mentors, which brutally summarised were: - Focus on family and friends (work had consumed much of my attention for 8 years so this was very positive for my relationships) - Do (bad) art, write, draw, make music, paint etc to both have fun and to enable brain plasticity - Ask myself some questions before the sabbatical about my priorities in life, love and work, write them down and then seal the envelope and not think about them until I opened it at the end of the sabbatical - Work on my health - Complete a couple of personal projects I am a much happier, well-rounded professional as a result achieving much more impact in more complex environments than ever before, and I have quadrupled my TC in the three years afterwards while decreasing my workload. Being away was also fairly useful for my direct reports' growth, I think. At home, things went from good to great too. Partner happy, pets happy, friends happy, me happy. I feel incredibly fortunate that the sabbatical (and everything else that enabled it, and surrounded such a kind and generous offer from my management) took place.
articsputnik 4y ago
For my life journey, these sabbaticals were transformative. I had several tough. I love the definition by Paul Millerd, "mini-retirement." Instead of waiting for your retirement in the sixties, take more minor once along. I wrote more about how it shaped me in "Finding My Pathless Path" at https://www.sspaeti.com/blog/finding-my-pathless-path/ https://www.sspaeti.com/blog/finding-my-pathless-path/.

140 points by rafaelc 4y ago

oh_sigh 4y ago

How long is the average sabbatical?

tbalsam 4y ago
I am coming up on a year in two days, quest-type sabbatical. I was extremely burnt out when I was laid off, and while I had done a lot of work on myself, a lot had piled up and I knew I couldn't job hunt in good faith. I'm autistic as well so it would completely exhaust me on a good day. I took six months to even just start doing 'normal'-ish things. I spent over a thousand hours processing long-overdue unprocessed emotions (i.e. decades old, for some of them), and working on accepting certain parts of myself that I hid behind the noise of work. I was able to come to terms with accepting my own autism. I was able to drop a mental health diagnosis after much personal work. I made a side project that got a lot of good attention and that I have great hopes for. And after just a year, I'm finally able to just start doing little social step things -- like going to a bar for 20-30 minutes just to take in the ambiance. Noise for me is maybe 5-8x impactful compared to the average person due to the sensory sensitivity of autism (could be 10, but building a good estimate is hard), so even with nothing else on the schedule it takes me a good few hours to amp up to (and a day or two to cool down from and decompress/process). I would never have been able to do that with work and all of the demands. In fact, I had to bury the hypersensitivity so deep as a survival mechanism that I didn't think I felt anything sensorially too strongly, but I also felt constantly panicked and dead inside. Now that I'm more in tune with myself, I'll just sometimes, not always, and even more rarely look at some things, even small negative things, and just feel a leap of joy that I even get the chance to be alive to experience it. For me, it was the beauty of all of the red lights in a merging traffic jam on the freeway. That euphoria is hard to capture. It's a lot of work and my retirement account is chomped, but I know the kind of work I want to do that lets me use my autism as a strength and gives me enough time on the side to learn how to keep innoculating against normally overstimulating environments -- it gets better with exposure and time as the brain starts deciding that certain things are no longer "new information". The thing that people forget is that there's an opportunity cost with _not_ taking 3 months 6, or a year+ to work on yourself. It's an exponentially impactful thing. Investing now means you have the rest of your life to reap the benefits from what you learn. It can drastically shape the course of your life. It's all work in the end, but good and uncomfortable work on self. I still am work-addicted at heart, but as I keep working on the trauma bonds that hold me into that particular coping mechanism, I can watch, almost entirely live, the future that I'm likely to attempt to head towards. I've made a lot of progress as a person but there's no reason to work in a holding pattern forever. I have so much to learn and constantly feel like I'm wasting my time and at the beginning of my journey. And I still suffer a lot, too, but that's a work in progress for now. That said, I wouldn't trade how I _feel_ right now for a consistent pattern of misery. I never, ever want to go back to that again, if I can help it. And I'd like to avoid having values to at draw me towards that way of living again. I know this had a few purple prosey leanings at points, it's been a good journey. Thank you for reading this far if you did, and please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. Many thanks, and much love! :D <3 <3 <3 <3 :D

azhenley 4y ago

Unfortunately, the research paper is paywalled, and I can't find a preprint.

korroziya 4y ago
Try opening it in Brave. Works for me.
- azhenley 4y ago
  I did. It is still nagging for $30: https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amd.2021.0100 https://journals.aom.org/doi/full/10.5465/amd.2021.0100

korroziya 4y ago

"Our 50 interviewees worked in a variety of private, public, and non-profit organizations from diverse sectors including consulting, design, finance, medicine, education, and technology..." Honestly, Blue collar workers need a sabbatical just as badly and you will NEVER see this occur outside of some exceptional anectdote which I'm sure will be mentioned in a reply to this post.

