The Power of the Sabbatical: a Quick Look at the World's Most Successful Sabbaticals

The power of a career break is often overlooked.    But career breaks have influenced people in dramatic ways.  People have taken the experience and gone on to create, to do, to write, and to view things with invaluable perspective. 

Take one of the most widely cited career breaks: Steve Jobs’ time in India.   He didn’t sign up for his career break- he was forced into it.  But his time spent in India helped prepare him to eventually return as CEO at Apple.  

A break can be about healing.  When Teddy Roosevelt’ mother and his wife died suddenly, he escaped to the wilderness of the American West and operated a cattle ranch before returning to the politics and the east.  He cites his later success to the healing power of his time out west- "I have always said I would not have been President had it not been for my experience in North Dakota."

Immersing yourself in the wilderness is a healing experience.   Cheryl Strayed documented her time hiking the PCT in Wild, her best-selling memoir about the experience.

A sabbatical can be about simply indulging: in food, in self-awareness, and in yourself as Elizabeth Gilbert documented her personal sabbatical experience in her book, Eat, Pray, Love.   

For many people, when they return from a sabbatical, they come stronger, ready to embrace the challenges at work.  

The world’s most famous basketball player of all time cemented his legacy after his sabbatical experience.   Though for most professional athletes (unless their super stars), a sabbatical doesn’t make sense in their short-lived careers.   A-Rod discovered firsthand the benefits of time-off.   

From tragedy, failure, and even desperation, people discover new strengths, patience, and ideas in unfamiliar territory.  

Destination Sabbatical: The Second World Country Bucket List

Where to go for a Travel Sabbatical or Nomad Year....

Skip Southeast Asia.   Check out the Second World Bucket List.  

The well-travelled paths of Western Europe and Southeast Asia beckon (Spain and Thailand saw 68.2and 29.9 million foreign tourists in 2015).   But how about the far too overlooked Second World Countries?    You’ll find fewer tourists, affordable prices, complex history, spectacular views, and locals eager to show you their homeland. 

Unique (and inexpensive) regions of the world to explore:

1.    Southeast Europe:

Top Countries: Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, and Macedonia

Our goal was to go somewhere different.   Somewhere we couldn’t find on a map (though we’re bad with maps….).  Somewhere with a lot to offer, but for one reason or another, is neglected by the tourist train.   

Take a look at Albania- an under the radar country if there ever was one.  But not for long.  Albania is not just where Lord Voldemort hid while he recovered his strength (Embarrassed to admit that’s what crossed my mind when we first added Albania to our itinerary). Albania is no Dark Lord’s hideout- it’s a country that has a lot to offer.   Warm and welcoming locals.  The wine pours generously.   Mountains ascend straight up.   And you don’t see packs of Chinese tourists (exception is Saranda where people do a day trip from Corfu, Greece).   Surfacing from decades of isolation, Albania today is reminder not of what divides, but what unites.   The national saying of Albania is the religion of Albania…. is Albania. 

Albania’s neighbors, Macedonia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, offer vineyards, lakes, mountains, east meets west architecture, and startling history.  (Don’t overlook Kosovo, Europe’s newest nation).  

We spent between $15-$30/night for an airbnb with a private A/C room.  

Our best value room:  $17/night in Lake Ohrid, Macedonia.  

Top things to do in Albania

·      Drive along the Albania Riviera

·      Hike the infamousAccursed mountains

·      Explore the UNESCO cities (or ruins) of Berat, Gjirokastra, and Butrint

2.    Central Asia & The Silk Road

Top Countries: Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan

Sadly, we have yet to visit Central Asia (we had to put it on hold for this trip).   If you want to get off the beaten path for a travel sabbatical, this is the place to go.   Wifi is going to be tough to find.  Not to mention English (time to brush up on your Russian).    Central Asia tests your travel abilities.  It may not be where you kick back, relax, and work on your book.  You need to be “on” while here.   But you’ll get a lot of great material there. 

Top Things to Do in Kyrgyzstan

·      Catch a game of dead goat polo

·      Explore the mountains

·      Stay in a yurt

3.     Georgia

A country that rises to the top of the often overlooked second world countries list is Georgia.   

You can’t help but want to linger in this small country..  The food is delicious.   The wine holds a rich history, dating back thousands and thousands of years.    You’ll see snowcapped peaks and medieval towers.  You’ll find prices cheaper than much of Southeast Asia and South America.  You’ll even find some decent wifi. You’ll find gregarious locals, eager for you to try the wine they made themselves (be prepared for some cotton ball dry wine drinking experiences). 

