Exploring Liminal Spaces with HBS's DJ DiDonna

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2:31Morra Aarons-Mele: I'm Maura Aaron Smele, and this is the Anxious Achiever. What would you do if someone said to you, take the next four months off? Don't show up at work. Do what you want to do. Would it be exciting? Yes. Would it be a little bit scary? Maybe. Would you know what you wanted to do? Today, we talk about the power of sabbaticals with DJ Dijana. So DJ is a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. He's an entrepreneur and he is the founder of the Sabbatical Project and the author of a really great new book called A Big Time Off. Sabbaticals aren't vacations. They are intentional. And they take you away from your routine work.

3:34Morra Aarons-Mele: DJ and I talked today about the joy and the sometimes uncomfortable nature of being on sabbatical. He's got so many stories of how people took sabbaticals, people of all different life stages and economic stages. The key to sabbatical, I think, is that it's intentional and it's planned for. Lots of us have breaks in our lives because of reasons that we didn't plan for. We get laid off or we have a family crisis, that's not a sabbatical. A sabbatical is a time when you actually ask yourself, who am I and what do I want? Which is a radical concept for a lot of us adults. So my conversation with DJ Dudana.

4:25Morra Aarons-Mele: Well, DJ, I'm really excited to have you on the show. Oh, I absolutely loved your book. Thank you so much. Great to be here. So you start your book with a sentence that I thought was kind of funny and interesting. And it says, I grew up terrified of having a midlife crisis. This seems to me like a weird thing to kind of like grow up worrying about. Why did you write that? We all have our anxieties, right? Well, that is true. I think that I think there's a lot of pressure. I felt a lot of pressure to get career right early on. And I see that with my students as well, right? You know, you have this idea when you're a kid of you're going to be a fireman or a doctor or an astronaut.

5:11And this notion, I think, of preparing and making choices and having it be the wrong one, especially once, you know, everything else is supposed to be kind of ironed out and running well. Here I am in my 40s. I thought that, like, this is when you have it all figured out. But yeah, so I think that the consequences seemed high of not getting your career right. And I think I was a little bit precocious because I burned out early. So hopefully before my midlife.

5:42Morra Aarons-Mele: How old were you when you first even thought of the concept of a midlife crisis? Oh, man, I don't remember. I just I have this vivid memory of, you know, like insurance salesman guy with a tie, you know, driving along a coastal highway. in like a red Miata or something, right? And just, so it just, it's just stuck in my memory. Having to kind of kiss your life goodbye or blow your life up in order to pursue something that you wanted and how kind of disappointing I thought that would be. Yeah, that resonates for me. Although my, actually both my parents were self-employed. My dad would say to me in his very thick, he'd say, even the best boss is an asshole.

6:26Morra Aarons-Mele: he was very he had a very thick that wasn't a good New York accent very thick New York accent and um always worked for himself and I think was like very happy all the time like he was a labor arbitrator and he had an art gallery um and so I yeah I think I felt and being neurodivergent myself when I actually started working in an office I felt trapped that was when it kind of hit me like, I don't think I can spend 30 years sitting here under fluorescent lights. Yeah, I think it hit me the first year that I worked after college, when you don't get a break for summer. That's right. You know, not even like a fun break where you're going to summer camp, but just like a break from what you're doing to do an internship or just some sort of pause from your routine work, right?

7:20And I think about this as we have these socially acceptable sabbaticals kind of sprinkled throughout our life. And I think summer vacation is one of them, where, you know, it's not, it's totally inconvenient for parents to do summer vacation. You know, there's research on like a summer slide with learning loss. If you were designing a society to really be oriented towards work and productivity and convenience, you would not have your kids out of school for two and a half months each year. But I think it persists because we all have such great memories of summer. And we want our kids to experience that.

7:57We don't want our kids to get on this treadmill of working 12 months here like we do. That's my suspicion.

8:03Morra Aarons-Mele: That's interesting. I never thought about like, because yeah, summer vacation is very inconvenient. I think that what I liked about your book so much was the sense that a sabbatical can create renewal in so many different ways, but it's not fun and easy all the time. And, you know, I think that what I've learned from interviewing so many people who work really hard is that work doesn't have to be fun and easy either, but it has to feel a little bit like it's in our control and like we're going to get a break at some point. It's a light at the end of the tunnel, right? I mean, I think that in no way am I advocating that everyone goes off on sabbatical for the rest of their life.

