3 months isn't long enough for a sabbatical
I started a sabbatical in Q4 of 2023. I figured I’d do it for 3 months. That 3 months went by quickly, so I figured I’d extend for 6 months. But I didn’t feel done yet so I decided to extend for 9 months. I’ve heard of people taking an entire year off and when I first started this journey, that seemed like too long, but now that I’m at around month 10, a year feels just about right. Assuming you can manage it financially, I highly recommend going for a year if possible.
Here’s why — the phasing that happens when you take so much time off looks something like this:
Month 1: You can’t believe how awesome it is to just NOT WORK. No rushing through breakfast. No early morning calls, no boss hounding you for some urgent thing. Just utter freedom. You sleep in. You nap in the afternoon. You go to coffee shops. The beach. The park. Another country. You go places and do things typically associated with vacation and NOT WORKING.
Month 2: You are still behaving like a tourist, basking in the joys of NOT WORKING. You wake up with the sun and not an alarm clock. Run errands whenever you want, in non-hurried fashion. You meander. Wander around. Life is great. You fix that thing in your house that you never had time to fix before.
Month 3: You are starting to get slightly listless but still can’t believe your good fortune to NOT WORK. You do a Zoom with a high school friend you haven’t spoken to in years. You find some other people NOT WORKING, and like a secret band of off-grid pirates you get together, to talk about how great it is to NOT WORK.
Month 4: You begin to think you should do something a little deeper, so you start reading books you’ve always wanted to read, but never had the time because you were WORKING. You watch or listen to the long podcasts, you know the ones that are over an hour long, that you never had time for before, but now you have all the time in the world. It’s great! You decide to start a new exercise regimen, and pick up a new sport like pickleball, because why not.
Month 5: You’ve done all the physical leisurely NOT WORKING stuff and are now working on your inner self. You introspect. Start to ask what you really want out of life. Read more philosophical, psychological, and spiritual material. You realize the default career path hamster wheel was invented by someone else, and you fully bought into it, thinking it was the only way, but now you’re wondering if there’s another way to work and live that’s less stressful, more meaningful, and without the crappy people.
Month 6: As the half year mark approaches, you feel a strange twinge of guilt, like you should have accomplished something more than NOT WORKING by now, but you also are still enjoying yourself. You can see how retirement will be awesome. Any residual physical and mental stress from decades of WORKING is now gone. You’ve now found an entire group of other NON WORKING people and read their stories, you have Zooms with some of them so you can compare notes, and bask further in NOT WORKING. You read more self-help books to continue your healing journey towards becoming a better human being.
Month 7: You start to face yourself more intently. You know you have some internal work to do, on your broken personality, on wrong headed beliefs, on dysfunctions from your upbringing that you’ve been burying all these years under the tyranny of WORK. You start to deal with those things, ponder them, ask close friends what they think, read books about them, listen to podcasts of wise people who’ve faced similar things before you. You start a more serious journaling habit. Maybe meditation too. You fully enter the process of changing yourself, and you know it will be a process, but that’s OK because you have the time now.
Month 8: Thoughts of going back to WORK start to creep in. You know this amazing season won’t last forever. You push those thoughts away. The bank account balance is going down. You wish it didn’t have to be that way. You realize that money worries was the whole reason you WORKED at a place you didn’t necessarily like or fit in the first place. You have this weird tension of needing money so you can continue NOT WORKING vs needing money because soon you won’t have any. You start doing some work-like activity on the side. Maybe freelancing. Maybe consulting. Maybe side-gig projects. It feels good to dabble a bit, without the extreme pressure.
Month 9: You reluctantly decide it’s time to activate something more seriously approximating WORK. You’ve relaxed, socialized, had fun, exercised, navel gazed, worked on yourself, read, watched, cleaned, fixed. But the sun is setting and you know it. That’s ok. It’s been a special season. You wouldn’t trade it for anything. You feel refreshed. You have a new perspective on life. Things will never be the same. You are a new person. Life feels different. More balanced. If you do something approximating WORK again, it’s with intention, not by force or tyranny.
Month 10: You cannot go back to your old life now, something new has emerged, and you are fully intent on living in this new, elevated state of being. You believe the universe will meet you there. You know you will go back to WORK, but it won’t be the same. It will be better. You may make less money but the tradeoff to maintain this zen-like state is totally worth it.
Month 11: Some tangible things fall into place to prepare you for work. You sharpen your tools. Buy some new equipment. Learn new skills. Find some new mentors. You are fitter, wiser, healthier, and better than before. Your previous worries about money are replaced by a faith that everything will somehow work out. You are ready to begin again.
Month 12: You enter your new life.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten. I don’t see how the fullness of transformation for something like this can happen in three months. You can’t put time restrictions on certain life changing seasons. For example, if you’re entering a mid-life crisis, you can’t say, “I’m going to schedule 3 months to resolve this, then get back to my life.” It doesn’t work that way. It takes as long as it takes.
Until next time.
I am three years in and still growing. My life has changed. I am different. Also important to note, I will never plan for a sabbatical to last a certain amount of time. It's a beautiful process of saying "No" to a life that was and saying "Yes" to a new way of being.
I love this! I took a 3-months sabbatical last year which turned into 6 months and while I learned a lot about myself, I think I was just getting started getting to know myself when it was time for me to go back to work. Basically, 3 months is nothing and 6 months is almost nothing 😅
The other thing I love about your article is that it feels so freeing and like I can breathe. It made me realize what was bothering me so much about all the messages around building something next to your job before you take the leap into a business full-time (I’ve seen a lot of these recently in the context of building a portfolio career). They give me the same vibe as people who tell you not to have any gaps in your CV, like every moment of time must be optimized. I know they mean well and want to be an antidote to the ‘no risk no reward’ & ‘hustle till you drop’ entrepreneurs but there’s still a lot of fear and optimization in that.
Your post almost feels like permission to take things one step at a time and allow myself to find my path. Even though I’m not taking a sabbatical now but venturing out on my own and I can’t quite afford not to make money for a whole year, I can afford to take a few months to find my way and let things fall into place. I don’t need to brute-force anything now :)