Top Things to Do in Georgia

·      Visit the birthplace of wine

·      Hike the Caucasus Mountains in Mestia

·      Discover the country’s history in and around Tbilisi

·      Float with harmless jellyfish in the Black Sea

Ready to go?   

How I Manage Fear & Anxiety when in a Career Transition

Finding yourself?  Quitting Your Job?  

How I Manage Fear & Anxiety when in a Career Transition

I thought we had done everything right.   We had planned for months.  We gave notice at our jobs.  We had shipped our belongings to a storage unit in Denver.  We had a budget.  We had a plan.  We even had a backup plan.    We were following our dreams: taking a career break to make a transition in our jobs.  

Why was I still so anxious and terrified?    

The stress wasn’t coming from money.   The fear was a direct result of the uncertain paths we had chosen.    The fear came at me from all directions.   Had we made the biggest mistake of our lives?   Would we completely waste our time on sabbatical?   What do people think of us when we tell them we aren’t working and aren’t looking for work?  

In the beginning of our sabbatical in Southeast Asia I woke up in a hot sweat almost every night.   Maybe my body wasn’t adjusting to the heat.  But I also found my mind dragging my thoughts in a thousand directions.   I’m not new to panic and anxiety, but I didn’t think I would have those feelings while on a sabbatical.  I had expected right before we left and when we returned.   But I didn’t expect fear and anxiety to show up in the midst of the experience we had worked so hard for. 

Luckily, I reached out and met others what had gone through major career shifts.   These generous folk guided me to resources for coping with fear.   People recommended books, meditation, and simply, writing out the anxiety.    These suggestions worked.   I stopped having those terrible sleepless nights (I still woke up sweating sometimes.  This is Asia).   

Here’s what helped me manage fear and anxiety while on a sabbatical. 

1.     Reading the Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron

A blogger I met in Chiang Mai lent me her copy.   While I didn’t finish the whole course, I adopted several habits Julia Cameron recommends.  The most valuable to me was the Morning Pages.   Every morning I wrote (no computer) in a journal nonstop.   I didn’t censor.   I just wrote it out.   My anxiety spilled out on the pages in a way that felt selfish and self-absorbed (especially while travelling in third world countries).   But it was an outlet I needed.    

2.     Working with a Career or Life Coach.

Perspective is everything.   I had so often dismissed life and career coaches as a luxury not worth investing in.   Hiring a personal trainer changed my perspective on the value of having a professional dedicate 100% of their attention on you.    I worked with a career coach.  I was shocked by how energized I felt after our sessions.  An excellent coach will help you understand what you may be overlooking or neglecting.  

3.     Finding a Support Group

A support group might be peers that are your cheerleaders.  They understand what you’re doing (judgment-free).  Not all people are fortunate to have that type of group.  Many friends just can’t play that role.    For me, a few dear friends and siblings were sounding boards.  My biggest sounding board was (and still is!) my husband accompanying me on sabbatical.   During our sabbatical we lingered for six weeks in the nomad sanctuary of Chiang Mai, Thailand.  I discovered a weekly women’s group in Chiang Mai.  I attended those lunches every week.  I felt embraced, supported, and understood in this group.

4.     Meditation

I’m not a yoga person.  I go occasionally, but mostly because I want to improve my posture.   I felt like I couldn’t meditate or be bothered with it.   I took a friend’s suggestion to try it out (again).   I developed a routine of Morning Pages, 10 minutes of meditation, and then action time.    It drove out the anxiety.

Following Fear

I am still managing and coping with fear.  A peer who went a major career shift shared her insight on fear: that fear could be a good thing.  That fear can be a friend.   That you could follow your fear. 

She recommended the next book I’m tackling: Yes, Yes, Hell No.    

How much money do you need to save before you quit your job?

Money talks are tough.   Money is personal.  It brings out the best and worst in everyone.   People love to criticize how money is spent- it’s practically a national pastime in the United States.  My intention is not to brag (and to be honest, I don’t think I have a ton to brag about.  My husband and I could have made far better financial decisions given the privileged hand we’ve been dealt).

My goal is transparency and reflection on how we saved money before we quit our jobs.

TAKING A HARD LOOK AT YOUR CAREER AND YOUR SPENDING HABITS. 

Know how much money you spend. Honestly, I had no idea how much it was until I crunched the numbers one gloomy Saturday morning after a gluttonous breakfast of biscuits and gravy with my housemates.   I tried a couple different spreadsheets (one from a financial advisor we saw though never invested with). Ultimately I decided on the Society of Grown-Ups one for its simplicity and for covering the heaving hitting expense area in a way that made sense to me.  There was some sticker shock.  For me, it was the dry cleaning bills and how much we spend attending weddings.  

