Why You Should Take a Few Months Off Work (Live from SXSW)
This episode of The Happiness Lab, recorded live at SXSW, features Dr. Laurie Santos and DJ DiDonna, Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School and founder of The Sabbatical Project. They discuss the transformative benefits of extended career breaks for personal well-being, creativity, and career resilience, and how to overcome common barriers for both individuals and employers.
Deep Dive Analysis
14 Topic Outline
Introduction to Sabbaticals and DJ DiDonna's Work
DJ DiDonna's Personal Sabbatical: The 'Ice Cream Sandwich Moment'
Defining a Sabbatical: Intentional, Extended, and Disconnected
Historical Roots and Modern Rarity of Sabbaticals
Who Takes Sabbaticals and What Catalyzes Them
Debunking Sabbatical Misconceptions: Not Just Vacation or Midlife Crisis
Personal Benefits of Taking a Sabbatical
Understanding Functional Workaholism and Regret Insurance
Benefits of Sabbaticals for Companies and Employers
Overcoming Personal Barriers: Optics, Responsibilities, and Cost
Structural Barriers and How Companies Can Enable Sabbaticals
Practical Advice for Planning and Taking a Sabbatical
The Importance of Relationships and Curiosities During Sabbaticals
Final Thoughts: Life's Fragility and the Urgency of Sabbaticals
6 Key Concepts
Sabbatical
An intentional, extended leave from one's routine job, typically measured in months (at least three), where the individual creates space for rest and personal exploration rather than immediately seeking new employment. It can involve 'active rest' by engaging in fulfilling work that is distinctly different from one's usual profession.
Identity Play
A concept describing the process of running small experiments during a sabbatical to explore different aspects of oneself and figure out what one wants to do next. This helps individuals break free from an identity that might be too enmeshed with their professional role or company.
Functional Workaholism
A state where an individual is not performing at their best or feeling great, but it's difficult to recognize this without stepping away from their routine. A long enough break, like a sabbatical, provides the necessary perspective to understand how one's working and living habits might not be serving them.
Regret Insurance
The idea of proactively taking time off to pursue significant life experiences or make changes now, rather than postponing them until retirement. This concept aims to prevent future regrets about not living an authentic life or missing opportunities due to the uncertainties of life.
Work Devotion Norm
The prevailing societal and organizational expectation that individuals must be deeply devoted to their work and avoid being seen taking time off. This norm can undermine policies like 'unlimited vacation' because employees are reluctant to take breaks if leaders don't model the behavior.
Pre-batticle
A sabbatical taken before starting a new job, often by pushing back the start date of a new offer. This allows individuals to arrive at their new organization refreshed and not burned out from their previous role, benefiting both the employee and the new company.
10 Questions Answered
A sabbatical is an intentional, extended leave from one's routine job, typically measured in months (at least three), where the goal is to create space for rest, healing, and personal exploration, rather than immediately seeking new employment.
Unlike a vacation where work responsibilities pile up, a sabbatical is long enough for those tasks to be off your plate, allowing for deeper rest and disconnection without worrying about returning to work.
While negative events can catalyze sabbaticals, they are not exclusively midlife crises; they can be taken at various life stages (gap years to pre-retirement) and ideally proactively to prevent burnout.
No, the super majority (over 80%) of people who take a sabbatical enabled by their company return to their job, indicating it's not primarily a 'golden parachute.'
Personal benefits include healing from stress-related ailments, reigniting creativity through new activities, building confidence by taking a scary leap, and gaining perspective on one's working and living habits.
Companies benefit from increased resilience against key person risk, enhanced employee loyalty, and fostering innovation as employees return with fresh perspectives and new skills.
Key barriers include concerns about optics (what others will think), practical responsibilities (family, logistics), and financial costs, though many of these can be overcome with planning and support.
Research suggests it takes about six to eight weeks for individuals to truly become themselves again and feel disconnected from their job and responsibilities.
It's often less stressful and more fulfilling to focus on 'tiny curiosities' rather than chasing a singular 'passion,' as this allows for experimentation without the pressure of a grand outcome.
Taking a sabbatical can be seen as putting on one's own oxygen mask first, providing the necessary perspective and resources to determine who one wants to be and what direction to take in life's next phase.
19 Actionable Insights
1. Heal and Gain Perspective Through Extended Leave
Take an intentional extended leave (measured in months, ideally 3-12) from your routine job to heal burnout, gain perspective on your life and work, and break free from an identity enmeshed with your company.
2. Proactively Plan Sabbaticals
Instead of waiting for a crisis, identify inflection points in your life to take extended breaks, treating them like ‘dental cleaning appointments’ to prevent ‘root canal emergencies’ of burnout.
3. Commit to a Future Sabbatical
Set a specific future date (e.g., 5-10 years out) to commit to taking an extended break, allowing ample time to save financially, prepare your employer, and make it a normalized part of your life plan.
4. Embrace Disconnection for True Rest
During your sabbatical, ensure complete disconnection from your routine job by disabling email and setting auto-responses, allowing you to fully deepen into your break without work piling up.
5. Engage in Active Rest & Identity Play
Use your sabbatical for ‘active rest’ by doing fulfilling activities very different from your routine job (e.g., learning a new skill, volunteering, creative pursuits) to reignite creativity and run experiments on new identities.
