Have you ever thought about quitting work for a year? It can actually improve your creativity and make you happier!
Two of my best friends are in the middle of taking a year off from work (a sabbatical). They are both single and have saved up enough money so it was not a difficult decision for them to take financially. On Ted.com designer Stefan Sagmeister talks about the benefits of taking a sabbatical. He does this every seven years to refresh and rejuvenate his creativity. I asked my two friends to watch this particular ted talk as Stefan offers some great advice. I summarized a few of the points Stefan makes at the end of the video.
Stefan totally shuts his design studio every 7 years for a yearlong sabbatical. They don’t take any clients. The reason being, he found that their design work tended to get stale and look “the same” after a while. He decided that it would be helpful to cut 5 of his retirement years and to intersperse them into his work years.
For his last sabbatical he chose Bali as his residence. This was in September 2008. On arriving in Bali Stefan started creative work straight away. Check out the talk above as he generated some especially creative ideas. I loved his compass coffee table – an amazing idea.
He also explored his own happiness (via meditation) and finally had time to read a book he had been meaning to read for years called “Stumbling On Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert (1) . Stefan was surprised and pleased to learn that the author also took a sabbatical to write the book! This was true for a lot of other famous, passionate, creative and highly inspired people as well.
This is also true for some very successful companies as well e.g. 3M give 15% of time to employees for personal projects and Google allows 20% of work time for employees to peruse their personal software projects. These companies benefit financially from the creative ideas their employees generate.
A warning
Stefan points out that without a plan that you will waste your sabbatical. This happened to him on his first sabbatical. Instead, make a list of what you’re interested in and write out a daily plan of your activities for each day.
Have you thought about taking a year off work? What is holding you back?
(1) If you order from this link we will receive a very small commission on the sale of the book . This helps us pay the bills for this website. Disclosing all vested interests on websites is now a requirement of the FTC.
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