Speaker 1: Pushkin work. It consumes a lot of our time and
Speaker 1: a lot of our mental bandwidth. I bet you've had
Speaker 1: moments where you've longed for a vacation or even fantasized
Speaker 1: about hitting retirement age. But there's another option for taking
Speaker 1: a break from the grind, a decision that can help
Speaker 1: you recharge and reassess. It's called a sabbatical. As a professor,
Speaker 1: I've had the opportunity to take an academic sabbatical every
Speaker 1: few years, and I've been very open on the show
Speaker 1: about just how rejuvenating and important those breaks were. But
Speaker 1: what if you aren't a professor, Can you still take
Speaker 1: a month's long break from your job. It may sound
Speaker 1: like a pipe dream, but more and more workplaces are
Speaker 1: coming around to the idea that extended employee leaves are
Speaker 1: a good thing. So to discuss the rise of the
Speaker 1: sabbatical and its many benefits, I recorded a live edition
Speaker 1: of The Happiness Lab at the twenty twenty five south
Speaker 1: By Southwest Festival in Austin, and I got to talk
Speaker 1: with one of the leading advocates of the modern sabbatical.
Speaker 2: Hello and welcome to the Happiness Lab live here at
Speaker 2: south By Southwest. I am here in front of a
Speaker 2: fabulous live audience, and we're going to be talking today
Speaker 2: about the importance of sabbaticals and taking some rest. And
Speaker 2: I'm excited to introduce my guest today, DJ Dedonna. DJ
Speaker 2: is senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. In his former career,
Speaker 2: he was co founder of ef Global. These days, DJ
Speaker 2: spends his time thinking about sabbaticals and their transformative effects.
Speaker 2: He's most recently become the founder of the Sabbatical Project,
Speaker 2: a nonprofit aimed at creating a world where extended leave
Speaker 2: is the norm rather than the exception. This sounds like
Speaker 2: a world I want to live in for sure.
Speaker 1: DJ's work on the transformative benefits of sabbaticals has been
Speaker 1: labeled Harvard busin if you View's New Idea for twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five. So I think we're going to be seeing
Speaker 1: a lot more of sabbaticals this year than before. DJ's
Speaker 1: work has appeared in The Atlantic Time magazine, Fast Company, Fortune,
Speaker 1: in the Wall Street Journal, and lots more. And today
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about the research behind why
Speaker 1: an extended break can be so important and what you
Speaker 1: can do to convince yourself and your employer that you
Speaker 1: might need one.
Speaker 2: Please join me in welcoming DJ Dedata.
Speaker 1: So, DJ, I'm curious how you became such a fan
Speaker 1: of sabbaticals. As I understand it, this started with a
Speaker 1: time when you yourself need a sabbatical, a moment that
Speaker 1: you call your ice cream sandwich moment? What was that?
Speaker 3: So I entered sabbatical land as I call it, as
Speaker 3: most people do, which is unintentionally. So if you don't
Speaker 3: take a sabbatical, a sabbatical will take you likely. You know,
Speaker 3: I'd run my company for seven years and I was
Speaker 3: feeling lower and lower energy, tough to get out of bed,
Speaker 3: and I was growing even worse facial hair than I
Speaker 3: have now, And my co founders were like, are you okay?
Speaker 3: And I think I think at some point, you know,
Speaker 3: when it was your dream job and you can't.
Speaker 4: Get out of bed to do your job, there's a problem.
Speaker 3: It brings up all certain types of emotions around, like
Speaker 3: if this won't make me happy, what will The ice
Speaker 3: cream sandwich moment was on a particularly sad kind of weekend.
Speaker 4: It was Friday, had no plans.
Speaker 3: I was watching a very depressing Netflix series and I
Speaker 3: was like, I just really want an ice cream sandwich.
Speaker 3: I lived in Cambridge, and so there's plenty of like
Speaker 3: late night mistakes you can make. But I didn't want
Speaker 3: to like walk into the cookie place, you know, late
Speaker 3: at night on a Friday by myself. So I was like,
Speaker 3: I'll just place an order for this, and I didn't
Speaker 3: want the delivery driver to think that I was a loser.
Speaker 3: So I was like, I'll place two orders for ice
Speaker 3: cream sandwiches. And so I went down and got the sandwiches.
Speaker 3: You know, hey, I'll be right down and I come back.
Speaker 3: I eat one of them, thankfully not to and then
Speaker 3: I'd go to put the kind of pizza box size
Speaker 3: thing into the fridge. And I woke up the next
Speaker 3: morning and my fridge had defrosted and ruined my floors,
Speaker 3: and I was like, Okay, this is the sign that
Speaker 3: I needed to take a sabbatical. So that's how into
Speaker 3: sabbatical land.
Speaker 1: So you made this decision to take the sabbatical, Like,
Speaker 1: but you were the head of this company that you
Speaker 1: were loving, Like, was that scary? What went through your
Speaker 1: head as you made that decision?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: One of the reasons why folks call it a sabbatical
Speaker 3: is because it's this tidy term for something that feels
Speaker 3: like your life is ending right, And so I think
Speaker 3: for me, you know, I talked to my co founder
Speaker 3: and he was feeling a little bit burnt out as well,
Speaker 3: especially from the perspective of entrepreneurship. I think, if you
Speaker 3: can't build up an organization that can survive without you
Speaker 3: after seven or ten years, you haven't done an awesome job.
Speaker 3: And so we were both you know, acknowledging, hey, let's
Speaker 3: let's give some time to step away. But honestly, I
Speaker 3: had no idea what was on the other side. I
Speaker 3: started it with the pretense that I was going to
Speaker 3: come back to the company, but I just I couldn't
Speaker 3: really continue anymore as was.
Speaker 4: Going, so decided to step away.
Speaker 3: Said four months feels, you know, like the longest time
Speaker 3: I've ever taken off by a factor of eight.
Speaker 4: But yeah, so that's that's what I decided to do.
Speaker 1: And so what happened.
Speaker 3: So so when I think about how I describe my sabbatical,
Speaker 3: because everyone's sabbatical is different, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: intimidate folks that might not be able to do or
Speaker 3: want to do the thing that I did. There's like
Speaker 3: the Marquee events. So I did this eight hundred mile
Speaker 3: pilgrimage in Japan. I'd really wanted to investigate on the
Speaker 3: spiritual side, something that I felt was important but rarely urgent, right,
Speaker 3: So that was kind of like the Marquee event. But
Speaker 3: really some of the more impactful moments on the sabbatical
Speaker 3: were things that I don't put up on the billboard.
Speaker 3: So I was nursing one of my parents back to health.
Speaker 3: So I moved back home, you know, at age thirty two,
Speaker 3: cooked a lot of meals. I helped a cousin of
Speaker 3: mine move and another cousin of mine build a deck,
Speaker 3: so I hung cabinets myself and got to have that experience.
Speaker 4: And you know, I wrote my first song.
Speaker 3: I bought a ukulele on Amazon, which is super embarrassing,
Speaker 3: and I brought it along on the on the trip,
Speaker 3: and so I wrote and performed my first song in
Speaker 3: a place where definitely no one would know me.
Speaker 4: So that was that was helpful.
Speaker 1: And so I think we're going to talk about what
Speaker 1: you learn from this and some of the benefits soon.
Speaker 1: But I want to start with some definitions because I'm
Speaker 1: a nerdy professor, and that's where I go, And so
Speaker 1: how do you define a sabbatical?
