Sabbatical-takers never regret having taken a break

I've had fun collecting data about sabbaticals on Twitter. Here's a commentary.

While there's an increasing volume of information about sabbaticals online, most of it can either be found in personal blogs where people share their stories, or in news articles so high-level I'm pretty sure they've been written by ChatGPT.

This is only partly helpful when you're trying to figure out whether you should go on sabbatical yourself. If you read blog posts you'll get a sense of what the authors got out of their experiences. They’re useful anecdotes, but you need loads more data points to get a sense of what your experience is likely to be. If you read a news article, you'll likely get a broad sense of the psychological and financial cost of going on sabbatical, but you won't know whether people who have gone through it themselves think the benefits outweigh the costs.

I want to know how people who have been on a full sabbatical cycle feel about having had that experience. If their sabbatical has damaged their career. If their relationship to work has changed. If they'd go on sabbatical again.

So I asked Twitter eight questions through a light-hearted Twitter poll.

Five of those questions were pretty straightforward e.g. how long was your sabbatical, how much did you spend, did you go back to your old company at the end of your sabbatical. The other three questions were invitations for people to reflect a bit more qualitatively and thoughtfully on their experience and how it had impacted both their lives and relationship to work.

The poll got 77 answers on average across all questions, and 95 if you don't count the last two questions which I added late and won't touch on here.

Not bad.

This is not top scientific research by any means but it does sketch out a picture about sabbaticals that I'd never seen before, at least not one that was data-based.

I want to share some of this data and some reflections with you.

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Interlude: anyone need help deciding whether to go on sabbatical?

Deciding whether to go on sabbatical and then more recently whether to quit my job were two of the most difficult decisions I’ve had to make. It's so easy to see all the risks that come with taking either one of those leaps and much harder to picture the benefits.

I want to help others who feel stuck at that stage of the process. I'm offering pay-as-you-want 1:1 calls for people who are thinking about going on sabbatical and are struggling to make a decision. You'll be in good hands, I've done this dozens of time before.

Click here to book 30-mins with me over Zoom. And if you know of anyone who'd like to have a chat with me, do forward this on, they are welcome to book a 'sabbatical chat' too!

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Back to the Twitter poll commentary.

I was lucky that my employer offered sabbaticals as a benefit and that I'd already spent enough time with them to be able to take one. I want and then came back like 22% of respondents. I worked for them another year before quitting.

I know from past conversations that many people don't have that option, particularly in small companies. Many also choose to not give themselves the option of returning to their employer by handing in their notice before they go on sabbatical. That option might feel less safe, but it makes sense to not have to think about whether you want to return or not if you already know before your sabbatical even starts that you’d be unhappy if you did.

But look at that large chunk of data at the bottom of the graph. Where do 56% of respondents go, if not back to their employer and not back to their industry?

They go on to do loads of very different things!

While a few people go on sabbatical to rest or work on a personal project, many go because something in their career or in their relationship to work doesn't feel right, and they want spaciousness to figure out what they need to change.

After going on sabbatical and exploring other ways of working and being, many end up changing careers, like my colleague Angelita, who left a career in the energy industry to become a maths teacher. Many also become entrepreneurs like Cinzia, who transitioned from the finance sector to offer retreats based on the Mediterranean diet and lifestyle.

It would also be interesting to see who ends up employed or unemployed straight after a sabbatical, and then ten years after that. I haven't seen any data on that yet.

But one thing is certain…

It seems very few people regret taking a sabbatical.

A whopping 93% of people would choose to go on sabbatical again if they could back in time, with most choosing to not change the format.

And if any of you are wondering how damaging this move might be for your career specifically, I'm happy to say that a large majority of respondents believe their sabbatical has had a positive impact on their career, with most of the remaining respondents reporting a neutral impact.

Of course, there might a post-purchase rationalisation bias behind this Very Positive Data. People who've spent twelve months of their lives on sabbatical might be skewed towards thinking and saying that this was a good decision because it's what they did and it’s irreversible. It's impossible to account for this bias, at least in this small Twitter poll.

All I can say is that most sabbatical-takers I've talked to in real life seem to be genuinely happy about what their lives look like now compared to before they went on sabbatical.

Not fake happy. Real happy.

Often they feel they better understand their motivational system and have developed the agency to shape their lives to optimise for their happiness.

Unfortunately, that’s not the case for everyone.

5 of the 76 respondents in the second graph report they wouldn't do go on sabbatical again if they were presented with the choice. The same number of respondents in the third graph (right) report that their sabbatical had had a negative impact on how satisfied they are with work more generally.

This is more than I was expecting. I've spoken to twenty or so people who have completed the sabbatical cycle from start to finish and have not met anyone yet who reported feeling disappointed by the experience. Paul Millerd, the author of the Pathless Path, has spoken to hundreds of people who have taken a career break and seems to have only stumbled upon one person who wouldn't do it again.

At the same time I'm not surprised...

So many things can go wrong when you go on sabbatical: maybe you've not budgeted enough, or you find yourself unable to structure your time well, or you struggle to find work that aligns with the new motivational system you've unlocked for yourself.

People who are unhappy with past life decisions don't tend to talk about them as much as people who are happy with them, so there's a lower chance I or Paul would end up on a call talking to them about their sabbaticals.

Short anonymous polls like this one on Twitter might draw them out, and help us sketch out a more realistic picture of the sabbatical reality.

Click here to see the results of the Twitter poll (raw data).

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More about sabbaticals: whether you're thinking of going on an extended break from work or you’ve already taken the leap, you are right in the middle of an experience that can transform your life in a truly meaningful way. It’s exciting of course, but it can also feel scary, lonely and a bit overwhelming at times.

I’ve created two playbooks to help you on your journey:

• Thinking of a sabbatical will give you everything you need to consciously decide if going on an extended break from work is the right move for you

• On Sabbatical is a self-paced digital experience with insight, structure and resources to turn your sabbatical into a life-changing experience