Ed. Note: As this post goes live, I am on a sabbatical week. I’ve written here and here about this shift; today’s post is a brief exploration of the purpose of sabbaticals. Next week, we’ll return to our series, “Gaining Clarity.”
“We are less bored than our ancestors were, but we are more afraid of boredom. We have come to know, or rather to believe, that boredom is not part of the natural lot of man, but can be avoided by a sufficiently vigorous pursuit of excitement.”
Bertrand Russell
Inspired by the example of my friend Sean, I’ve taken off every seventh week as a sabbatical week for the last year. This is time set aside to think, learn, read, study, or simply be bored for a few moments.
When I first heard the term sabbatical, I pictured some sort of religious or spiritual experience. It is derived from the biblical concept of the sabbath, after all. However, I was still curious as to where the practice of sabbaticals originated.
Sabbath means “day of rest;” falling on Saturday in Judaism and Sunday in Christianity.
Sabbatical means “of the Sabbath” and refers to a one year break from study for researchers or professors, often to write a book. It comes from the Mosaic law calling for the release slaves and debtors, as well as allowing the land to rest from tilling for one year. How interesting that even dirt needs time to rest and replenish nutrients to support crops. This also helps prevent disease and allows the land to build up a natural resistance to pests and parasites.
With these sorts of objectives in mind, every seventh week is set aside as time to rest, recover and rebuild essential resources of energy. The key to the sabbatical is time away from obligation. There is only one rule for the sabbatical; do not schedule anything for the sabbatical. The entire week should be left open for you to learn, work, or spend that time however seems appropriate at the time.
Why take a sabbatical?
Modern work culture is out of line with basic human needs, especially in the US. We pride ourselves on how little sleep we can function on; we take pride in being available 24/7; we consider always being an email away the cost of employment; we settle for years of working mind-numbing jobs with a handful of days off each year. We take pride in having full days and the constant go-go-go of productivity.
Unfortunately, we seldom realize how much rest we need until something forces us into rest. We are terrible at taking time off. Americans notoriously leave sick days and vacation time on the table, year after year. We know how to keep going and push through long days, weeks, or months. We think we are getting more done by constantly pushing through. However, when we continue this over time, we are actually heading toward breakdown and exhaustion. These issues can take us from our work, our loved ones, and our enjoyment of life itself. We can’t afford to be out of work or dysfunctional for years. Taking regular time away from work and obligation protects against these harms.
The more we learn about our own physiology, neurology, and psychology, the more we are seeing the truth of just how fragile our wellness can be – and how vital recovering well is. Further complicating matters, no one really teaches us what time off can or should look like.
The only way to get more rest and time to recover from the stress of work is to schedule that time. This is where the sabbatical comes in.
What is a sabbatical week?
Put simply, a sabbatical week is taking every seventh week off from work. I work six weeks, then take the next week off, repeating the pattern. Alternatively, you could take the last weekend of every month as a sabbatical weekend, in which you clear your schedule of any obligations. When you know you have a week of rest coming up, you are able to push yourself in your work safely; there is rest on the horizon.
What the sabbatical provides is margin; a buffer of time between work and responsibility. This is space in which to explore project ideas, education, and hobbies. Or perhaps, as Russell advocates, simply allowing ourselves to be bored from time to time.
The sabbatical is not a week free of discipline, however. I find that keeping a normal waking and sleeping schedule, along with exercise and eating at normal times makes the week seem longer. It helps me stay on schedule for when I go back to work the next week, too. The only difference is when I normally work, I am reading or taking a course or working on a project around the house. I tackle whatever project is appealing on sabbatical.
Not less, but more work in less time.
Parkinson’s Law states that a task tends to expand to fill the amount of time given to it. Remember in school when you knew you had a paper due in three weeks? When it was assigned, many of us would say, “Oh, I’ll take my time with it and really pay attention to details, since I have all this time. If I do just a little bit every day, I can use the time to polish it and make it really excellent.” Then, if you are anything like me, you touched it once, got stuck on an insignificant detail, put it aside for two weeks, and freaked out that you had very little time in which to write this massive paper. After the freak-out session, you’d write furiously, giving the paper a once over the night before handing it in. You somehow managed to get thousands of words on the page and edited in a matter of hours instead of weeks. How? You had your back to the wall, and your options were to work like a madman or face failure. What you spent a few hours on actually took you three weeks because you gave yourself three weeks to do it. The task took the amount of time you gave it.
The key to accomplishing more in less time is giving yourself less time to complete the project. Because I work on that seven week schedule, I make sure I get the same amount of work (or more!) done in six weeks as I would in seven. I simply schedule seven weeks of work into six weeks. Everything gets done in that window because things take as long as you allow them to take.
Sabbaticals are space to rest, whatever that looks like
Far from a lazy week, sabbaticals are prime time to explore creative or educational endeavors. There are no limits to what you can or can not do on sabbatical. You simply need to make those choices on sabbatical. More often than not, I do end up writing new articles or researching topics on the sabbatical week, resulting in more output than expected. Because I am rested and genuinely enjoy those things; work without the obligation of doing it feels like play. I often want to work on projects or take a course or dive deeply into research. Doing those things with no obligation makes all the difference. This space keeps motivation and energy high, allowing for bursts of hard work rather than an endless slog of less-than-stellar output. After every sabbatical, I am refreshed, and ready to jump back into working hard on the projects I’ve laid out beforehand.
Setting aside this time to simply rest has made a remarkable difference in my output. I’m only able to maintain an ambitious work schedule because of the sabbatical. I’ve seen the benefits first-hand of scheduling time for rest, and encourage you to do the same. Allowing room for boredom and rest is the antidote to the current trend of our over-stressed daily lives.
When is your next sabbatical?