Speaker 3: So the definition that I think about is an intentional
Speaker 3: extended leave from your routine job. So intentional, not that
Speaker 3: you have to have made the decision to take it,
Speaker 3: because most sabbaticals kind of happen to you, but that
Speaker 3: once you're on sabbatical, you stay there.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: And so as soon as we leave a job, our
Speaker 3: new job is to find another job.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It's like very hard to be in that kind of
Speaker 3: liminal state between careers, between jobs. So in order for
Speaker 3: it to be a sabbatical, you got to like create space,
Speaker 3: not look for another job extended, So it has to
Speaker 3: be measured in months, not weeks. I think we like
Speaker 3: to say at least three months. I took four. I
Speaker 3: wish it would have been six. Most people I think
Speaker 3: would like to take between six and twelve. Nine is
Speaker 3: very symbolic because you're kind of like creating something new.
Speaker 4: And then from your routine job.
Speaker 3: So most folks, especially type A achievers, probably some in
Speaker 3: this room, will say like, all right, I'm gonna go
Speaker 3: off work and then I'm gonna learn how to be
Speaker 3: fluent in a foreign language, or I'm gonna like write
Speaker 3: a book or something like that. And what we found
Speaker 3: in the research is actually that active rest. So doing
Speaker 3: a job that is not your job can actually be
Speaker 3: fulfilling and healing as long as it's not similar to
Speaker 3: your routine job at all. Right, So don't do like
Speaker 3: consulting projects to make a little bit more money, like
Speaker 3: really switch out of your routine job, routine work into
Speaker 3: something that feels fulfilling. So write that book, like become
Speaker 3: a yoga teacher certified, right, but has to be very
Speaker 3: different from what you're doing.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a funny word, right, you use this
Speaker 1: term extendedly. It's not a vacation. It's a sabbatical. It
Speaker 1: kind of sounds almost like old school like like the
Speaker 1: Bible like a sabbatical, right, I mean is that intentional?
Speaker 1: Where did this concept come from?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the of the word is ancient. Comes from
Speaker 3: Hebrew scripture Shabbat, right, And so this concept that you
Speaker 3: work for six days and on the seventh day you
Speaker 3: devote that to worship. That also expanded out into you're
Speaker 3: supposed to till the fields for six years and then
Speaker 3: let them lie fallow for one year. And so that's
Speaker 3: the notion of the rest right, that you have to
Speaker 3: have rest in some sort of period of time.
Speaker 4: Then it was kind of taken on by academia.
Speaker 3: So late nineteenth century, the president of Harvard I went
Speaker 3: through and looked up the notes, like the minutes, the
Speaker 3: meeting minutes, which is fun They had done research on
Speaker 3: how much breaks do faculty need in order to replenish
Speaker 3: themselves and also to do research, so they would have
Speaker 3: to go over to Europe to figure out like what's
Speaker 3: actually going on in the academy. And the funny thing
Speaker 3: about that was that in the definition there it talked
Speaker 3: about rest and recovery and also pursuit of science and knowledge.
Speaker 3: And if you look now, like the rest and recovery
Speaker 3: piece is totally dubiously absent from all these kind of
Speaker 3: academic sabbatical leave policies. But that's the base sick history
Speaker 3: of the terminology.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, as a professor, many people in academia
Speaker 1: get something like a sabbatical, think it's going away. But
Speaker 1: this is really rare in other fields.
Speaker 3: Right, totally rare, and it's increasingly rare in academia, right.
Speaker 3: Folks that are you know, are not getting paid for
Speaker 3: it or shrinking down into a semester. Maybe we can
Speaker 3: talk about your sabbatical later. But it's you know, about
Speaker 3: five percent of companies offer this policy. It's much more prevalent,
Speaker 3: you know, and kind of like tech and companies where
Speaker 3: they're really trying to recruit talent and retain talent. It's increasing,
Speaker 3: So it's doubled since twenty nineteen, and it seems to
Speaker 3: be increasing over time, but still definitely the minority, especially
Speaker 3: paid sabbatical with some sort of benefits and that sort
Speaker 3: of thing.
Speaker 1: And so you've done this cool project where you've been
Speaker 1: studying sabbaticals scientifically, You've done hundreds of interviews, dozens of
Speaker 1: different academic studies. From your research, I'm curious who is
Speaker 1: taking sabbaticals and why are they taking them.
Speaker 3: So when I first started out, I thought I was
Speaker 3: the customer, and so people who are in their mid
Speaker 3: thirties forties who burn out take sabbaticals. And then what
Speaker 3: I started to realize is that folks are starting as
Speaker 3: early as kind of gap years. They're tagging along with
Speaker 3: their parents sabbaticals. So when I thought about the research
Speaker 3: in the book, it's kind of going from gap years
Speaker 3: to twilight careers. So kind of like pre retirement type age.
Speaker 3: So it's really anyone that either has something forced upon
Speaker 3: them or takes this opportunity to take time off. I
Speaker 3: think gap years are a great example.
Speaker 1: Of that, and so why are they taking them? Like
Speaker 1: what happens?
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, two thirds of sabbaticals are catalyzed by
Speaker 3: a very negative event. So either a personal health crisis
Speaker 3: or you get fired, or you know, let's say, like
Speaker 3: a global calamity or pandemic forces you to think about
Speaker 3: work totally differently. And then there's also positive catalysts, right,
Speaker 3: so you sell your company, you know, you get like
Speaker 3: a kind of employment leave things like that. And then
Speaker 3: I like to say this neutral catalyst of if you
Speaker 3: have a company, if you work for a company with
Speaker 3: a sabbatical policy, then you get to take that time
Speaker 3: off and you don't even have to think about it.
Speaker 3: And you know, there are a lot of companies that
Speaker 3: offer that, and then also countries that enable people to
Speaker 3: do it, Like in Sweden you can take six months
Speaker 3: off to try to start a business. In Australia, if
Speaker 3: you're a civil servant, you get six months off every
Speaker 3: seven years.
Speaker 1: Man, I didn't realize there are countries that were doing this.
Speaker 1: That is exciting, and that also reminds me that your
Speaker 1: research has shown that there's lots of misconceptions when it
Speaker 1: comes to sabbaticals. So let's go through some of these.
Speaker 1: I think when I think of sabbaticals, I first think,
Speaker 1: maybe we're just dealing with like a longish vacation. How
Speaker 1: is this sabbatical different than that?
Speaker 3: So everyone who has taken a sabbatical has also taken
Speaker 3: a vacation, and they're saying that something profoundly different.
Speaker 4: Is going on.
Speaker 3: When you're on vacation, all the things you're on vacation
Speaker 3: from are piling up in the back, right, your inbox
Speaker 3: is piling up. You know that you have to come
Speaker 3: back to work and get things done. When you're on sabbatical,
Speaker 3: you're gone long enough so that those things are off
Speaker 3: of your plate, so you can actually kind of deepen
Speaker 3: into what's going on and you don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about like what's happening at work.
Speaker 1: So different misconception is this idea of that sabbaticals are
Speaker 1: basically a midlife crisis. It's your freak out. You don't
Speaker 1: know what you're doing, you're burning out, Like I guess
Speaker 1: that's maybe part of some sabbaticals, but that doesn't define it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So we talked about the times when people take
Speaker 3: the sabbaticals over the course of their life, and we
Speaker 3: talked about whether or not you take a sabbatical or
Speaker 3: sabbatical takes you. So that can certainly be the case
Speaker 3: where you're living a life that doesn't feel authentic to
Speaker 3: you long enough that you feel like you have to
Speaker 3: kind of burn the boats and like cast off lines.