tbalsam 4y ago
Agreed, the wealth disparity gap in this country is disheartening. I have a similar story and felt so much shame at first in drawing from my savings to do so -- especially with some visits to third world countries and some of the harder parts of that life. Tightly knit family structures do allow for this kind of sabbatical more often, but I do support initiatives like UBI for this (and other) reasons. Not to make it political as to which solution is best -- this is just one reason where I think it offers a good solution (all else being equal).

neilv 4y ago

One software company I worked had a benefit that, in your sixth year, you could take a paid sabbatical. IIRC, it was a month, which was still a nice break, but you probably aren't going to have time to write a novel. I heard of people using that sabbatical to pick up consulting work. (This was before FAANG salaries, so even top engineers and managers might need the extra money, such as for kids' college, more than they need to travel or take up watercolor painting.) Professor friends who've done sabbatical, it's much longer than a month, and seems to be a change of working scene. There's no teaching load from their university, but expectations that they'll be doing research/writing of some kind. They might do it while visiting a different university. Regarding the class equity the article mentioned, a paid contiguous month off might be something a company could swing for all employees, as acknowledgement and incentive to stay 5+ years. A paid few or more months off would be a different matter to do.

cweagans 4y ago
A paid three month sabbatical after 5 years for somebody making $150k/year would be an extra $625/month. With the costs of other benefits, it's really not that much different and would be relatively straightforward to work into a benefits package.
- haimez 4y ago
  Except basically everyone who takes that sabbatical immediately quits after it’s over. Seriously.
  - neilv 4y ago
    For the contemporary tech industry reason of job-hopping being the best way to boost your salary, but a 3-month sabbatical is worth sticking around for?
  - feoren 4y ago
    Gosh, if only there were any way to prevent this. Like, and I'm just spitballing here, but what about: making your workplace somewhere they actually want to come back to!? We've really internalized the idea the every job always has to completely suck ass, huh?

the__alchemist 4y ago

I've got one of these scheduled. I'm going to quit my job in August, and focus on my own projects, as well as the mentioned rekindling connections. A mix of practical (engineering/electronics) projects, and more out-there things like computational chemistry simulations.

colanderman 4y ago
Starting my own in one week. Similarly a mix of the three types discussed in the article. Started out simply as dissatisfaction over pay cuts -- but each day I'm realizing how incredibly burnt out I am -- which I've previously somehow managed to forget each weekend.
- the__alchemist 4y ago
  The managed to forget each weekend piece resonates with me.

famahar 4y ago

I just quit my job every few years for a 6 - 12 months. The only reason I work is to save money so I can be free for a year to pursue my hobbies, art, literature, education, friendships, recharge my mental health, physical body, and explore the wonders of life without my energy being sucked away half the day by meaningless work. I'd be a husk of personality if I didn't have this time to think slowly about life with full mental clarity. There was a month where I would wake up daily and go for an extremely long walk or bike ride and just sit next to the river for hours. Some of my best thoughts and ideas came from doing this. There was no work drama or deadlines ruining this thinking process.

wise0wl 4y ago
In my next life I think I will do this. I decided to get married and have kids, so this one is mostly spoken for---but next time round I am doing the sabbatical thing.
- CGamesPlay 4y ago
  It’s OK to spend your sabbatical with your family.
  - hackernewds 4y ago
    The antithesis of a sabbatical - having crying, yelling babies and a laundry list of chores and tasks
    - nick123567 4y ago
      Sounds like you really like your family
      - feoren 4y ago
        Sounds like you haven't had children. It's pretty universal. It's incredibly draining literally every minute that they're awake. You have no time nor mental power left at the end of the day. For years.

rr808 4y ago

Its great if you want to leave your job. Spend a few months looking for a new role then go back to the old company if you can't find anything better.

tayo42 4y ago

I'm on a work break now. At the moment I have two thoughts about it. Sabbaticals are like a nuclear option for recovery, and I feel like never should have let my self get to that point that I feel like I needed one. When I return I should find some kind of better balance. Another part of me feels work will always suck and I should figure out how to not work for as long as possible, using corporate jobs to fund long breaks. I heard this described at an anti-sabbatical.

shubhamjain 4y ago

Just want to offer a counterpoint. I took a sabbatical last year after working continuously for nearly nine. I felt I had it, I deserved a break. I just wanted to quit and see what happens. First few weeks were great. I travelled a bit, worked on my personal website, wrote a lot of articles, but gradually I sunk into this loop of doing-nothingness. I started playing video games all day, or surfing the internet. For some people this might not be an issue, but as a person who has always thrived on challenging and creative work, malaise started hitting me very soon. Despite having all the time in the world, my creative spirit sunk to an all time low. All the wonderful things I had planned were not happening. I do think it was a great learning experience, but I want to offer some advice. If you're going to take one, here are a few things you should do: 1. Think of at least one major thing you would want to work on. This could be travelling, photography or your side-project. It could just be watching movies, too. I think humans like having a routine and have at least one thing to dedicate themselves to. 2. Don't plan too many things. I wanted to get fit, learn to draw, write, read and in the end, I quickly ended up doing nothing. 3. I think we tend to chalk up lot of mental health issues to our work. I don't deny this could be a possibility, but if your work isn't insanely demanding, you don't need to quit your job to fix those issues. 4. If you're planning to work on your project, you need to ask yourself why you can't do it now. Even with most demanding jobs, dedicating some time to a side pursuit isn't a hard ask. I do plan to take another one, but instead of quitting when I am frustrated as hell, I will do it when my creative spirit is high, and I am feeling more positive about my life.

