Leaning Out: Why time away from work is necessary and important

My 2017 Sabbatical near the beach

I’ve always been inspired by other people’s sabbaticals, and in awe of people who pull them off. Stefan Sagmeister’s TED talk on the subject is brilliant. Articles like this one and this explain how to do it and some of the virtues. However, I have my own point of view based on my own experiences, and I think that in this era of always-on busyness, my insights are worth sharing.

I am currently on my second sabbatical in 15 years. I’ve just reached the 3-month mark and have finally reached a phase that I’d expected to reach after a couple of weeks. I am calm and present. I am tapping into my creativity and have whole days of conscious stillness where I am not thinking about work.

For the first three months, I was still thinking about work or doing something vaguely work-like. I had consulting-like conversations with folks, I brainstormed a design thinking class format with some Cal Poly professors, I interviewed with a college, I presented at a conference, I spoke with journalists, I taught a class and I captured a myriad of ideas that flowed into my head. It’s true, I wasn’t being paid, but that was still a type of work that I was doing. I fretted about the future (what if I never get work?) and I obsessed about the past (how could I have handled X-Y-Z differently?). I followed the changes happening at my old company, where I’d spent the previous 14 years.

Then, one night a couple of weeks ago at 4am, I woke up with an epiphany about my old job and what it meant to me. There’s something about the middle of the night that lets your mind ruminate and make connections that you don’t consciously make. For me, it’s always 4am. I got up and journaled as my thoughts unfolded and I recognized one of my core values emerging. One of my goals for this sabbatical, after working at a company I was passionate about for 14 years, was to identify WHO I AM outside of the company. This was the first step and it struck me at that time that it was finally time to let go of the past and become more conscious of the present. I’m on a SABBATICAL. It is time to listen to the moment and reside in it.

I have gone through a profound shift in these past couple of weeks since then. I am slowing down my thoughts, noticing the birds singing and the movement of the wind on the trees. I have taken steps to eat better foods, put technology aside (for short blocks of time) and to express myself visually (sketching, painting and doodling). I am not really worried about the future or the past, I’ve finally given myself permission to be HERE and NOW.

One of the side effects of being present in my life is that I am rediscovering playing with ideas. I’ve always had lots of ideas, but usually haven’t acted on a whole lot of them. I always have the excuse of being busy and thinking that I’ll get around to it someday. Usually, I haven’t. But now, I can play with the ideas. I have permission. I have time.

It took me THREE MONTHS to become present and still. This is something I haven’t achieved in years, despite a meditation practice and frequent vacations.

People say that you can achieve this in everyday life when you are still working. But, I don’t believe them. You might touch moments like this, but the bulk of your time is in planning and building and getting from point A to point B.

Here is a typical day for someone with a family who is working in the tech field today:

• Wake up, glance at your emails and respond to anything urgent, get yourself ready — if you get up early enough, maybe you do some yoga or go for a run.
• Get your kids up, feed them, prepare their lunches
• Load everyone in the car and drive to school. Drop off the kids.
• Drive in traffic to your work.
• Check your calendar/email, pour yourself a cup of coffee, head to your first meeting.
• Back-to-back meetings from 9–5, including a lunch meeting
• (Check to make sure your spouse/nanny/etc has the kids afterschool)
• An hour or two of building, crafting, planning…whatever the real work you do is.
• Drive in traffic to your home, cook dinner, eat
• Check emails
• Kid’s bedtime routine. Put kids to bed.
• Check emails and respond to anything urgent. (Perhaps get on a video-conference with your teammates in India).
• Watch a little Game of Thrones.
• Check emails, Facebook, LinkedIN, etc
• Go to bed

You’ll notice that in a typical day, there is little down-time for thinking, being still, doing nothing. If you ARE doing nothing (maybe on a weekend?), you feel guilty and generally find something to fill your time. At least, this is how life played out for me.

Enter: Sabbatical. Sabbatical traditionally relates to the concept of the Sabbath (a day of rest). In religious contexts, the sabbath is a day reserved for prayer and conscious presence. Inspiration for the concept of sabbath comes from the biblical idea that on the 7th day of creation, God rested. If God needs a rest, apparently we must too. Today, a sabbatical is usually a paid leave time that is used for study or travel. Sometimes people write books. Stefan Sagmeister used it to run visual experiments and play with ideas. You might have an unpaid sabbatical, but universities and some businesses frequently offer professionals paid time for these activities. In my case, the sabbatical is unpaid. This, of course, adds to the bar of taking one, but it is quite do-able if you plan ahead and save.