Speaker 3: I think I was a little precocious in my midlife crisis,
Speaker 3: like a little bit earlier than midlife. Hopefully you think
Speaker 3: about it like a dental cleaning appointment, Like you want
Speaker 3: to take these like cleaning appointments, right, we don't love them,
Speaker 3: but you try to take them every six months so
Speaker 3: that you don't have like a root canal emergency. So
Speaker 3: the whole goal of this is can you identify inflection
Speaker 3: points in your life to take them off as opposed
Speaker 3: to waiting for some big crisis to pull you into
Speaker 3: sabbatical land.
Speaker 1: All right, here's another misconception that I think comes on
Speaker 1: the employer side, the idea that sabbatical is basically just
Speaker 1: a golden parachute, like you take a break from a
Speaker 1: job that you're thinking about basically getting the heck out
Speaker 1: of anyway? Is this the case?
Speaker 3: So what we found in the research is that the
Speaker 3: super majority of people that take a sabbatical that's enabled
Speaker 3: by their company come back, So over eighty percent come
Speaker 3: back to their job. So it's not really a golden parachute. Now,
Speaker 3: people do leave. But the difference, and we can get
Speaker 3: more into this around kind of what's in it for companies.
Speaker 3: The difference is you are spending a bunch of time
Speaker 3: preparing the company to do all the tasks that you're
Speaker 3: doing before you leave on sabbatical, and so you're kind
Speaker 3: of like preparing the company for you to be gone,
Speaker 3: and you're also like allowing the company to see, like
Speaker 3: what are all the things that you do? Who else
Speaker 3: could be doing it? Who could be stepping up in
Speaker 3: your midst things like that. So not really a golden parachute,
Speaker 3: but people do leave. I think the argument is if
Speaker 3: someone's going to leave as soon as you let them
Speaker 3: out of the door and off the leash, like were
Speaker 3: they doing great work?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But do we have data on it, like how
Speaker 1: many people actually take off after a sabbatical?
Speaker 4: About twenty percent. Yeah, so it is.
Speaker 1: It's non zero, but it's not like eighty percent orred percent.
Speaker 3: And you know, one hundred percent of the people who
Speaker 3: don't have a sabbatical policy at work are taking off
Speaker 3: to take a sabbatical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right's fair, that's fair. And that gets a different misconception,
Speaker 1: which is this idea that sabbaticals are sort of costly
Speaker 1: for businesses. But you've argued a better way to think
Speaker 1: about them as an investment. What do you mean?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think listen, as I was saying about an
Speaker 3: entrepreneurial company, if if it can't survive without you leaving
Speaker 3: it as a leader, that's a problem. Similarly, turnover is
Speaker 3: just something that happens, Like how many people here have
Speaker 3: left a job?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: That was a lot of hands for the listeners that
Speaker 1: you haven't.
Speaker 4: Left a job.
Speaker 3: So people are going to leave anyway, and as a
Speaker 3: company you have to be prepared. You have to be
Speaker 3: resilient to survive turnover. People are going to quit, they're
Speaker 3: going to go on parental leave, and so it is practice.
Speaker 3: It's like building a muscle of figuring out what tasks
Speaker 3: you have, offloading them on to other people and really
Speaker 3: kind of investing in that muscle as a company.
Speaker 1: So when we get back from the break, we're going
Speaker 1: to see why a sabatoput can be such a helpful investment,
Speaker 1: not just for the person taking it, but even more
Speaker 1: for the company that allows it. The Happiness Lab will
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. You're listening to a live
Speaker 1: edition of The Happiness Lab recorded at south By Southwest
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five with my friend, the Sabbatical Expert, DJ Dedonna.
Speaker 1: I started this next section of the show by asking
Speaker 1: Dj to give us a breakdown of the average sabbatical
Speaker 1: and to explain how the benefits of taking a break
Speaker 1: tend to unfold.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So from a personal perspective, I think you can expect
Speaker 3: a lot of things. And if you're coming into the
Speaker 3: sabbatical super burnt out, then you probably need to heal
Speaker 3: and that's going to be the first thing that you get.
Speaker 3: So in the research in my interviews, I talked to
Speaker 3: a ton of people that had some sort of physical ailment,
Speaker 3: whether it's ulcer's, stomach, gastro stuff, and they've been told
Speaker 3: by doctors this is stress related, But until they actually
Speaker 3: stepped away from work long enough for that to heal.
Speaker 3: They couldn't kind of grock that right. So I think
Speaker 3: healing is one of the first things. Creativity is one
Speaker 3: of the next things. So you're taking time off and
Speaker 3: you're doing whatever you want to do, and that ends
Speaker 3: up like kind of reigniting a lot of creativity. For me,
Speaker 3: it was writing silly songs on ukulele, but like whatever
Speaker 3: you would like to do. We think about like working
Speaker 3: on ourselves as work as opposed to play. So there's
Speaker 3: this concept of identity play as helping you run little
Speaker 3: experiments figure out what you want to do next. And
Speaker 3: then I think confidence is a huge one. No matter
Speaker 3: if you have a sabbatical policy at your company or not.
Speaker 3: It's pretty scary to launch off for an extended period
Speaker 3: of time. Like I'd never taken more than a couple
Speaker 3: weeks off work since I don't know middle school, and
Speaker 3: so to take four months off that's scary, especially.
Speaker 4: If you're leaving your job. What are you going to
Speaker 4: do on the other side of it?
Speaker 3: That sort of thing, And so being able to do
Speaker 3: something that seems scary and then come back and say, actually,
Speaker 3: I'm fine really builds up people's confidence to take big
Speaker 3: steps in big leaps.
Speaker 4: It's also hopefully running.
Speaker 3: Experiments on your sabbatical to say like, oh, I thought
Speaker 3: that I wanted to write, and I actually like writing,
Speaker 3: and so that builds up confidence ability to do it.
Speaker 1: And it seems like from your research when you talk
Speaker 1: to people, these benefits are really common, Like this is
Speaker 1: just what you hear everybody who take sabbatical saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I came back from
Speaker 3: my sabbatical and I said that was really changed who
Speaker 3: I was as a person. So this kind of identity
Speaker 3: was enmeshed with my company, and if the company was successful,
Speaker 3: I was successful. If it wasn't, I wasn't. And so
Speaker 3: I was able to kind of break free from that.
Speaker 3: But I wanted to check to make sure it wasn't
Speaker 3: just my experience. And so the more folks that I
Speaker 3: talked to, the more you just kept hearing these terms
Speaker 3: like peak life experience. It's up there with like having
Speaker 3: a child, like getting married. So you're creating an event
Speaker 3: for yourself that will be one of the most important
Speaker 3: events of your entire life.
Speaker 1: It also seems like you take time to notice the
Speaker 1: things that you're not doing. You've talked a lot in
Speaker 1: your work about this idea of functional workaholism and how
Speaker 1: a sabbatical can help you penetrate into that a little bit.
Speaker 1: What do you mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we talk a lot about burnout. I view
Speaker 3: burnout as a spectrum. So you're kind of like, you're
Speaker 3: like burning out right, You're existing on a spectrum where
Speaker 3: you're not doing your bath, not feeling great. That's kind
Speaker 3: of hard to realize unless you step out from it.
Speaker 3: And stepping out I'm assuming you've all had the experience
Speaker 3: where you go on a vacation for a week and
Speaker 3: right at the end you're like, oh man, I was
Speaker 3: just sinking into it, and then you have to PLoP
Speaker 3: back into work. So stepping out long enough to say, Wow,
Speaker 3: the way that I was working and the way that
Speaker 3: I was living was actually not serving me, and I
Speaker 3: want to just step out of that for a little bit.