8:49I think it provides a little bit of a light at the end of the tunnel. You know, again, I talked to my students, I think that these kind of mid career degrees or early career degrees, like the MBA is, is a really, you know, socially acceptable sabbatical where you can work for a few years, 10 years and look forward to an inflection point where you can reassess where you can heal, explore, try things on, and then reenter the workforce. But after something like that, or if you don't go to that kind of grad school, there's no more inflection points. And so you either have to create them yourself or wait until, unfortunately, something bad happens that foists you into that sabbatical land, which in our research, we found about two thirds of folks enter into a sabbatical by a profoundly negative event.

9:37So relationship crisis, health crisis, job crisis. And so that's not how you want to, that's not how you want to get there.

9:44Morra Aarons-Mele: No. Okay. So I want you to tell a little bit of your story, but first let's just define what a sabbatical is. So the word sabbatical has no real definition. I think my understanding is that people use it because it lends credibility and prestige to a pretty scary, uncertain countercultural activity. So I called it a sabbatical because it, it seems better than, you know, I'm in the middle of my life or early. So it gives you a little bit of permission. So in, in writing the book, we came up with the definition around extended leave, intentionally taken from routine work. So those three components, extended meaning, hopefully at least two months, preferably four to six.

10:35Intentional doesn't mean that that's how you get there into sabbatical land. But once you're there, once you're off of routine work, you stay there. So, you know, our tendency, if we lose a job, or if we leave something is to immediately try to find something to replace it. And so what we're asking is kind of a disconnection and, and boundaries from that to just live in that liminal space, that space between. And then the routine work piece, you know, a lot of folks end up doing something that feels to many like work on their sabbatical, whether it's trying to write a book, or even getting yoga teacher scuba certified.

11:11Morra Aarons-Mele: You have a fun case study of someone who built an app that gets really successful. Totally, totally. And I think that's actually really relevant in the age of AI here is when do you have time to experiment with things when you're so busy with the urgent in your life? Yeah. How can you actually upskill or just think creatively when everything's so busy and everything's so chaotic? So that's how I think about the definition of a sabbatical. I think it's a pretty big tent and it's not what I think people normally think of when they think of a sabbatical. What do you think of this concept? I've heard some younger people, they say, I'm fun employed right now.

11:50I love the sentiment, right? I think that that's new in the sense that can you actually enjoy that space between, right? I used to think about when I would apply to schools or something. When you send the application out, there's nothing more you can do. And so you can either worry during that time or you can try to enjoy yourself. Like you're not getting that time back. And so similarly, I think, you know, taking that time to actually heal, to recover, to take it less seriously and have confidence that you will get a job is a superpower. It's very difficult to cultivate and it's not possible for all folks.

12:28But having that confidence is pretty special.

12:34Morra Aarons-Mele: Well, it's the ultimate superpower sitting in the uncertain. Now, you built a really successful company. You're traveling all over the world, doing all kinds of cool things. And then as you tell it, you were 33, I think. And you sort of had a crucible moment on a plane in the middle of the night. So tell us a little bit about your company, your growth as an entrepreneur, and then what happened? I really wanted to do something that helped people, that was global in nature, and was entrepreneurial. And I found these professors at Harvard who had done research helping to enable access to finance to entrepreneurs in emerging markets.

13:23And so when I found that and helped them write a business plan and turn it into a company, I felt like I'd hit the jackpot. It checked all the boxes.

13:33Morra Aarons-Mele: How old were you when this all happened? 27. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So we started that company and, you know, I packed my suitcases and moved to South Africa and spent seven years basically living, traveling, working in emerging markets. Our company was based in Peru. I traveled and worked to probably 20 countries or something. And so it was one of those situations where I felt pretty confident that I had avoided the fate of my convertible driving protagonist from the beginning. I did exactly what I wanted to do. And it was helping people. Our company had great culture. And, you know, just at some point, and it was probably more of a slide than a particular moment, I just was I was no longer happy and no longer satisfied.

14:18Um, so there's, there's the, the, the push of burnout and dissatisfaction. And there was also the pull of just wanting to do some stuff in my life that there was never time for. Um, so I felt like things, things like investigating my spiritual path, I felt were, were important, but never urgent, or at least I didn't give it the time, you know, based on the importance that I felt, um, if I was looking back at my life. Right.

