The Power of the Sabbatical

The last couple of years were professionally rewarding but filled with personal challenges involving hospices, caretaking, healthcare, and bereavement. My family experienced pain and trauma, and I personally did as well. It didn't help that the world was enduring a global pandemic, economic challenges, quarantines, and the like. Sometimes it seemed like normal life would never resume until gradually, and inevitably, life started to get to the "new normal".

It was then that I decided it was time to take a brief sabbatical, the first I've ever taken in a professional career spanning 29 years. I did not plan to simply go on vacation or read books, no, I decided to take a temporary break from my primary career path of full time engineering leadership to launch a startup, consult on a personally important project, and also spend some time focused on my home life. It has been a very rewarding and personally reinvigorating experience.

I don't want to act like I'm some sort of expert on the art of the sabbatical, but I will say that one unexpected aspect of taking a break is the opportunity to take stock, to reassess my personal brand, my drivers, my ambitions, and my goals outside of the context of the latest product launch or technology project.

For many years now, my professional life has consisted of overseeing complex technology projects and that often entails running from one meeting to the next, juggling a myriad issues, and orchestrating large numbers of people and technology decisions. The cognitive load and time commitment are both high. I like it that way or I wouldn't have pursued this career but that doesn't mean that I do not require the occasional time to regroup, recharge, and recenter as a human being. As a people leader, I am always encouraging that self-awareness and self-compassion in others, but I've rarely extended that grace to myself. It turns out that, as a good friend of mine likes to say, "rest is a weapon". Taking the time to focus on home, personal goals, and a reminder of just what you're working for at the end of the day is powerful, recuperative, and sometimes necessary.

I'm starting to realize that a sabbatical is a cousin to another, smaller, set of time management and work management practices that I have long employed and encouraged in others. There is a time management micro-practice called The Pomodoro Technique (https://francescocirillo.com/products/the-pomodoro-technique) that involves focusing on a work task for 25 minutes (a "pomodoro") and then taking a 5 minute break. After the 5 minute break you focus for another 25 minutes. After four pomodoros you take another longer break, 15-30 minutes. The upside of this technique is that you regain your focus, you give your mind vital opportunities to concoct, to digest, to make connections, and you focus more effectively on work during your pomodoros. I've found this to be a startlingly effective technique whether I'm working in software engineering, writing, or audio production. Those bursts of focus punctuated by short breaks create an ability to sustain thought, to solve problems via lateral thinking, and to avoid fatigue.

At the team level there are practices as well. For example, in Agile Scrum practice we take work in two-week increments, or "sprints", and punctuate the sprints with retrospectives where we stop and reflect, adjust and refine.

In America it is common that once or twice a year most people punctuate their work lives with a week or two of vacation, a sort of next step up from the Pomodoro. Perhaps the next step up from that is the sabbatical, taken rarely, perhaps years or decades spaced, to allow for the next level of focus, the next level of work. At least, that's how it feels to me.

I am keenly aware that it is rare and valuable to be in a position to take a sabbatical but I am of the opinion that there should be rhythms to work, rhythms to rest, time spent heads down, and time spent looking to the horizon. LinkedIn has an option to list a Career Break in your experience. The site helpfully points out that a break spent on otherwise non-linear experience can help you be a better leader, a more well-rounded person, and give you the opportunity to gain unique experiences that differentiate you from others. I have found that to be true and even as I end my sabbatical and return to my primary career path I want to be on the record as recommending the exercise as healthy, reinvigorating, and something worth finding the opportunity for.