Speaker 4: I might want to make a big change.
Speaker 3: But obviously people's experience of COVID varied widely, but I
Speaker 3: think a lot of folks saw, oh man, now that
Speaker 3: I'm back at home with my family, I actually want
Speaker 3: to do that more. And like the way that I
Speaker 3: was kind of returning back to my family or or
Speaker 3: you know, even how I was working was not really great.
Speaker 3: So you needed like some perspective and like a long
Speaker 3: enough break from the norm to understand that.
Speaker 1: And also this seems connected to this idea you've talked
Speaker 1: about called regret insurance, right, maybe like a benefit that
Speaker 1: comes later in life. What's that like?
Speaker 3: Imagine you're, you know, the age of your grandparents, and
Speaker 3: you're telling your grandkid a story, like what do you
Speaker 3: want to have in that story? Bronnie Ware, who is
Speaker 3: a Pallido care nurse, talks about the five Regrets of
Speaker 3: the dying and this notion that you have not lived
Speaker 3: a life authentic to yourself. If you close your eyes
Speaker 3: real quick and think, like, what would I want to
Speaker 3: do with my life? If I could do anything? Can
Speaker 3: that happen in the life that you're living now? Maybe,
Speaker 3: but probably not, Like it takes a little bit of time,
Speaker 3: and taking six months off in the scheme of working
Speaker 3: for forty years is just not that much time.
Speaker 4: It's less than like two percent.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you know then what you knew now,
Speaker 1: would you still choose the sabbatical? Would you do it differently?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Actually, one of the things that spurred me to taking
Speaker 3: my sabbatical was advice from a mentor. I went into
Speaker 3: that mentor's office and I was complaining, you know, hey,
Speaker 3: like this is hard, this is tough. The company's not
Speaker 3: working as much as I would like it to be,
Speaker 3: or whatnot. And he said, DJ, if you knew then
Speaker 3: all the things you know about your life and your company, now,
Speaker 3: would you join that company again tomorrow? And it was
Speaker 3: very clear. I was like, absolutely not. And so I think,
Speaker 3: like the tough part about our lives is lived kind
Speaker 3: of with this inertia. You've made a bunch of small
Speaker 3: decisions and all of a sudden you find yourself in
Speaker 3: this past. So I guess encouraging you to think about
Speaker 3: would you want to return to this exact life, and
Speaker 3: if not, how are you going to run experiments to
Speaker 3: figure out what other track you need to be on.
Speaker 3: So long way to answer your question, But I look
Speaker 3: back at that time and it's the most dense period
Speaker 3: of memories in my entire life. It was eight years
Speaker 3: ago right now I was walking in Japan, and so
Speaker 3: that will serve me, I think, for the rest.
Speaker 4: Of my life.
Speaker 1: So it seems like sabbaticals are serving the people who
Speaker 1: take them. But now I really want to jump into
Speaker 1: these benefits that employers can get because I think this
Speaker 1: is one of the reasons that sabbaticals aren't just equal
Speaker 1: for everyone, that not every company is doing this right
Speaker 1: is I think employers are really worried about whether this
Speaker 1: is going to be incredibly costly for companies. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit about some of these benefits, but I
Speaker 1: want to do a deeper dive, like what are companies
Speaker 1: really getting out of this when they set up sabbatical policies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think it's a great point in the sense that
Speaker 3: the best case scenario is that a sabbatical that doesn't
Speaker 3: require you to blow your life up, doesn't require you
Speaker 3: to save up for ten years, is possible because your
Speaker 3: company values in you enough to do it. So all
Speaker 3: of us who work at companies where managers are also people,
Speaker 3: so we're taking our people hat off and putting our
Speaker 3: company hat on. So this resilience is just a huge
Speaker 3: piece like having a company be able to withstand what
Speaker 3: they call key person risk. One of the interviewees was
Speaker 3: like the principal and founder of this boarding school in
Speaker 3: South Africa, and you know he'd been there from day one.
Speaker 3: It was ten years in and he stepped aside for
Speaker 3: six months because his spouse was doing a degree in Europe.
Speaker 3: And by stepping away, he was able to see that, like,
Speaker 3: some of the things ran really well in his absence,
Speaker 3: maybe even like a little bit better right the operation side,
Speaker 3: and then other stuff like fundraising fell off an absolute cliff, right,
Speaker 3: And so the organization got to see what it was
Speaker 3: like when he stepped away, and you know, junior folks
Speaker 3: got to step up into roles and have kind of
Speaker 3: career stretch experiences. But also he got to figure out, like, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, like this
Speaker 3: thing is going to fail and that's not great, and
Speaker 3: so like really developing like the resilience to say, Okay,
Speaker 3: if I do want to transition out, what kind of
Speaker 3: skills do I need to kind of manage? And said
Speaker 3: the organization. So I think tenure and loyalty to the company.
Speaker 3: We talk a lot about people finding meaning at work,
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, I'm sorry, like
Speaker 3: most companies cannot provide a ton of like meaning and
Speaker 3: purpose and so yeah, yeah, and that's fine, that's fine,
Speaker 3: But I think what the company can do is they
Speaker 3: can give you time to yourself to do the thing
Speaker 3: that's meaningful for you. And I think the impact of
Speaker 3: that is that people have more loyalty to the company.
Speaker 3: One of our interviews was from the US Treasury, where
Speaker 3: they had this long service leave policy where you can
Speaker 3: take six months off and she got to go and
Speaker 3: do like mountaineering and trekking in Latin America, and it
Speaker 3: was long enough to say, I like trekking, I like
Speaker 3: being on vacation, but I also really like the work,
Speaker 3: you know, international development work. She was not planning on
Speaker 3: having a family. She's like, I appreciate the ability to
Speaker 3: step outside of my work for a stretch and become
Speaker 3: kind of appreciative of that work again. And I know
Speaker 3: I can do it every seven to ten years. So
Speaker 3: that kind of like loyalty. And I also think that
Speaker 3: creates authentic company culture. Because there's a financial advisory start
Speaker 3: firm in Seattle called Brighton Jones that has these sabbaticals
Speaker 3: every ten years, and people come back and they're doing
Speaker 3: like a slideshow of their sabbatical, and everyone's excited for
Speaker 3: those folks because they know they get it as well.
Speaker 3: And so the company values you as a whole human
Speaker 3: being and also like they get to celebrate your experience
Speaker 3: because they know they get to take it, which is
Speaker 3: different than someone being like I had a great honeymoon.
Speaker 4: You're like, oh, man, I didn't you know.
Speaker 1: You've also argued that it can help employees like increase
Speaker 1: their innovation over time, and it's not necessarily that their
Speaker 1: skills building, although that happens in some cases with sabbaticals,
Speaker 1: it's more just that like time off builds this innovation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So one of the interviewees was the CTO of
Speaker 3: a tech company Stepped Away and was engaging this kind
Speaker 3: of identity play I talked about, so, you know, was
Speaker 3: a developer in college but had really not played around
Speaker 3: with like mobile app development, and so it was like
Speaker 3: futzing around and created this app to help text to
Speaker 3: speech folks, right, And so that turned into being a
Speaker 3: company that he started started from just wanting to learn
Speaker 3: and play. I think this like play muscle, is really underutilized,
Speaker 3: and I think it's really important to have folks like
Speaker 3: step away and regenerate their ability to solve problems creatively
Speaker 3: because you don't know what's coming around the corner. As
Speaker 3: technology kind of accelerates, so you have to be able
Speaker 3: to see outside of the box.
