ONE
Break the treadmill
Step off the loop you no longer remember choosing. The first and hardest act of a sabbatical is the walking away.
Leverage the Power of Time Off to Build Your Dream Career
On the call you have been pretending not to hear.
The system will turn you into a tool if you let it. The world needs you to be human. A sabbatical is the quiet revolution that makes it possible.
— FROM THE EDITOR'S NOTE
What a real sabbatical makes possible.
ONE
TWO
Find yourself
Stand at the foot of the force that made you. Look up. Find your own face in the ancient rock.
THREE
Return to your ikigai
Walk back into the world carrying the flame. Not rested, exactly — returned, aligned, alive in a way you had forgotten was possible.
AN EXTRACT · PART V
Read the chapter in full
Entry
As we have noted in The Structure of a Sabbatical, a sabbatical goes through three phases, sometimes longer or shorter depending on your circumstances -- the Entry, the Deepening and the Exit. Among these three, the Entry is the most critical. A poorly executed entry into a sabbatical can lead to problems during both the deepening and the exit phases.
The reason the entry is most crucial to navigate well is that this is also the time when you might feel the most anxious and nervous, suffering the most from withdrawal symptoms linked to your stressful environment and hence most likely to spoil your sabbatical by desiring an early exit.
The first point I want to emphasize is that such anxiety is perfectly normal. It's a common reaction to withdrawing from a stressful environment. As seen in the article "Junkie," your body and mind may create stress to obtain their cortisol and adrenaline fixes. This stress often manifests as fear for the future, low self esteem and so on.
What they're saying.
“I read this on three planes across two trips and finished in a hotel in Lisbon at 2am. It doesn't promise the sabbatical will be easy. It says it will be the hardest and truest thing you do — and it's the only book I've read that actually explains what happens in week three.”
— PRIYA RAMANAN · PRODUCT LEADER
“A handbook in the oldest sense — the kind you return to, then dog-ear, then give away. Patient about the fear, plainspoken about the money, very good on the part nobody tells you about: coming back as someone.”
— MARK HENDERSON · ENGINEERING DIRECTOR
“This is not a self-help book. It's closer to a manual for an initiation. The work it describes is the work I have been avoiding my whole adult life. Now I don't have the excuse.”
— SARAH CHEN · WRITER
Twenty years of careers. Three proper sabbaticals.
Read the editor's note
THE MONTHLY LETTER
One long letter. On the last Sunday of each month.
A lead essay, a few shorter notes, one quiet reading recommendation, and whichever small domestic detail I noticed that I think you might like too. No course. No funnel. You can reply to it — I read everything.
Begin the pause.
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