off you go now, no. 2

?? Big news: we (re)submitted our manuscript for peer review and publication Monday.?

This marks the third time we’ve submitted it, with two different authors, over the course of three years.?

For those of you outside of academia, I’ve been repeatedly assured -- with a straight face -- that this is actually a good thing.* For those of you in academia, I feel like I finally get your pain.?

The most exciting part of this to me isn’t that it’s one step closer to publication, but that our new collaborator, Kira Schabram from the University of Washington, brought a very different lens through which to see the interviews and a more rigorous, quantitative approach.

I want to dedicate the next few editions to going through the findings, and what it means for those considering (or currently on) a sabbatical.?

But first, a quick round up of what’s going on in the world of extended leave, as well as our featured sabbatical story and interview:

1. News in the world of sabbaticals:

• One of my absolute favorites, Krista Tippett, has announced “The Pause .” On Being is taking a season off, to contemplate how it would like to return to the world anew, after 20 some years. Given that Krista famously took a restorative summer sabbatical in 2017, I’m excited to see what’s on the other side.
• I’m working with a very well-known, innovative (especially in the “people” space) tech firm to pilot and measure a sabbatical program for its employees, so I’m thinking a lot about different outcome variables to measure in order to determine how/if the sabbatical is helpful to the individual and the company. It’s encouraging to see how companies are seeking to measure different things:?

?? “Why Microsoft measures employee thriving, not engagement ” - HBR

?? “To retain employees, support their passions outside of work” - HBR

?? “The number of top fintechs offering sabbatical policies has doubled in the past year ” - American Banker cited me here, but paywalled…sorry ;/

2. This week’s main character: Roshan Paul?

Social Entrepreneur (cofounder of the Amani Institute ), Writer and now EIR at the Growald Climate Fund Roshan Paul ’s story about taking a sabbatical with his wife during the pandemic in Fast company:?

“Three years before I took time off, I watched a TED talk by a designer in New York who said he takes a yearlong sabbatical every seven to ten years,” Paul says. The idea stuck with him. “The thought it gave me was: Why do we wait until we’re retired to do all the fun things, when we’re less physically able? Why not borrow some of those retirement years and take them earlier? So I thought I’d borrow a year and make it up on the backend.”

Full piece HERE

My interview with Roshan HERE

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3. Every sabbatical is different, but…

The reason I pursued research on sabbaticals to begin with was because I wanted to know if my experience -- along with seemingly everyone I spoke to after returning from my sabbatical -- was unique.?

One of the first tasks in our research was to find patterns.?

After I conducted over 50 in-depth qualitative interviews (and hundreds more informal ones), together with professors from Notre Dame and Washington, we analyzed the transcripts. And clear patterns indeed began to emerge:

(I’ll intersperse direct quotes from the paper in italic.)?

While sabbaticals appear at first as a combination of idiosyncratic choices and constraints, we found that they play out in a number of predictable patterns…all sabbaticals are comprised of three building blocks, each with a core purpose to either recover, explore or practice.?

Despite the many different reasons people enter into Sabbaticalland -- over two-thirds doing so as a result of an unplanned negative event in their life -- folks typically do the same things: they heal, they explore and they try things out.?

Recover.?

During this time, people typically had a simple routine, and if they traveled at all, it was more cushy and vacation-y. Anecdotally, most people that I’ve spoken with advise budgeting at least six weeks for this process to fully unfold.?

If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it is. But you have to remember what you’re up against: in most cases years, even decades, of workaholism, or at the very least, a particular identity that is probably outmoded.??

During this time, one’s emotional experience can be all over the map. For those of you who have taken a longer silent meditation retreat, you know how quickly the vacuum of stimulation can fill with self-doubt and a bunch of random scaries. Sabbatical alum and research participant James Allworth describes this quite eloquently in his piece after returning from sabbatical: “So you’re thinking about a 10 day silent meditation retreat. ”

Crucially: Relief and excitement could be shaded by grief and anger about how far they had been pushed; anger would particularly fester for those unable to completely disconnect.

Explore.

The core purpose of exploration was “an immersive learning experience”...most participants relished periods of intense activity interspersed with reflection, silence and empty space.

Like recovery, exploration involved a rollercoaster of emotions, from “bawling my face off” on the highway to awe, euphoria, and a jumble of discovery, white space, fun, joy and the whole range of human emotions.?

Importantly: people found themselves in more difficult experiences than they expected: broken bones, personal danger, sleeping in the elements, etc -- but they stressed that through this discomfort, you learn a lot about yourself. What your limits are, what you don’t like, what you want to do and where you want to go.?

Exploration was a period of intense growth for sabbatical-takers -- I think about it as dense versus sparse memories. If you look back on any one or two month stretch in your life, which ones stand out? To this day, over five years later, I can rattle off a couple dozen experiences and corresponding lessons from two months in New Zealand and Japan, motorcycling in the rain and walking for six weeks by myself. Compare that to any other two month stretch in my life…and I can’t think of many specifics to recall.

In the words of one of our interviewees: getting a little lost, it’s really good for you.

Practice.

Practice refers to the parts of a sabbatical dedicated to non-routine work; trying on different identities for size, and hypothesis-testing different types of entries back into work.

Interviewees trained as yoga instructors, got advanced scuba or photography certifications, or launched MVPs of their business ideas.?

It should be no surprise by now that folks’ experience of this part of the sabbatical could range widely. Some who endeavored to tackle a specific task, say writing a book or doing research, were often proud of their accomplishments.?

Others were frustrated that they traded much-needed disconnection for an early re-entry into the job market.

It is during the practice period of sabbaticals that the lines distinguishing being on sabbatical and back into the real world began to blur for those with porous boundaries. But for those who were seeking to make a change in their life, putting some of their learnings to test lent much-needed courage to take the next step.

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How did these three stages -- recover, explore and practice -- impact people’s sabbaticals, and their relative success? We found that these building blocks arrange into typical trajectories: the working holiday, the free dive, and the quest. The difference between an extended vacation and a transformational experience depended on which trajectory people (unknowingly) set upon.?

In the next issue, we’ll explore these trajectories, see their impact, and learn whether it’s possible to intentionally pursue one or the other.?

OK! If you’ve read this far, you might be interested in getting help or getting involved:

• Get expert help, find community, and sign up for the book launch beta on our website: The Sabbatical Project
• Pass this newsletter along to a friend in need of a sabbatical
• Be a part of the movement: Share your sabbatical story
• Reply or comment on this newsletter for questions or input!

Off you go now,?

dj.?

* This is literally the third time we’ve submitted to the same journal, which I’m told by my academic friends is actually one of the best case scenarios; most papers aren’t even invited to revise and resubmit in the first place. Do I think this is the last time we’ll have to make changes and resubmit? No.