Speaker 1: And that's helpful for companies when people come back to
Speaker 1: I soon totally.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean you have to solve problems inside of companies, right,
Speaker 3: And so it's starting.
Speaker 1: To seem obvious that sabbaticals are a good idea for workers,
Speaker 1: They're a good idea for companies, probably a good idea
Speaker 1: for like society and us as people, right right, right,
Speaker 1: But only five percent of non academic companies are doing this,
Speaker 1: and so DJ this is now your life's mission, your
Speaker 1: dream to make sabbaticals more equitable. But to do that,
Speaker 1: we have to overcome all the barriers that we and
Speaker 1: our employers feel when it comes to giving us a sabbatical.
Speaker 1: And we're going to get to those barriers when we
Speaker 1: come back from the break. The Happiness Lab Live from
Speaker 1: south By Southwest will be right back. Sabbaticals seemed like
Speaker 1: a good idea, But let's go through some of the
Speaker 1: worries that people have when considering a sabbatical or just
Speaker 1: like the actual barriers that come up when you like
Speaker 1: detonate your life for six months. In some ways, one
Speaker 1: of these barriers is the optics.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I think people are really worried about what this is
Speaker 1: going to look like. Is that something that you experienced When.
Speaker 3: I first thought about what the barriers were, you know,
Speaker 3: around seven years ago, optics was one of the biggest ones, right,
Speaker 3: So what are people going to think about the fact
Speaker 3: you took time off? That has changed significantly since then.
Speaker 3: I think one of the enabling features is that LinkedIn
Speaker 3: introduced a career breaks role that you could put in,
Speaker 3: which is tremendous. So like hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 3: now like proudly kind of talk about their career breaks.
Speaker 3: The other thing is just like this story about a
Speaker 3: successful business and a successful life is also changing. So
Speaker 3: people are starting to hear in addition to the CEOs
Speaker 3: running multiple companies sleeping under the dea thing, they're starting
Speaker 3: to realize that folks like Steve Jobs right was studying
Speaker 3: calligraphy for a year, and you have the CEO of
Speaker 3: Impossible Foods figured out his company on sabbatical, Like, there's
Speaker 3: actually like a lot of roles for you to kind
Speaker 3: of find that creative energy when you step away. The
Speaker 3: other thing I think about if you're interviewing for a
Speaker 3: job and you tell them that you took a career
Speaker 3: break and they disqualify you for the position. That's a
Speaker 3: great sign that maybe you didn't want to work at
Speaker 3: that company. It's like a kind of a revealed preference.
Speaker 3: And also I've also found that in interviews, people want
Speaker 3: to talk of, oh, like you traveled for six months,
Speaker 3: Like what did you do? What was your favorite Like
Speaker 3: that makes you an interesting person, and it also shows
Speaker 3: that you had the courage and self confidence, like to
Speaker 3: take time off and do something for yourself, which I
Speaker 3: think the majority of people are going to be like,
Speaker 3: that's awesome, Like I want this person on the team.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the story is changing, but it
Speaker 1: also seems like we need to change the story in
Speaker 1: our own heads. Like part of the problem of optics
Speaker 1: seems like it's what we think other people are going
Speaker 1: to judge us about, but it also is a lot
Speaker 1: about what we're judging ourselves about too.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I did a study of my Harvard Business School classmates
Speaker 3: ten years out, and ninety percent of people were concerned
Speaker 3: about how a career break would look, and less than
Speaker 3: five percent of people actually cared whether or not someone
Speaker 3: took a career break. So it's this weird dynamic where
Speaker 3: you assume that people might take you less seriously, but
Speaker 3: it's just not the case. And the way to kind
Speaker 3: of solve that in our research, we identify this concept
Speaker 3: called exemplars, which is fancy for examples, So like, find
Speaker 3: an example in your life, someone that looks like you,
Speaker 3: someone that has a similar job to you, who has
Speaker 3: taken this time off so you can actually see for yourself, like, oh,
Speaker 3: I'll be fine on the other side.
Speaker 1: I love that example because it seems like part of
Speaker 1: the problem with sabbaticals is like for many people, this
Speaker 1: is just going to be the first time you're letting
Speaker 1: yourself do something that's not like work for any any
Speaker 1: stretch of time whatsoever.
Speaker 4: It's very uncomfortable. It's not a natural feeling.
Speaker 3: It kind of creates a vacuum, right because you had
Speaker 3: all these responsibilities and even though you want to not
Speaker 3: be checking email, when all of a sudden you're cut
Speaker 3: off from email and your calendar, Like, the first part
Speaker 3: of sabbaticals can be difficult, and that's one part I
Speaker 3: think folks don't get, like, you're on sabbatical must be amazing,
Speaker 3: and you're actually like beating yourself up about leaving not
Speaker 3: knowing what you're going to do next, and so it
Speaker 3: is like an identity transformation. And in order to transform yourself,
Speaker 3: you've got to really do some you know, like some
Speaker 3: thinking and some breaking apart of who you are.
Speaker 1: Okay, So that's the optics, like internally and externally. Another
Speaker 1: big one, just practically is responsibility. Like we have professional responsibilities,
Speaker 1: personal responsibilities, we're parents. There's like logistical challenges. How did
Speaker 1: you navigate this stuff? And what are some suggestions?
Speaker 3: So I think that almost no one can throw all
Speaker 3: of their responsibilities off tomorrow, right, And so if you
Speaker 3: treat it like an emergency root canal, like that's difficult.
Speaker 3: If you say, what is everyone here in this room
Speaker 3: doing in twenty thirty one, Like, no one has any idea, right.
Speaker 3: So if you say, like, in twenty thirty one, I'm
Speaker 3: taking six months off and you work towards that, man,
Speaker 3: twenty thirty one's coming up.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, twenty thirty one is not very far away,
Speaker 1: but it's gonna be awesome for the folks in this room,
Speaker 1: because everybody started nodding when you said that twenty thirty one. Right.
Speaker 3: So if you can set some time in the future
Speaker 3: and say, like I'm committing to take six months off.
Speaker 3: Then all of a sudden, you can save up for it,
Speaker 3: you can signpost it with your employers, and it's not
Speaker 3: a big deal. This is just part of who I am.
Speaker 3: I take six months off six years from now. The
Speaker 3: other thing is you hear a lot about responsibilities. I
Speaker 3: have kids, like they have, like, how am I I'm
Speaker 3: going to pull them out of school to put them
Speaker 3: back in school.
Speaker 4: Time and time again.
Speaker 3: It's it's difficult, But the people who have children who
Speaker 3: take sabbatical have the most inspiring stories, hands down, because
Speaker 3: they'll say stuff like I just had begun to think
Speaker 3: about my kids as a set of responsibilities and tasks
Speaker 3: like take them here, pick them up from here. When
Speaker 3: in actuality, what's happening is people are showing their kids
Speaker 3: what is astronomy? Oh, you're seeing the stars from Patagonia,
Speaker 3: seeing them and getting excited about that.
Speaker 4: Like what is zoology?
Speaker 3: And you're going to the Serengeti and you're seeing like
Speaker 3: animals up close?
Speaker 4: What is geology?
