More people taking adult gap years and mini-sabbaticals

Mini paid leaves. Adult gap years. Micro retirement.

Extended career breaks go by many names and take many forms, from using time between jobs to explore or taking employer-approved leave to becoming a digital nomad or saving up for a months-long adventure.

Creating space for a mental, physical or spiritual reset is the common thread.

More and more companies are allowing weeks or months of paid or unpaid leave as a way to retain valued employees, according to Kira Schrabram, an assistant professor of management at the University of Washington School of Business.

Seven years ago, she brought her experience in burnout research to the Sabbatical Project, an initiative founded by Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer DJ DiDonna that promotes sabbaticals as a “sacred human ritual” that more people should have access to.

Schrabram, DiDonna and University of Notre Dame Professor Emeritus Matt Bloom interviewed 50 U.S. professionals who took long breaks from non-academic jobs.

Based on the responses, they identified three types of sabbaticals: working holidays that involve pursuing a passion project; “free dives” that combine exciting adventures with periods of relaxation; and tasks undertaken by exhausted people who, once sufficiently recovered, embark on life-changing discoveries.

More than half of the interviewees self-financed their breaks.

In an article published in Harvard Business Review, researchers suggested that paid leave is a tool employers can use to recruit, retain and incentivize talented employees.

Roshida Dowe was 39 years old and working as a corporate lawyer in California when she was laid off in 2018.

Instead of immediately looking for a new job, he decided to spend a year traveling.

Seeing how many people were asking how he did it, Dowe decided to try working as an online career break coach.

She and Stephanie Perry, a former pharmacy technician who also took a year off to travel, co-founded the ExodUS Summit, a virtual conference where black women can talk about taking sabbatical leave or moving abroad.

Speakers at the event discuss both practical topics, such as finance, security and healthcare, as well as more philosophical topics, such as the value of rest and healing from intergenerational trauma.

Dowe, who moved to Mexico City as part of her own reinvention, said showcasing women setting out to see the world is powerful because “most of us aren’t open to possibilities that haven’t been shown before.”

“When I coach women who want to take sabbatical, the most important thing they look for is leave,” she said.

For Perry, a vacation spent in Brazil in 2014 served as the catalyst; He met people who stayed at his hostel and traveled for months rather than days.

He researched budget travel and found people doing it on US$40 ($A56) a day.

Before that, “I firmly thought that long-term travelers were all trust fund babies,” he said.

Cost is a common barrier for people considering taking a break.

Perry, who has legal residence in Mexico and an apartment in Bogota, Colombia, said there are creative ways to get around this.

“Housesitting is the reason I can work very little and travel a lot,” she said.

Perry, who has a YouTube channel where she posts videos about traveling as a black American or being an immigrant, raises money through her subscribers to sponsor black women on sabbatical.

When Ashley Graham took a break from her job at a nonprofit in Washington, D.C., she planned a road trip that included visiting friends she could stay with for free.

“It was a great way to connect with my past life,” said Graham, who later moved to New Orleans after falling in love with the city during his paid trips.

Taylor Anderson is a certified financial planner based in Vancouver, Washington, who specializes in helping clients plan for sabbaticals.

Many of the same principles apply to saving for an individual as they do to saving for retirement, he said.

Both require financial discipline as well as a willingness to understand when it is safe to spend.

“We’re talking about breathing money. Sometimes it’s breathing in, sometimes it’s breathing out,” said Anderson, who has himself experienced the benefits of a salaried restart.

“We often find that people have money saved but are afraid to spend it.”

Can anyone afford to work a month or more without a paycheck? Of course not. But for those building a nest egg, “the cost is actually less than you think,” he said.

Artists Eric Rewitzer and Annie Galvin recruited two employees from a San Francisco gallery in 2018 to spend the summer in France and Ireland.

“It was terrible,” said Rewitzer, who describes himself as a workaholic and control freak.

“This was a great exercise in trust.”

When they returned to San Francisco, Rewitzer saw the city differently.

He felt his life was out of balance; There was too much work and too little time in nature.

This shift in perspective led the couple to purchase what they thought would be a weekend home in the Sierra Nevada.

When they closed their gallery during the COVID-19 pandemic, it became their full-time home.

“It all comes down to being willing to take chances,” Rewitzer said.

Taking a break from college to become a ski bum in Vail, Colorado, put Gregory Du Bois on the path to taking a mini-sabbatical during his corporate IT career.

Every time he took a new job, he negotiated an extended leave of absence, explaining to his managers that he needed breaks to recharge to do his best work.

“It’s such a lifestyle that I almost don’t think of it as sabbatical,” said Du Bois, who retired from technology and started working as a life coach in Sedona, Ariz.

“For me, this is a spiritual renewal.”

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