WastingMyTime89 4y ago
From experience, having taken a four months sabbatical after a particularly draining three years bout of work, what you were experiencing is normal. I think people underestimate how much time it takes to actually get ride of all the stress they have accumulated. The first two-ish months, I spent most of time buming around. I too got to a point where I thought I was wasting my time but it downed on me that it was actually a good thing. I had finally reached a point where I felt the need to do something more fulfilling and from there on, I naturally started filling my time with things making me more happy. > 4. If you're planning to work on your project, you need to ask yourself why you can't do it now. Even with most demanding jobs, dedicating some time to a side pursuit isn't a hard ask. That's illusory for a lot of us. I can and do find some time for side pursuits because I refuse to let my work fill up my whole life as it could but taking on a significant side project would come at an unaffordable cost to my family life.

irrational 4y ago

My work offers a 6 week sabbatical every 5 years. I've had 3 sabbaticals. I've spent all of them working on projects around the house that my wife has dreamed up. I spend most of the sabbatical looking forward to going back to work where I can get some rest and relaxation.

rypskar 4y ago
6 weeks every 5 years? Is that on top of normal vacation or instead of vacation? In large parts of Europe 5-6 weeks is the normal annual vacation
- irrational 4y ago
  On top of. We get 10 holidays + 1 floating holiday each year. We get a week off each summer. We get paid Fridays off during the summer. Plus we get a paid time off day each pay period (so, 26 days each year). The paid time off days can be saved up and roll over from year to year. Not including the Fridays off, I could take approximately 16 weeks (4 months) of vacation this year if I wanted to. And this year is not a sabbatical year. In a sabbatical year, I could potentially take off nearly 6 months (6 weeks of sabbatical + 11 holiday days (about 2.5 wees) + 1 week off in the summer + 12.5 weeks of paid time off = 22 weeks = 5.5 months. If I add in the Fridays off in the summer, it would be more than 6 months off.
davemp 4y ago
I did a similar thing recently taking ~6wks to get a big renovation project underway. It wasn’t really ‘relaxing’ but it was a great way to get a lot of TODO monkeys off my back and gave me more of an appreciation for different types of labor.

marginalia_nu 4y ago

I took what was supposed to be a year in 2016. I came back after like 9 months. I wish it was all "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately", but in earnest I was going through a bit of a rough patch and felt like I needed more time for hobbies and projects. I felt like I was drowning in duties and obligations and had no time for anything I wanted to do. I had a bunch of stuff planned, didn't do any of them, but came back a different person with new and healthy perspectives on life. I don't think more time was what I needed at the time, but that is a hard notion to challenge if you're working a full time job. I actually had plenty of time for what I needed, which was to improve my balance in life. Have more hobbies that weren't all screen-based, to hang out with people that weren't all socially awkward engineer types. I realize this is a bit of a luxury, but if you need it and can afford it, I would recommend taking an extended break. It's difficult to have true opinions about life if you haven't actually lived it. You can read about it all your life, but it's nothing like that.

lampshades 4y ago

I took a year long sabbatical during COVID (been back working for a year) and the taste of freedom has made me really not want to work anymore.

com 4y ago

I started a paid six month sabbatical in December 2019. It worked out a bit different to what I expected, for all of the obvious reasons, but was still very good. I followed some advice from my collection of personal and professional mentors, which brutally summarised were: - Focus on family and friends (work had consumed much of my attention for 8 years so this was very positive for my relationships) - Do (bad) art, write, draw, make music, paint etc to both have fun and to enable brain plasticity - Ask myself some questions before the sabbatical about my priorities in life, love and work, write them down and then seal the envelope and not think about them until I opened it at the end of the sabbatical - Work on my health - Complete a couple of personal projects I am a much happier, well-rounded professional as a result achieving much more impact in more complex environments than ever before, and I have quadrupled my TC in the three years afterwards while decreasing my workload. Being away was also fairly useful for my direct reports' growth, I think. At home, things went from good to great too. Partner happy, pets happy, friends happy, me happy. I feel incredibly fortunate that the sabbatical (and everything else that enabled it, and surrounded such a kind and generous offer from my management) took place.

articsputnik 4y ago

For my life journey, these sabbaticals were transformative. I had several tough. I love the definition by Paul Millerd, "mini-retirement." Instead of waiting for your retirement in the sixties, take more minor once along. I wrote more about how it shaped me in "Finding My Pathless Path" at https://www.sspaeti.com/blog/finding-my-pathless-path/ https://www.sspaeti.com/blog/finding-my-pathless-path/.