6. Run Counterfactual Life Experiments
Use your sabbatical to test out potential future life paths or interests (e.g., volunteering in a field you might retire into) to gain clarity and avoid future regrets about untried endeavors.
7. Prioritize Relationships During Your Break
Actively use your extended time off to focus on and refresh important personal relationships, as this can get you out of your head and catalyze deeper connections that routine life often neglects.
8. Follow Tiny Curiosities, Not Just Passions
Instead of the pressure of finding a ‘passion,’ explore ’tiny curiosities’ during your sabbatical, as this play-like mindset reduces stress and allows for unexpected discoveries without the fear of failure.
9. Get Out of Your Head and Into Your Body
Especially at the beginning of your sabbatical, engage in activities that are physical and hands-on (e.g., yoga, pottery, hiking, building cabinets) to shift focus from mental responsibilities to bodily experience.
10. Reframe Family Responsibilities as Opportunities
If you have children, view a sabbatical as an opportunity to experience the world through their eyes and model healthy work-life balance, transforming tasks into shared, enriching educational experiences.
11. Challenge Self-Judgment on Career Breaks
Recognize that your concern about how a career break will look is often much greater than what others actually think; find ’exemplars’ (people like you who took breaks) to build confidence.
12. Use Career Breaks as an Employer Filter
If a prospective employer disqualifies you for having taken a career break, view it as a positive sign that the company culture may not align with your values.
13. Explore Hidden Sabbatical Policies
Ask around your company (starting with non-managers and exemplars) about existing or negotiable sabbatical policies, as many companies may offer partial pay, retained benefits, or flexible arrangements.
14. Consider a ‘Pre-batticle’ Between Jobs
If switching jobs, negotiate to take an extended break between roles (a ‘pre-batticle’) to start your new position refreshed and avoid carrying burnout from your previous job.
15. Employers: Model Sabbatical Behavior
Leaders and managers should take sabbaticals themselves to model the behavior, normalize extended breaks, and encourage employees to utilize available policies without fear of judgment.
16. Employers: Design Effective Sabbatical Policies
Implement paid sabbatical policies that are long enough (months, with at least 6-8 weeks for true recovery) and ensure employee disconnection (e.g., disabling email) to maximize benefits for both the individual and the company.
17. Employers: Foster Organizational Resilience
Implement sabbatical policies to build company resilience by practicing for employee turnover, identifying key person risks, and allowing junior staff to step up into stretch roles.
18. Employers: Invest in Employee Loyalty and Innovation
Offer sabbaticals as an investment to increase employee loyalty (by valuing them as whole human beings), reignite creativity, and foster innovation by allowing employees time for identity play and problem-solving.
19. Don’t Postpone Life Until Retirement
Act now on your life’s important desires and experiences, as waiting until retirement is not guaranteed due to life’s fragility and the uncertainty of future physical and mental capacity.
6 Key Quotes
If you don't take a sabbatical, a sabbatical will take you, likely.
DJ DiDonna
As soon as we leave a job, our new job is to find another job, right? It's like very hard to be in that kind of liminal state between careers, between jobs. So in order for it to be a sabbatical, you've got to create space, not look for another job.
DJ DiDonna
You think about it like a dental cleaning appointment. Like, you want to take these, like, cleaning appointments, right? We don't love them, but you try to take them every six months so that you don't have, like, a root canal emergency.
DJ DiDonna
I did a study of my Harvard Business School classmates 10 years out, and 90% of people were concerned about how a career break would look, and less than 5% of people actually cared whether or not someone took a career break.
DJ DiDonna
Chasing your passions is stressful. What if you don't know what your passion is? What if your passion doesn't fulfill you? And instead, just thinking about what you're curious about.
DJ DiDonna
Your chances of making it to retirement age are 5 and 6. So your chances of not making it are 1 and 6. If you're a 50-year-old couple, you have less than 50% chance of both partners reaching retirement age and being able mentally and physically to travel.
DJ DiDonna
1 Protocols
Planning and Taking a Sabbatical
DJ DiDonna- Ask around to find an 'exemplar' – someone with a similar job or life who has successfully taken a sabbatical – for inspiration and practical advice.
- Set the 'container' for your sabbatical by committing to enough time, ideally months, and ensuring you will be sufficiently disconnected from your routine job.
- Ensure disconnection by traveling if possible to get out of your geographic space, or at least breaking your daily routines; disable work email and set auto-responses that clearly state your return date and that the inbox will be deleted.
- Structure the beginning of your sabbatical with activities that get you out of your head and into your body, such as yoga teacher training, pottery, hiking, or hands-on projects like building cabinets, to help fill the initial vacuum of responsibilities.
- Think about the sabbatical in phases: healing at the beginning, experimentation in the middle, and integration at the end, allowing for a natural progression of self-discovery.
- Run 'counterfactual experiments' by trying out alternative life paths or activities (e.g., volunteering in a potential future career) to test interests and avoid future regrets without long-term commitment.
- Focus on nurturing important relationships that might have 'run a little dry,' leveraging your flexible schedule to connect with friends and family at their convenience.
- Chase 'tiny curiosities' rather than feeling pressured to find a grand 'passion,' as this approach is less stressful and allows for unexpected discoveries and a playful mindset.