14:46Morra Aarons-Mele: Um, can I ask you just a quick question here? So tell us about the years from college to age 27. Like, what were you doing? I ended up in this kind of interesting entrepreneurial fellowship in the state of Indiana. So they try to fight brain drain by matching, you know, recent grads with executives at startups. This is back in 2005. So joining a startup wasn't necessarily the coolest thing to do, and especially a startup in Indianapolis, Indiana. but it was an amazing group of people called the Orr Fellows and so we got access to the highest level of these fast-growing companies. I worked for a company called Angie's List and I just got to see this and be a part of this rocket ship from 30 people to 350 people in two years.

15:35I started a company on the side that failed and I figured you know if I want to do this myself I I need a little bit more training because I studied philosophy in undergrad. And so I decided to get my MBA. And I did that because the founders of Angie's List were all Harvard Business School graduates. So it wasn't something that I had on my radar. And so when I entered into Harvard Business School, I was set on trying to do something that helps people and was global and fast growth.

16:05Morra Aarons-Mele: So your 20s were spent in a blur of startups and studying and lots of achieving. sounds like total blur total achievement mindset um and yeah it was it was incredible right and i felt like i was kind of on a roll and uh and and yeah so you know 27 to 33 was was really kind of really fertile and exciting and there were just so many interesting opportunities to to spend my time? You know, do I want to go to Turkey and work with FICO over the weekend? Or do I want to stay in Boston? And so that that shows over and over again. Yeah. What's that? What's FICO? FICO score, like the credit scoring companies, we would partner with banks and credit scoring companies all across the world to help them lend to entrepreneurs and people that couldn't get get loans.

17:03And so, yeah, I mean, that you make that decision over and over again, and you make the decision of learning and growth and fun versus stability and community and family and dependability. And then, you know, after time, then people are like, you're not a reliable person, you're not a reliable friend and, you know, relationships falling apart. So it was this kind of tale of two DJs.

17:27Morra Aarons-Mele: Oh, God, I, you know, I have to just tell you real quick here that I had this crazy experience two nights ago where I was, I think I was, I was stuck. I think I was stuck in an airport. Anyway, I was bored. And so I started cleaning up my voicemail and I had, I found three voicemails that I had kept from when my children were probably four and five. And they called me and they had said, mommy, I miss you. When are you coming home? and I mean this is a long time ago now so I kept them all these years and I mean I'm about to cry just thinking about it and I thought oh my god you know when I think of all because I was totally like that it was like so and so wants to talk in Cincinnati about a potential contract tomorrow I'm on a plane like can you fill in last minute to speak to this audience in california absolutely and like that mentality is so rewarded in our culture but when i listened to these voicemails and i also thought of all the friends i lost during the like probably 15 year period i just thought oh i don't know i don't know if that was the right decision I think that we have to learn these lessons practically.

18:58We have to learn them by experience. I talk about, I think, an Aristotelian concept of metas. So, you know, having to experience it yourself, learning by doing, as opposed to conceptually. I mean, everyone knows conceptually you should spend time with family and friends and not get, you know, overwhelmed by work and that kind of thing. And that's, that's part of this thing is I think we either need to be yanked out of that, that soup that we're existing in, or we need to intentionally plan a momentary escape from, you know, from the scale of your entire life. If you take six months off, you know, over the course of 40 year working career, it's just, it's a rounding error, you know, it's one and a half percent.

19:40Morra Aarons-Mele: It's not that much. Okay. Back to you. You're 33. You think what? You know, I had, I felt as though I just could not do the job anymore. So that was the burnout piece. And in our research, we have kind of learned to call it functional workaholism, where you're not necessarily reaching that end state of burnout, but you're just existing in this state of working that's not healthy, but you also, you know, really don't have the awareness of that. It's just kind of, that's life. And so many people that we studied had stomach ulcers or trigger fingers or insomnia. And then as soon as they got off work for a few weeks, they cleared up, right?

20:27And the doctors can tell you till they're blue in the face that you need to have less stress. And, you know, these are work inflicted damages, but it's just hard to believe. um and did you study for um anxiety measures i mean these are my these are my anxious achievers

20:42Morra Aarons-Mele: also although i will say that sometimes i think the anxious achievers like they really thrive and get a lot of joy while they're also hurting themselves it's a weird did you measure for any levels of anxiety or stress i didn't i i did i'd done some talk therapy at that point but you know again how do you schedule meetings with therapists when you're you know oh no i mean in your research in your research. Like when you said that their health got better, did you measure for any mental health? No, no. It would be awesome to do that. I know. I mean, my next study is going to be more pre-post, right?

