A recent Harvard Business Review blog featured a ‘burnout’ case of a young person two years into a job. The principal cause was that having spent a small fortune on her MBA, she was now committed in her mind to getting a return for that investment by working in an area she didn’t like. This, admittedly exceptional, case highlights that people can feel trapped into what they’re doing. This article suggests one way to overcome that feeling, by taking a sabbatical.
There is a deep history of taking time out to rejuvenate. The agricultural practice of letting a field lie fallow (which moved from the passive act of doing nothing with the field to the active act of planting legumes to increase the nitrogen in the soil). The Sabbath in religions — a time for contemplation. The custom of university academics taking a sabbatical every seventh year.
The point of all of these is to regularly do something different in order to recharge and reinvigorate. The lesson from agriculture was that pause in use of a field was good, but doing something differently with it was better, is a lesson we can apply to ourselves.
The sabbatical does that. It could be working for a community organisation to help our marginalised or our indigenous. It could be working with another organisation in a different field (private sector if you’re public, public sector if you’re private). It could be taking six months to create something (a book, an app, a business).
Whatever your sabbatical is, it is not a break, and it is not a holiday. It is taking time to do something different. And in the process, being useful in a different way.
At the end you might return to your core business, you might decide to pursue different pathways. But you will be refreshed and rejuvenated in a way that a holiday or break cannot give.