Speaker 3: You're in like the Grand Canyon, And so it enables
Speaker 3: you to see the world through their eyes and actually
Speaker 3: give them an experience that will sit with them for
Speaker 3: their entire life. There's a movie called Blink that we saw.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you've seen it, but distributed by
Speaker 3: nat Geo, and it's this family in Quebec where they
Speaker 3: have I think three or four kids that have this
Speaker 3: kind of ocular degeneration disease, and so they only have
Speaker 3: a certain amount of time that their kids are going
Speaker 3: to be able to see the world, and so they
Speaker 3: decided to take a year off so the kids could
Speaker 3: like absorb as many images about the world as possible.
Speaker 3: So I think about that like taking it from a
Speaker 3: responsibility that you have to take care of to a
Speaker 3: responsibility to allow your kids, or you and your spouse
Speaker 3: or yourself to get to experience the world in a
Speaker 3: different way than our just routine life.
Speaker 1: I also think that it's probably really great for parents
Speaker 1: to show kids and to model like be that exemplar
Speaker 1: for taking some time off and also just like not
Speaker 1: be so burned out around their kids. Like I do
Speaker 1: worry with some of like my adult friends with kids,
Speaker 1: that those are kids that have only ever seen their
Speaker 1: parents super stressed out, and I feel like it must
Speaker 1: just be rejuvenating for kids to see parents it's taking
Speaker 1: time off too.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, you have to model this behavior right And I
Speaker 3: actually have two good friends who are on sabbatical and
Speaker 3: Kenya right now, and just seeing them kind of go
Speaker 3: from having groceries delivered, meals delivered, like no time to
Speaker 3: do anything, into like teaching their kids how to ride bikes.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just it's really inspiring and life is
Speaker 3: too short. Right Again, a silver lining of the pandemic
Speaker 3: for many people is that you realize that life is
Speaker 3: fragile and it's short, and you just can't bet on
Speaker 3: twenty thirty one even who knows, so maybe she said
Speaker 3: it to twenty twenty nine.
Speaker 1: When you take your sabbatical, Yeah, we gotta get it
Speaker 1: in as soon as possible. Okay, So we've talked about optics,
Speaker 1: We've talked about responsibility. I think the elephant in the
Speaker 1: room when it comes to sabbaticals is cost right, just financially,
Speaker 1: I think if you survey most people, my guess is
Speaker 1: most people are going to say that sounds awesome, but
Speaker 1: it's just completely out of reach. How do we solve
Speaker 1: for this?
Speaker 3: So, I mean, the first and obvious answer is that
Speaker 3: if this is supported by companies countries like our culture,
Speaker 3: then it's not a problem at all, and if you
Speaker 3: can plan it in advance, right. So a couple people
Speaker 3: from the study were teachers. They had taken a sabbatical
Speaker 3: right before they got married and backpacked around around the world,
Speaker 3: and so it's like, we want to do this when
Speaker 3: our kids are a certain age. So they saved up
Speaker 3: for ten years because it was important to them, and
Speaker 3: they did it and it turned out, actually they drove
Speaker 3: a land rover across to the tip of South America
Speaker 3: from Arizona, and it turned out that there was so
Speaker 3: much maintenance with the land rover that the guy got
Speaker 3: really good at it. And he came back and he
Speaker 3: was like, I actually want to start a land rover business.
Speaker 3: So now he like refurbishes land rovers and takes people
Speaker 3: on tours. But yeah, so if you're thinking about it
Speaker 3: as something that has to happen tomorrow, very few people
Speaker 3: can afford it. If you're planning it out and saying
Speaker 3: this is important to me, I'm going to save five
Speaker 3: percent a year, then it's not that big of a deal.
Speaker 3: The other thing I would say is that I've heard
Speaker 3: this over and over again, where when you're at a company,
Speaker 3: your raises are kind.
Speaker 4: Of on a schedule.
Speaker 3: It's like you get a five percent raise or here's
Speaker 3: what you're eligible for. When you switch jobs, you actually
Speaker 3: get paid a lot more because you're being valued at
Speaker 3: the market rate for your skills. And so lots of
Speaker 3: folks are saying, I quit my job, they wouldn't give
Speaker 3: me a sabbatical. I joined another company and I got
Speaker 3: a raise, so that essentially made the sabbatical free. So
Speaker 3: your mileage may vary, but that's a dynamic that we
Speaker 3: kind of get trapped in as we've been at a
Speaker 3: company for a long time.
Speaker 1: You've also noted that it's also just worth asking because
Speaker 1: lots of companies have policies that are like this that
Speaker 1: might be hidden or not talked about too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's these secret policies. I think that if you
Speaker 3: want to do it and you're kind of set on it,
Speaker 3: and you're like, listen, I'm either leaving or they're giving
Speaker 3: me a sabbatical. Like at that point, you're going to leave,
Speaker 3: and so you can talk frankly with your manager about this.
Speaker 3: And I've seen this many times where someone says, all right,
Speaker 3: let's work this thing out. Can we wait a year
Speaker 3: so we can prep the team Okay, cool, how about
Speaker 3: like we're not going to give you full pay, but
Speaker 3: how about partial pay or how about just retaining benefits?
Speaker 3: And what we find is that most people if you
Speaker 3: just retain benefits, because that's the scary thing, they can
Speaker 3: save up for it. And so again like how far
Speaker 3: in advance are you planning on doing it? But I
Speaker 3: would talk to people who aren't your manager first and
Speaker 3: try to find an exemplar, and then you can kind
Speaker 3: of broach that subject. And one of the reasons why
Speaker 3: we have like a like a kind of a support
Speaker 3: group on Facebook and LinkedIn where you can ask other
Speaker 3: people what their best practices were in doing it. You
Speaker 3: can find people who maybe worked in your industry or
Speaker 3: in your company who have taken it.
Speaker 4: So that's helpful.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is how kind of personally we can
Speaker 1: sort of fight some of the barriers. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: maybe some of the structural barriers. Hopefully there are folks
Speaker 1: in the room who are themselves employers, maybe big CEOs
Speaker 1: of companies who are hearing about these benefits and want
Speaker 1: to start offering sabbatical policies and want to develop a
Speaker 1: company policy that can help folks do this. What do
Speaker 1: employers actually need to make sabbaticals a thing.
Speaker 3: So in order to make it equitable for folks, it's
Speaker 3: got to have to be paid, right, So allow people
Speaker 3: to be able to take it and not take a
Speaker 3: huge financial hit. I think in order to make it successful, Like,
Speaker 3: the worst thing that can happen is you roll out
Speaker 3: a sabbatical policy and it's too short or you don't
Speaker 3: allow your employees to disconnect, and then you've had people
Speaker 3: who are gone from the workplace and then also haven't
Speaker 3: gotten the benefits. And so give folks enough time ideally months.
Speaker 3: You know, what we found in the research is that
Speaker 3: it takes about six to eight weeks for you to
Speaker 3: really like become yourself again. Think about that, you take
Speaker 3: a two week vacation up to two months to really
Speaker 3: feel like, oh, I'm me, I'm not just this collection
Speaker 3: of jobs and responsibilities. So give them enough time and
Speaker 3: ensure disconnection. So best practice disable the email auto respond
Speaker 3: You'd be surprised if you have an auto response that says,
Speaker 3: I'm coming back to the office in September. I'm deleting
Speaker 3: this entire inbox like emailing you in September. Folks will
Speaker 3: just email you in September. It's not the end of
Speaker 3: the world. So disconnection, I think duration and support.