21:16So we were just talking to people from the perspective of I had taken this sabbatical, but pre-post, so seeing how people are, because I get to witness this firsthand, right? People come to me, they want to take a sabbatical. Right, you're the guy. They think they know this was not my intention to be a sabbatical guy but here we are um they they come to me beforehand and i can see this transformation um so yeah mental health measures also biomarkers so you know i look at my own you know for example um biomarkers outside of the teaching semester versus inside of it oh interesting it's it's just bananas the impact of of stress so i'm excited to do that study um so coming up stay tuned

22:00Morra Aarons-Mele: Throw in an anxiety scale for me, will you? Absolutely. I would be so excited. So, you know, that's how I was kind of feeling. And it took a, you know, I'd subblooded my apartment. I'd worked with my co-founders to clear a few months off. But, you know, with every startup and I'm sure most lives, there's always something right around the corner that will prevent you from leaving your life. You know, I had the privilege to not have dependents. I was kind of, you know, on my own. And so I could, I could make a lot of independent decisions. I think people, people don't get to do at all times in their life.

22:37And I had officiated my, my best friend's wedding and they were taking the family to New Zealand where he was from and they invited me along. So it kind of like their second wedding, go explore New Zealand. And that was, that was the call that I needed to like, okay, let's just go. I had no intention to go to New Zealand, let's just go and see what happens. And so that's, that's how it started. I, I bought a ukulele, um, which is kind of ridiculous. It's this little ridiculous instrument. I grew up playing guitar and singing and, um, I brought it with me and, and, you know, wrote some songs, performed in bars where no one would ever know who I was, did my first 10 day silent meditation retreat and, you know, spent a lot of time in my head wondering if I'd made the wrong decision and looking back to see, you know, what, like, where had I gone wrong?

23:27Why was I not feeling excited about my work? And then, you know, just to make that, that environment even more all consuming, I did a six week walking pilgrimage in Japan, where you're just in your head all the time. And so it was, you know, it was exploring my, my kind of desire to, you know, investigate the spiritual side and, you know, do something physically demanding. And yeah, it was, it was a lot of kind of self-reflection. And then also I think a bit of grieving once I realized that I like what I'm doing. We're making a positive impact, but it's just not, it's not consistent with the kind of life that I want to have.

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28:35Morra Aarons-Mele: Okay, so so and actually your book has a really fascinating chapter on pilgrimage, which I loved. I'm just going to stop here. Obviously, I agree with you and nothing would make me happier than to do everything you just said. but I would imagine that you encounter cynics who are like oh my god I don't need to know about his e-pre-love era you know um that's that's really not how we do things what do you say to them you know I think I think there's the rational brain right there's the the concerns about how do I logistically make this work? How do I financially afford it? What do I do with the responsibilities I have, be they people or mortgage?

29:25And then I think there's this kind of imaginative childhood brain of what's possible, what I want in my life. Why am I afraid to re-examine that at various times? um the first one you know i i've got advice on that as far as almost no one can afford you know logistically or financially to take a sabbatical tomorrow right but you know what are you doing in 2032 right and so if you start planning six years in advance five ten years whatever it takes financially you can make it work logistically it just becomes part of your life Right. And so it becomes much more possible. So I try to encourage people to think far enough out in the future that they actually have no idea what they're doing and plan towards it.

30:15You know, if people have all financial abilities, you know, socioeconomic levels who it's something important

30:23Morra Aarons-Mele: to them and they plan 10 years ahead and, you know, it's, it's like a life defining memory for them and their children if they have them. But it takes a lot of effort to do. Right. As far as convincing the kind of imaginative childlike side, it's really helping people try to get down into the depths. I think of it as like archaeology, right? Like what did you used to love doing? What was important to you? You know, Elizabeth Gilbert talks about like passions are intimidating, but curiosities can be a little bit easier to think about. So what are you curious about? What would you want to experiment with?