This is actually my second sabbatical. My first was 15 years ago, just after a breakup. I packed my things and moved to the Colorado Rockies where I spent my days hiking and thinking. I explored who I was and what was important to me, and figured out a direction to head for the next part of my life. I returned to work after 3 months — reinvigorated, nearly 30 pounds thinner, and focused on my next step in life (at the time, I wanted to have a child, so my focus was on accomplishing that). It was incredible how valuable that time off was for me. It helped me catapult my career and exploded my creativity and learning.

On this sabbatical, since I have a nearly 10-year old daughter and a wonderful husband, I am not taking myself away to hike in the mountains for 3 months. I’d love to do that, but part of the reason that I wanted this sabbatical was to spend more quality time with them — and they both have school, so our lives are here. I think that contributed to why its been a slower epiphany on this go-around. Most of my days are similar to “everyday”: I get up, make lunch for my child, take her to school, pick her up from school, force her to do homework, contribute to making dinner, family time, bed time…. but, between the hours of 10–2, I have WIDE OPEN. And, importantly, I live near the beach.

Some of the things I do:

• Go for walks on the beach
• Run
• Walk the dog (a lot)
• Draw (sketch, paint)
• Write
• Coach at a Social Entrepreneurship course
• Catch up on TV shows I missed over the past 10 years (really haven’t watched much stuff for adults in that time)
• Meditate
• Sit quietly doing nothing

Some of the benefits of this incredibly small, still time include an amazing boost in creativity, feelings of self confidence, happiness, a fountain of ideas, a stack of new projects, and a clear sense of myself.

I am arguing that it is important for us all to spend time LEANING OUT. To gain perspective on life, work and community. To give yourself permission to just BE. To travel, play, write, sing, dance and immerse in joyful existence.

I like Stefan Sagmeister’s idea of taking 5 years from retirement and interspersing them into my working years. This is the core of how I justify taking time away from my career and spending money in a year when I’m not working. I’m not tapping into my retirement to do it, I’ve been saving specifically for this purpose for years.

Here’s some tips for how to explore taking a sabbatical of your own:

• If this idea appeals to you, but you aren’t ready for it yet, set up a “Sabbatical” fund and put money into it whenever you have anything extra (or build it into your budget). If you put 10% of your pay into that fund, you can fund a sabbatical once every 10 years. If you save 50%, you can take a sabbatical every 2 years. Ideally, you can pull off something somewhere between that. You don’t even need to know WHEN. Just start saving.
• Create a “Someday Sabbatical List” of ideas and dreams for what you might do with the time. There are no bad ideas here, it’s just a place to capture your thoughts so you can examine them later.
• Find out if your work offers a paid sabbatical. Obviously, if they do, this is the way to go. If they don’t, consider doing your homework and pitching the idea. They may go for it, or at least counter-offer something that will work for you. If they don’t support your idea for a sabbatical, understand that you’ll be funding this yourself. It will be more expensive and you will have to find a way to cover expenses that your employer normally does (for example, I’m on Cobra to cover my insurance).
• Craft a vision and goals for what you’d like to do with your sabbatical. Will you travel? Write? Learn a sport? Volunteer?
• Discuss the idea with your boss with loads of notice. You don’t want to burn your bridges, even if you will have to quit your job to take your sabbatical. After all, you’re going to have to find work when it’s over.
• Make a loose plan for your time. If you do not, you will find that time floating away from you in everyday normalcy. I’ve really been fighting this myself, since I’m starting the sabbatical here at home. The dog still interrupts me to go for walks several times a day. I still need to care for my daughter and have quality time with my husband. I still need to do laundry, dishes and take out the trash. Days can drift past like an extended weekend and with nothing to show for it. This might be JUST FINE, if that’s what is needed. For example, I felt like I needed precisely that type of time for most of the past 3 months to unwind myself from my work life. But, I’d hate to wake up and have the entire sabbatical over without me having MADE some things… so now I have that on my calendar.
• Tell EVERYONE. Once you’ve made the commitment to taking a sabbatical, it’s important to follow through on it. It is SO EASY to put it off another year and another, but the next thing you know, a decade will pass and you still won’t have done it. So, tell everyone when your start date is for your sabbatical and how long you’ll be at it. Put the date on your calendar, and block EVERYDAY on your work calendar starting that date.
• For me, it wasn’t real that I was going to be doing this — even after I’d committed to it — until I put something in writing. Early one morning in late January, I was thinking how unreal it was that I just had a couple of weeks of work left. I pulled up my email and found an advertisement from MOO. I decided to make business cards that said “On Sabbatical”. When I hit submit on the purchase, I had a jolt of excitement run through me that I had been waiting for. I’m REALLY doing this!

Consider leaning out for a while. It’s really worth it.