HAVE AN EMERGENCY FUND

This is a fund that’s not in your 401K or anywhere you’d encounter a financial penalty to access it, or that’s not immediately accessible in an emergency.  Full disclosure- I’m not a financial advisor.  I can’t suggest how much that money should be (and there are different financial gurus that offer lots of advice).   Suzie Omran suggests an eight-month emergency fund and Dave Ramsey suggests $1000 emergency fund and 3-6 months of living expenses saved.  And if you tap into it, your first priority is to replenish it.  You should have this regardless of having a career break or sabbatical.   

THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU’RE GOING TO DO ON A CAREER BREAK OR SABBATICAL

Are you going to try to make some money with a side-gig project?  Are you going to learn Spanish in South America?  Are you going to live in artist’s retreat and work on a novel?  Are you going to take cooking classes, programming classes, a meditation course, have a career coach?   You might not have all those answers.  What you end up doing will likely change during the journey (we ended up buying plane tickets while at the airport for a day of flight and we cancelled several flights to spend time with family).   But plan to have the resources you need to realize the purpose of the career break.  Have a sense of what you want to do and how long you want to do it for. 

 

TALK ABOUT MONEY 

I didn’t know how to talk about money.  I felt it was hard to talk about it with family and friends and plan for it.  Honestly, it felt selfish and arrogant and rude to discuss money.  Instead, I sought advice from professionals- in particular a financial planner at Society of Grown Ups in Boston (I have no relationship with Society of Grown Ups, but I think their mission to help people realize their own financial goals, rather than make money selling you investments, is something to get behind).   I explained to the planner our salaries, our investments, our goals in the next 1-2 years, 3-5 years, and long term goals.  The planner gave me the advice I needed, tips on investments, and targets amounts for savings for taking a career break that would work for us.

 

OUR CAREER BREAK FORMULA  

We had an emergency fund.  We had a fund for our career break.   I created a spreadsheet to help us track our career break expenses and keep us on target with how much we spent each day.   I sought to over-budget.  We also had a readjustment fund.   We decided to calculate it for six months of our living expenses to be cautious and to help us not feel financially stressed during our sabbatical.  Our (optimistic) plan with the money we don’t spend will be to invest it. 

HOW LONG IT TOOK US TO SAVE  

Considering all the funds: emergency, career break, and readjustment fund, it took us two years to save. The vast majority of our savings came during an eight-month sprint.  The sprint started when we setup a special savings account with direct deposits from each of our paychecks and we cut down on our spending significantly.  It accelerated the process.   Also, before we left our jobs we maxed out our 401ks for 2016 (that helped us feel less behind in retirement planning).

FINANCIAL PLANNING: IN SUMMARY

We’re guilty of making poor financial decisions (e.g., my husband left his job right before law firms across the US announced big raises for all associates).  We haven’t done anything perfectly.   Far from it.   But six months in, I’m happy to say it’s working out and we’re doing fine.  We’re currently under budget for our break, which is helping us stretch our time, especially with the detours we’ve made.  We’ve been able to indulge at times, to donate money when we encounter amazing NGOs, and to not stress out when we’ve had to make adjustments along the journey.   But the economy is entering a shaky period.  We’re going to need to hustle for work.   It’s something we’ll start doing while on our break.   Financial planning also never ends.  But we’re learning along the way.   

Confessions of a Runaway

You can’t just run away, you need to run towards something.

You get bombarded everyday with articles: Quit your job. Don’t Your quit job. Take a Big Leap.  Take Small Steps.   It’s messy and confusing.   But nothing will be smooth and perfect.  Because anything worth doing takes grit, takes trade-offs, and takes missteps.  It’s a lie that you’ll wake up one day and have started a new app, or have become a best selling novelist, or have started the organization of your dreams.  

A journey can’t be captured in a 250-word blog post.   Because there are the in-between steps, the nights of doubt, the struggle, and the pressing feeling of pure selfishness and guilt that keeps you up at night.  Because when you press against the tide, you are expected to eventually swim with the current.

Failure is what happens when you’re focused on wishing and not doing. 

Failure is what you sit and distract yourself instead of going out and messing it all up.

And the mistake often made is only knowing what you are running away from, but failing to figure out what you’re running towards. 

Your life is wild and precious and it’s yours.  You should run towards something.  Figure out what that is.