31:01And then the external search is more an explorer, right? What are places that would inspire you? What's on your bucket list to travel to? And so I think of it as a seed where we found in our research that knowing someone who has taken a sabbatical or just hearing sabbatical stories is a great predictor of people feeling like they can do it, giving permission and inspiration to take off themselves. So I just try to get people into that imaginative space. And think from the perspective of you're retired, you're a grandparent, your grandkids are on your knees and you're trying to tell them what the story of your life was.

31:39What do you wish you would have done?

31:41Morra Aarons-Mele: Exactly. And then do it. Right. I mean, life is chaotic. I don't think it's going to get any easier, like either in the outside climate or inside of our kind of our busy lives. Yeah. And to your point about the storytelling, you know, as I read your book, I reflected on all the people in my life. who've taken sabbaticals, a lot of them wouldn't have called them that. So my husband's family, he grew up in a very religious world. Almost all of them did some sort of mission work with their church. So they would take, the church would send them somewhere. That's a sabbatical in a way. I mean, you're working, but you're away.

32:20Morra Aarons-Mele: It fits your three definitions. I realized that I had prepared and taken for a sabbatical when I was 26. I had an extreme I ran marketing for Europe's second largest online travel company extremely demanding job very prestigious very exciting and my mother got breast cancer and I kind of had this moment I guess it was my quarter life crisis and I thought I'm going to go live in Africa for six months and I saved for a year and then I realized that I had done that when I was 23 I had also my my best friend was in the Peace Corps in Africa and I had said to my boss, peace out, I'll be back in four weeks, which was ballsy.

33:04Morra Aarons-Mele: I have friends who've taken sabbaticals. I think that people, like you said, they take executive education. That's not long enough. So I think that it's actually when we think about our own lives and our friends, it's not as radical a concept as we think. It doesn't have to be about your eat, pray, love era. So I love how you layer it. And I want to bring up a book that I think you probably like a lot, a book that I love, Transitions by William Bridges. It's right behind me. Is it? And, you know, you bring in the concept of rites of passage and liminal space and how liminal space, I mean, this was bridges, can power transition in a way that we can't plan for no matter how we try.

34:03Morra Aarons-Mele: Talk about that. Yeah, so for those that are unfamiliar, liminal space is kind of the space between two things, right? Maybe two identities, two places. In every religious tradition, folks are existing in liminal space, right? like 40 days in the desert sitting under the Bodhi tree. And, you know, what happens is, and this was during my sabbatical as well, is the liminal space is very uncomfortable. We like having an identity. We really dislike having a vacuum of an identity. What do you tell people you're doing if you've quit your job, but you're not looking for a job and you're off for months at a time?

34:41It's really difficult. And so the research on rites of passage basically show that in order to transition from one identity to another, it's good to have protection during that space. So, you know, the society says this is a transition you're going through. And as you move between these, we're going to give you kind of permission and guidance and also, you know, the ability to explore during that. And that allows you to transform who you are in a way that when you're just moving from one job to another, from one identity to another, you don't really have the time to sink into that and, and potentially take a different path, right?

35:21I mean, the job we're most qualified for when we leave a job is a similar job. And the people most likely to refer us to new jobs are people who knew us in our old job. And so you get to the point where decisions you made in your 20s or teens are powering your work, which is the majority of your waking hours throughout your entire life. And so, you know, when do we take time? When do we give ourselves permission to exist outside of that role and come back to who we were, who we are, who we were and explore who we want to be? So you have to drop that for a fair amount of time. And the reason why this duration piece is important, you talked about a month not being enough.

36:02There's something about, you know, six to eight weeks seems to be the anecdotally when people feel it on sabbatical, where you truly drop away your old identity, being run by your calendar, people knowing you as a certain thing, and sink into like, okay, who am I? This feels comfortable. It might feel uncomfortable, right? Because you don't know what you're going to do next, even if you're going back to your job. But yeah, that's that they call it fertile emptiness. William Bridges talks about being fertile emptiness. Yeah, you know, I don't know if you know my story, but I have been an entrepreneur since 2006.

36:41Morra Aarons-Mele: I was before that I I worked in digital startups and then I worked in politics doing digital campaigns, fundraising, persuasion campaigns all online. And then I started my own business doing that work. And on the side, I always did workplace mental health. I did this. This is like ever since I was 25 years old, I wanted to be a workplace therapist. But I went to grad school. I just never could make it happen. And I fell into my business and I did really well. and I made a lot of money and that was what I did. But I always kept this creative space for my work in workplace mental health and work redesign.

