How To Take A Sabbatical Without Ruining Your Career

Well, the good news is that these daydreams don’t have to be confined to your private journal or Pinterest board. In less time than you’d think, you could be at an artist’s retreat or backpacking around Europe.

The bad news is that it is going to take a bit of saving, a lot of motivation and a healthy dose of courage.

How to Take a Sabbatical from Your Career

What I am talking about is a career sabbatical. And no, it is not just for dreary old university professors. The term Sabbatical stems from the Hebrew ‘Sabbath’ and means a period of rest.

A sabbatical could be

• A creative “time out” in Europe,the Pacific or in Asia at a writer’s, artist’s or spiritual retreat
• Traveling and backpacking through South America and teaching as you go along
• Embarking on a new course of study whether an MFA or MBA in another country to prepare for a career change
• Learning something new for free in your own time and online, just for the hell of it
• Undertaking some kind of volunteer charitable project on another continent or even in your own hometown or country.

Why should you take a sabbatical?

You will never regret it

We always regret the things that we don’t do in life, rather than the things we did. It may take a while to save up for that time out you’re planning, but you don’t need to squander your life savings.

Take lunch from home, invite friends for dinner instead of eating out, do a few extra jobs (check classifieds section of your local paper), do overtime at work, sell your car, sell old clothes at a yard sale, sell old gadgets on EBay, do private tutoring. Whatever it takes to save up to make your sabbatical planing REAL.

You will join the ranks of countless others who take regular sabbaticals to rejuvenate, think or be inspired

Bill Gates took a twice-yearly “Think Week” to read technical papers. Australian actor and Avatar star Sam Worthington is also taking a time out. And no matter what you think of her book, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Author Elizabeth Gilbert also took a career and life break and wrote a best-selling book about it.

You will learn to be assertive, trust your instinct, and forget about material possessions

Taking the plunge to follow a dream or to simply have an adventure, is something that gives you one luxury that the daily grind cannot: TIME. By having the time to figure out what you want and who you are, you’ll open your mind and heart to new experiences.  You’ll realize that what you’re doing is what is RIGHT for you at that particular point in your life, without having to justify it to your partner/parents/friends.

You may meet the love of your life

When you have nothing to fear and are pursuing what you really want to, in a completely neutral place, away from the reminders of life in your hometown, then who knows, your Mr. or Mrs. Right may be right under your nose!

It can enhance your job prospects rather than put a dent in your resumé

One of the greatest fears we have (I know I did) in NOT pursuing a career break or sabbatical is because of how “it could look” to prospective employers upon your return home (if you ever return).

How to “cover the gap” in your resumé for a career sabbatical

Career Sabbatical X DATE – Y DATE

Achievements/Experiences/Proficiencies
(Then depending on what you did, state the experience then the achievements/skills underneath)

Travel and teaching English abroad:
List all countries and conversational language skills learned or utilized

• Inter-cultural proficiency and language skills
• Ability to interact with and understand people from a range of cultural and ethnic backgrounds
• Taught X language (or course) to a group of X children/adults in a remote, underprivileged community, prepared and researched the curriculum and managed core team of __

• Project Management and Team-building skills
• Led a large scale development/cultural management/engineering/architectural project with a team of X in X country for X charity or aid agency with a budget of __ and a team of __ ;
• Managed and negotiated meeting outcomes/goal setting and tracked project progress with stakeholders
• Management and Team Building:

• Language proficiency
• Significantly improved verbal, reading, writing, listening and social understanding skills in X, Y language/s through intensive language tuition at X school to X level, and home stay experiences

• Improved lateral thinking, adaptiveness and tolerance through artistic/writers/spiritual retreat
• Greatly enhanced writing /visual communication/patience/positive psychology skills through intensive contact with other course participants from X;Y continents
• Produced X,Y work (state outcome e.g draft novel, sculpture/ painting/art exhibition
• yoga instructor qualifications focusing on diabetes/obesity etc)