Speaker 1: So you've also talked about some ways that companies can
Speaker 1: make this the norm or make this scene is like
Speaker 1: not a bad thing to do. What are some ways
Speaker 1: that companies can do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the norm that exists is this so called
Speaker 3: work devotion norm where people are kind of like feel
Speaker 3: like they have to be devoted to work. They can't
Speaker 3: be seen as taking time off. This is why things
Speaker 3: like unlimited vacation, which is a total boondoggle, like doesn't
Speaker 3: work because you don't see people taking time off and
Speaker 3: so then you don't feel like you can take it.
Speaker 3: So I think the first thing that leaders can do
Speaker 3: is take the breaks themselves to kind of model this.
Speaker 3: So Sweden also has man Sweden's getting a lot of
Speaker 3: love this episode. Sweden also has like kind of world
Speaker 3: leading paternity leave, and what they found is that like,
Speaker 3: even though you get paid paternity leave, fathers wouldn't take
Speaker 3: it unless their bosses took it. You've got to model
Speaker 3: that behavior, you've got to celebrate it inside the company
Speaker 3: in order for folks to take it.
Speaker 1: What are some examples of positive impacts on organizations for
Speaker 1: their leaders, like is it just the people that talk
Speaker 1: the benefit from this or do you also see like
Speaker 1: frontline workers taking these things and benefiting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a lot more rare to have folks
Speaker 3: across the spectrum of the organization just because of the
Speaker 3: financial responsibilities and things like that. So I talked to
Speaker 3: this startup called Skylight. At the beginning stages of a startup,
Speaker 3: if you've ever worked for one or started one, no
Speaker 3: one's taking a sabbatical at the beginning. But if you
Speaker 3: can get through the first like four or five years,
Speaker 3: then you can make some space. And so the CEO, Michael,
Speaker 3: their first employee, was just really burnt out, and so
Speaker 3: allowed her to take two months off, come back and
Speaker 3: then during that time it's a little bit cheating on
Speaker 3: the sabbatical, but she had investigated a bunch of AI
Speaker 3: tools and like got trained up, and so she was
Speaker 3: able to bring that back, which was integrated into the
Speaker 3: product and actually made it quite successful and kind of
Speaker 3: changed the trajectory of it. The other example that I
Speaker 3: like to tell is there's a CEO, Cheryl Johnson, of
Speaker 3: this organization in Detroit. So, like the Coalition to End homelessness,
Speaker 3: and there's funders that fund nonprofits in places like Detroit,
Speaker 3: La San Francisco, Boston. They convinced the boards of nonprofits
Speaker 3: to allow their leaders and their employees to take time
Speaker 3: off and they fund it, right, And so the point
Speaker 3: of that again to prevent this key person risk at
Speaker 3: a nonprofit where the leaders super important, charismatic. And so
Speaker 3: they're like convincing these boards to let these nonprofit employees
Speaker 3: leave because like burnout started in the care sector, right,
Speaker 3: I'm onlike nurses, healthcare workers, nonprofit leaders. If you really
Speaker 3: care about your job, you don't want to leave it
Speaker 3: because you feel like you're letting people down. And so
Speaker 3: I think in the nonprofit industry, actually you see that
Speaker 3: a lot as well.
Speaker 1: You've also seen some of these creative solutions that some
Speaker 1: like jobs have come up with. You talked about this
Speaker 1: idea of a prebatical, which I think is actually a
Speaker 1: kind of clever one. What's that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this came from the great resignation. Everyone is like,
Speaker 3: I quit my job, It's amazing, and then a lot
Speaker 3: of people got really nice offers that other companies and
Speaker 3: other jobs, and so like, actually, I'm just going to
Speaker 3: start this other job, And I think it's kind of foolish.
Speaker 3: I think that you're burnout from a job is going
Speaker 3: to like end just because you joined another job.
Speaker 1: Yes, you take your box and by the time you
Speaker 1: get to the car, the burnout's over it.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, you're running on adrenaline, right, so you're bringing
Speaker 3: like the adrenaline over. But I think companies actually benefit
Speaker 3: from ensuring that people take time off.
Speaker 4: And the easiest.
Speaker 3: Sabbatical to take is if, like, you have a job
Speaker 3: so I teach at a business school, Like you get
Speaker 3: a job at a consulting firm, and you can push
Speaker 3: your offer so you know that you have a job
Speaker 3: coming out of it and you don't have to worry
Speaker 3: about money. And so I think like allowing folks to
Speaker 3: make sure they come into your organization not burned out,
Speaker 3: excited to hit the ground running is a great one,
Speaker 3: all right.
Speaker 1: So let's say somebody's listening right now and they're convinced
Speaker 1: it's time, they're ready to overcome all these barriers. The
Speaker 1: extended break is what they want to do. What are
Speaker 1: some practices for the sabbatical curious who are ready to
Speaker 1: hit go on actually taking a break.
Speaker 3: So I think the first thing is you got to
Speaker 3: ask around, so try to find an exemplar. I think
Speaker 3: setting the container for a sabbatical is super important.
Speaker 4: So I don't really.
Speaker 3: Want to give people guidance on their particular sabbatical, but
Speaker 3: you got to like set enough time. You have to
Speaker 3: ensure that you are disconnected enough. And partially that means
Speaker 3: traveling if you can, so getting out of your geographic space,
Speaker 3: and partially that just means getting out of your routines
Speaker 3: because that's a vacuum at the beginning of your sabbatical,
Speaker 3: when you subtract all of your responsibilities. It can help
Speaker 3: to have some structured things, especially at the beginning of
Speaker 3: your sabbatical, like you want to do something gets you
Speaker 3: out of your head and into your body. Yoga, teach
Speaker 3: your train, pottery like stuff where you're using your hands.
Speaker 1: Hiking, building cabinets.
Speaker 4: We heard ye, yeah, exactly. Do not suggest going to ikea.
Speaker 3: It's not stressful getting out of your head and into
Speaker 3: your body. And thinking about the phases of a sabbatical
Speaker 3: as healing at the beginning and then experimentation in the middle,
Speaker 3: and then integration at the end. So really like finding
Speaker 3: these what they call like counterfactual experiments, like what would
Speaker 3: my life be like if I did this versus what
Speaker 3: I'm doing now. One of my favorite stories was a
Speaker 3: consultant who would take a sabbatical every four years, and
Speaker 3: he was like, when I retire, I want to run
Speaker 3: an eco lodge. And so you spend a sabbatical volunteering,
Speaker 3: like working in the kitchen and working in the back
Speaker 3: office of eco lodges. And was like, this is actually
Speaker 3: not for me, right, and so like running these experiments
Speaker 3: so that you don't have regrets later in life.
Speaker 1: You've also talked about the importance of using your sabbatical
Speaker 1: to focus on relationships. I know why this is so
Speaker 1: important from the happy to science. The science just shows
Speaker 1: that social connection is so critical for happiness, But why
Speaker 1: can this be so important and transformative?
Speaker 3: Sabbatical specifically, A, I think you can go too far inwards,
Speaker 3: and so I think about sabbaticals as having three archetypes.
Speaker 3: There's like the achievers that really want to get something
Speaker 3: done kind of type A. Folks be the explorers, so
Speaker 3: people that just want to like see the world and
Speaker 3: explore outwards.
Speaker 4: And also like more seekers.
Speaker 3: That want to find out, like I wanted to do
Speaker 3: that spiritual journey so like, and then there's like folks
Speaker 3: that need kind of healing and so, you know, one
Speaker 3: of the tough things is that you spend so much
Speaker 3: time thinking about yourself and what you want, because like
Speaker 3: you're parched, you want to like go out and do
Speaker 3: all the things that you end up just focusing solely
Speaker 3: on yourself for happiness, Like, focusing on relationships is important.