37:22Morra Aarons-Mele: And then I sold my business in 2021. I stayed till 2022. It was a horrible experience. That's a conversation for another day. But in 2022, I thought, okay. I've wanted to be a workplace therapist since I was 25 years old. I can't afford to go back to grad school right now, and I don't really want to, but I'm going to make this work happen. So that's been four years. And it's been insane. It's been amazing. It's been hard. I think the mistake that I made was I just rushed right into it. I sold my business. I had the most profound personal trauma of my life in my family and selling my business. And I just charged forward because it's what I thought I had to do.

38:23And now four years later, I'm like, oh, my God, I needed that space.

38:32Morra Aarons-Mele: And I think I have to take it. yeah but we are so especially when we're successful like I you know I had kind of the golden egg figured out for a long time and I thought that the next chapter would be just as easy it just has not been yeah and um it just it's just been really hard I think that the number one thing I end up doing with especially high achievers, and I talk about multiple archetypes of sabbatical takers in the book. Yes, talk about that. I think this achiever archetype, so there's the achiever, the explorer, and the seeker, right? The achiever is this person who's like, I'm going to swap out this work activity for a work-like activity.

39:24Exactly. Still counts, right? The writing a book, you know, working on helping a friend start a company. You know, I remodeled my kitchen, which doesn't sound like fun to most people, but it felt really empowering. And those people usually do not allow themselves to rest before entering into that phase. And so they're running on adrenaline. They're excited because they've chosen something that matters to them. So this task is intrinsically motivated. That's right. And so it carries you for a bit, but it's not necessarily restorative. Now, what we found in our research was you think that the way to restore your health is just laying on the beach and sipping coconuts, right?

40:10But what we actually found is if you are doing something for a contained period of time that is really important to you. So, I mean, you wrote a book. I imagine you didn't take time off to do it.

40:20Morra Aarons-Mele: um but if it's extremely important three books and i've done every single one at 5 a.m on the side of a basketball court like yeah one of the people uh in the book who's a good friend of mine spent you know two months at my parents house you know in new hampshire um just focusing on writing the book and she jumped right into it um and so could have done it could have had more healing. She's still at the end of, at the end of the, the sabbatical is like, that was one of the most important things I've ever done. But you know, why did I just not give myself a few weeks? Was that a sabbatical though?

40:57Morra Aarons-Mele: That's a question. Like if you're working that hard, is it a sabbatical? So, you know, the reason I think that it is, is because people are swapping out work that, that they might like, but someone else is directing and, um, and, you know, takes up a ton of time and space and feels a little bit trapping with something that's really important to them that's time bound. Like a job is you're doing it from now until whenever. When you're doing something that's more project based or if it's from a place of exploration. So you mentioned the person that wrote an app on their sabbatical. They divided their time into the three buckets.

41:41They were spending time with family. They brought their two kids to live on an island. you know, off the coast of Norway, and a third of the time on himself. So healing, being, you know, being creative, getting outside. And the third is time on creative projects. And so he built an iPhone app to help kind of convert text to speech. This was, you know, 10 years ago or so. And it was really about digging back into his passions, growing up and experimenting, tinkering and so most people would say you built an app you know in the basement on your sabbatical but for him it was really empowering and and you know he had gotten to the point where he was leading technology teams but not actually getting to to put his fingers in it and yes that actually turned out to be a job afterwards um and but that was a choice for him and he actually gave himself the summers off um designed the company so he could have summers off with his kids because it was so impactful to spend spend time with his kids and his wife is a teacher and so he was like I don't want to miss these next five six years with my kids over the summer I want to have

42:50Morra Aarons-Mele: more of these experiences I just want to interject here because I think what what what you're talking about him especially right he was a he was he had a craft but as a leader and a manager he didn't get to do it. Craft is a big theme on this show. Craft is my passion. My craft is, is writing and telling stories. And, um, I think that that's a piece that I hear from people all the time is that they get so senior, they don't get to practice the craft that they love and, and, and mastered. Yeah, we, you know, that person, Winston actually was inspired to take a sabbatical by this designer, Stefan Sagmeister.

43:35So he has, if you type in sabbatical, he's got this, you know, TED talk with millions of views. And he would shut down his design firm every seven years. And, you know, pay everyone to kind of go and do whatever they wanted to. And so he spent time in Bali. And it was really just trying to get that creativity back and, you know, not having any pressure on it, just being creative, making art, that kind of thing. And it turned into, you know, more projects when he got back because as a creative person, you know, I just, I just, I don't think you can just go, you know, a hundred miles an hour forever.

