How to (not) take a sabbatical [#44]

Today, I want to share a few reflections with you. This’ll be slightly different, more personal than usual. 

Because I just took six month off “work”, and want to share my experiences with you. 

Ready? Let’s dive in.

The Mini-Retirement 

In 2014, I read a book that would change my life: “The Four-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss (don’t hate me, it’s actually a good book).

In the book, Ferriss conveys the idea that by working with high focus and tons of automation, delegation, and elimination, you can do a full week’s worth of work in 4 hours. 

One thing that particularly stuck with me was the concept of the “mini-retirement”.

Typically, we assume that we work until we’re 67, and then we ride off into the sunset and enjoy our lives.

Reality is different: at age 67, you likely don’t have the energy to do all the things you've delayed until now. You might be sick. Hell, you might be dead. 

Am I really gonna delay all the things I want to do until then? Absolutely not.

Here's where the mini-retirement comes into play:

You work for a few years, and then take a few months off to do all the things you’ve always wanted to do. Learn something new, do something cool, and then get back to work. 

So when I left my job at the end of February, the premise was clear: I will be taking a sabbatical to do things, to explore, to travel, and to recharge. 

Here’s what worked well and what I’d do differently next time: 

[1] If you’re gonna take a sabbatical, take a damn sabbatical 

The first - and biggest - mistake I made was to not take time off properly. In March, I traveled Latin America for a few weeks, and did some more extended traveling in July and August. But in the meantime, I struggled with the lack of structure in my day - and compensated this with, well, structure.

I felt the obligation to work, to do something “productive”. Which kind of defeated the end goal: to recharge from the stress of the previous 7.5 years building companies, and to explore new things that I would want to do.

As my flatmate put it, “during your sabbatical you sometimes worked more than I did in my full-time job”. 

Not the point, is it?

Retrospectively, I believe I should’ve made a plan and set boundaries. I was still doing my daily writing, sat down at the computer to work on personal projects, did my training, followed my routine structure.

Isn’t a sabbatical meant to break a routine, to escape from everyday reality? 

Next time, I would:

1. Make a clear plan what to do (eg. map out travel well in advance, identify one project I want to pursue). Having nothing to do, nothing to work towards isn’t good for most humans, myself included. 
2. Set a clear deadline for your sabbatical: since I’m not picking up employment or returning to my job (more on this later), I didn’t have a clear deadline. Which lead to me "floating around", trying this or that, but not really making the most out of my time.
3. Break routines for a while: besides not working full-time, everything else remained the same. So instead of taking a proper "sabbatical", I was just doing the same shit over and over again, just without the full-time job part.

Tim Ferriss did this much better: for each of his mini-retirements, he picked a country to live in for 6 months. There, he would study the language and acquire a new skill, completely separating himself from his normal entrepreneurial work.

For example, he went to live in Argentina for 6 months, took Spanish lessons and became a world-class Tango dancer.

This is a cool sabbatical design, as it provides a plan, a deadline, and a fantastic opportunities to break your routines. 

[2] Having the time to do the things you’ve always talked about is super cool

On the other hand, I did do a few cool things. Specifically, I created an online course (sign up for the waitlist here), and wrote the first draft of a book (which expanded and expanded in scope). 

I had always toyed with the thought of Solopreneurship and being a full-time creator, so this was a good place to test it. But since I also tried to chill and not do much, I felt like I wasn’t making progress on neither the chilling nor the personal projects.

Ultimately, I decided to take a few weeks of structured work to finish those projects. This felt more like work, but was the right thing to do.

I'm glad I got the chance to tackle these projects. Between working full-time, training ~10h/week and writing this newsletter, it's difficult to find time for such expanded projects. The sabbatical was a great opportunity to try this out.

Today, I know that being a solopreneur probably isn't for me. Writing is fun, being in control is fun, but I dearly miss working in a team.

In the end, I’m curious to see what will happen with the course and the book. Maybe the will change the trajectory of my career. Maybe they will be a complete bust. Time will tell. 

Next time, I would: 

1. Identify the projects I want to work on in advance
2. Set specific goals around these projects 
3. Also specify what time I don’t want to work on them

[3] Find your purpose 

For my entire adult life, I’ve had a clear goal to work towards: finish a university degree, launch & scale my startup, turn the company I used to work for into a global player, make the Men’s Lacrosse national team. Something that got me out of bed in the morning. 

During my sabbatical, all the sudden that drive to get out of bed in the morning was gone. There was nothing firing me up, nothing that made me excited to hit the day running. 

I believe that’s okay for a while - after all, time for reflection is a good thing. But eventually, life needs a purpose, as do the things that you do on a daily basis.

A few months, I came up with a purpose for my sabbatical: to simply have fun.

Every morning, I asked myself: what am I gonna do today that will be fun? And at night, reflect on it by thinking: “did I have fun today?” 

Which is a fantastic practice. Definitely keeping this one, sabbatical or not.

Next time, I would: 

1. Spend more time actively reflecting (take time daily to journal, read, meditate)
2. Map out fun activities that I want to do 
3. Figure out from the start what the purpose of my sabbatical is

What’s next? 

I’m done. 

The sabbatical is officially over. 

Not because I have signed a job contract, or have run out of money, or anything like that. 

No.

Because I’m recharged. I have a ton of energy and that needs to go somewhere.

So starting today, I’m back on the entrepreneurship track, ideating on bootstrapped companies, meeting potential co-founders, speaking to future customers. 

Maybe, after all, the sabbatical wasn’t so bad.

Hope you will keep these considerations in mind when thinking about doing a sabbatical. I can only recommend doing one.