Speaker 3: It gets you out of your head and into more
Speaker 3: like what do we actually care about?
Speaker 4: Like what are we doing here?
Speaker 3: And then second, I think as you as you get older, right, like,
Speaker 3: everyone has their own schedules and you're trying to like
Speaker 3: align stuff, and so this allows you to take the
Speaker 3: scheduling hassles of one side of that equation and take
Speaker 3: it away so you can actually plug into someone else's
Speaker 3: life in their convenience. So it can kind of like
Speaker 3: and catalyze and refresh these relationships that might have run
Speaker 3: a little dry.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting is some of the happiness lab fans know.
Speaker 1: I quite famously took this my own zabbatical when I
Speaker 1: was feeling really burned out, and I think one of
Speaker 1: the unexpected benefits was this sort of relationship building mostly
Speaker 1: because of that schedule issue that you just mentioned, right,
Speaker 1: I wanted to see your friend or catch up, and
Speaker 1: they were like when can you meet? I was like
Speaker 1: one any time, Like I got nothing going on, right,
Speaker 1: you know? And that was just transformative, right because it
Speaker 1: meant that those meetings and those relationships actually got built
Speaker 1: and that those connections actually happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's all these things that we say are importance,
Speaker 3: we know are importance, but we don't make time for
Speaker 3: I talked briefly about this urgent versus important kind of dynamic.
Speaker 3: So it to urge you to think about, like, what
Speaker 3: are important relationships that you haven't given a lot of
Speaker 3: love to, Like what are important things that you want
Speaker 3: to do in your life? And take stock like how
Speaker 3: old am I? Like, how many years have I been working?
Speaker 3: How many times have I taken the chance to do
Speaker 3: some of those things? And I'm guessing the answers like
Speaker 3: pretty pretty rarely, and so like, okay, like you have
Speaker 3: to make the time to do it. So relationships are
Speaker 3: one of those.
Speaker 1: And so any advice for how to pick what to do,
Speaker 1: because I think especially if you're entering the sabbatical for
Speaker 1: that period of healing, if you're feeling really burned out
Speaker 1: and you're thinking like, now's my time to find my passion.
Speaker 1: That can kind of feel a little bit exhausting. But
Speaker 1: you've talked about we shouldn't be going for passion, we
Speaker 1: should focus on tiny curiosities. How does that work?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so full disclosure.
Speaker 3: I took this from Elizabeth Gilbert, Like she talked about
Speaker 3: like chasing your passions is stressful. What if you don't
Speaker 3: know what your passion is? What if your passion doesn't
Speaker 3: fulfill you and instead just thinking about what you're curious about.
Speaker 3: And so if you're like I've always wanted to be
Speaker 3: a master potter and then you like spend your entire
Speaker 3: time trying to find someone to like apprentice with, that
Speaker 3: can be devastating when it turns out you're not good
Speaker 3: at pottery. As opposed to saying like I've you know,
Speaker 3: what is it like to travel on this part? Or
Speaker 3: for me, like what would it be like to hang
Speaker 3: cabinets even though I have no idea what I'm doing?
Speaker 4: And it was okay.
Speaker 1: It seems like it's kind of getting back to that
Speaker 1: play mindset, like you don't have to do your sabbatical
Speaker 1: perfectly to kind of get some huge benefit out of it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think, actually this is going to sound tripe,
Speaker 3: but the mistakes are part of the thing, right. So
Speaker 3: there was a person from our study who was like,
Speaker 3: I really want to learn backcountry skiing, and so they
Speaker 3: moved to British Columbia for a couple months, I got
Speaker 3: these lessons, got certified, and then they eventually found themselves
Speaker 3: tracking like how many vertical feet have I skied each day?
Speaker 3: And they had like a spreadsheet and then they realized like, oh,
Speaker 3: like I'm the problem here, Like like the way I
Speaker 3: attack things is the problem, not like the job. And
Speaker 3: so even if you sub out of that job, do
Speaker 3: you want to work on yourself or do you want
Speaker 3: to just take who you are and say like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I want to actually attack some other problem I'm passionate
Speaker 3: about with the same energy and vigor.
Speaker 1: And so as folks are thinking about sabbatical right now
Speaker 1: in the middle of twenty twenty five, when we're having
Speaker 1: this conversation, I think there's also an interesting question about
Speaker 1: not just how do we take sabbatical, but should we
Speaker 1: be taking sabbatical when the world feels like it's like
Speaker 1: literally on fire? You know what's the advice for that.
Speaker 3: I think this goes back to the burnout and caretaker piece, right,
Speaker 3: So like put your oxygen mask on before your kids,
Speaker 3: Like you need perspective as to like what's actually going on,
Speaker 3: what's important for you, and to get the resources to
Speaker 3: kind of like take a different tack, right, And so
Speaker 3: I think it's an opportunity to step back, And I
Speaker 3: think it's a great opportunity in a time of like
Speaker 3: where you're feeling not so great to say, like, who
Speaker 3: do I want to be in this next phase of
Speaker 3: my life and what skills or like direction do I
Speaker 3: need to take in or ready to get there?
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm watching the clock tick down in like
Speaker 1: extreme way, which means we've got to get to our
Speaker 1: parting thoughts. So parting thoughts on why we need this
Speaker 1: life in career investment and why we should take sabbaticals
Speaker 1: more seriously.
Speaker 4: I mean back to the regret insurance.
Speaker 3: I would just really think about what are some things
Speaker 3: that you would like to have as a part of
Speaker 3: your life story and actually document those, like write them
Speaker 3: down in a journal, and then think about, like when
Speaker 3: are you going to actually be able to do them?
Speaker 3: I think often we live in this inertia.
Speaker 4: Oh well, this is the life.
Speaker 3: I'm looking two weeks ahead, right, but really trying to
Speaker 3: take a step back and say, like, what are things
Speaker 3: that are important to me that I won't be able
Speaker 3: to do. A stat that I looked up that was
Speaker 3: kind of surprising was, if you're like a forty year
Speaker 3: old male, which is what I am, I use mail
Speaker 3: because our stats are worse, your chances of making it
Speaker 3: to retirement age are five and six. So your chances
Speaker 3: of not making it are one and six. If you're
Speaker 3: a fifty year old couple, you have less than fifty
Speaker 3: percent chance of both partners reaching retirement age and being
Speaker 3: able mentally and physically to travel.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm great at dinner parties.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so like this we're going to wait till retirement thing,
Speaker 3: this bucket list thing is not guaranteed. And I hope that,
Speaker 3: like the pandemic gave us this like touch of like
Speaker 3: life is precious, but like waiting until you can retire
Speaker 3: is just not guaranteed. Both what are the things you
Speaker 3: wish you could do? And then also, oh my gosh,
Speaker 3: like I might not be able to do them. Hopefully
Speaker 3: we'll like spray all into action. Twenty thirty one.
Speaker 1: Twenty thirty one, who's putting in their Google calendar today?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you for joining us for Happiness Lab live
Speaker 2: at south By Southwest.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed my chat
Speaker 1: with Sabbatical expert DJ Dedonna. But that's not the end
Speaker 1: of the live show fun because I had a chance
Speaker 1: to record several other podcasts at south By Southwest, and
Speaker 1: next I'll be sharing a show I did with a
Speaker 1: new voice in podcasting, but a voice you might already
Speaker 1: know pretty well well. Hey Professor, Hey Michelle. That's all
Speaker 1: next time on the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie
Speaker 1: Santos