44:13Right. And it just, there's no fount of inspiration. There's no creativity. You start to get kind of like focused in what you've been doing versus really kind of expansive dissociative thinking.

44:25Morra Aarons-Mele: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the other two archetypes. We talked about achievers. Yeah. So the explorer, you know, wants to, wants to see the world, wants to see what's out there, either geographically or, you know, experimenting inside their community, volunteering, just really doesn't have necessarily an agenda like an achiever would. And, you know, you see a lot of these folks, especially early in their life, which is, you know, gap years and exposing yourself to all these, you know, amazing things about the world and trying to figure out what to do. But also you see it in folks who, you know, one of the folks we interviewed, Jeanette, she, she had this idea that she wanted to be a world traveler, and she wanted to see, you know, all these countries.

45:11And then she, you know, she looked at her calendar, I was like, Oh, my gosh, like, I'm in my mid 30s. I've always wanted this to be my identity, and it's not. So taking some kind of agency to do that. Right. And then I think the risk that an explorer has is missing the things right under their nose. Right. And so I remember I was, I was in Turkey talking to FICO and different banks. And I was, I was talking to folks about going to see Rumi's birthplace, you know, the Sufi poet.

45:43Morra Aarons-Mele: Yes, I've done that. And there was some festival and I was trying to figure out the logistics and, and they were like, you know, that like one of the most famous kind of Sufi retreat centers is 90 minutes from Boston, right? So, yeah. And so there's just these things where you think that you need to go on some exotic adventure in order to, to expand your, your horizons. But really some of the coolest stories are, you know, I hear from people just saying, being able to go and visit the cafe and read the newspaper or a book, um, being able to take their kids on like a solo, you know, if you have multiple kids on a solo weekend trip, um, just, just things that, that are memorable, but don't have to be, you know, expensive and, and incredibly difficult to do.

46:31Um, and then there's the seeker, which is, you know, I was kind of like half explorer, half seeker, which is instead of exploring outwardly, you're exploring inward. So what do you want to do? Who are you? Where are you on a spiritual journey? Where are you on a relational journey to friends and family and partners? Who do you want to be? And just really doing that kind of self-discovery and discernment. So, you know, again, I talked to my students around, when you apply to college and grad school, you're forced to do these essays where you kind of talk about what you want to do, what your biggest mistakes were, where you see yourself in five years.

47:12And of course, someone's looking at those. And so you can say something like, oh, I just works too hard. And, you know, that's my biggest problem. But if you're, if you're doing it on your own, if you're doing annual reflections, if you're kind of applying to your life for the next four years, if you're not doing that, you know, who's making the decisions and who's kind of steering the ship. So I really encourage like that reflection and that, that self discernment. And I think it's, it's a lot easier when the noise dies down. And you're doing something of your own volition. You're, you're healed, right?

47:46You're out of your head and into your body, ideally doing something kind of tactile or, or physical to kind of detox.

47:53Morra Aarons-Mele: That's right. This episode is brought to you by Vinted, a secondhand marketplace app. You know, I love clothes. And I love when the seasons change to spend a good amount of time, you know, moving out, reviewing my summer stuff, bringing in my fall stuff. I live in New England, so I love a great sweater. I love a great tweed blazer. And now I have a way with Vinted that I can sell clothes I no longer want, but I know someone else will love and buy some new clothes. It really solves a problem for me, which is running out of closet space and also feeling guilty about buying new clothes. And it's really, really fun.

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52:07Morra Aarons-Mele: That's$50 off your first year at monarch.com with code achiever. There are two questions I want to ask you though that I think are like practical. The first question is about permission. So you and I probably know lots of people who have the money and the ability probably to take a sabbatical, but they can't give themselves permission and they may even be able to give themselves permission but their anxiety can't give themselves permission so um

52:51Morra Aarons-Mele: how do you if you've been an achiever your whole life or if you've grown up in a family i mean Let's talk about family values, work, commitment, showing up, right? How do you give yourself permission? Also because people might be judging you. It's especially difficult because if you're not, if you're struggling through it, if it's difficult, people are like, wait, you're on vacation and you're expecting me to believe you're having a hard time. No, the family of origin thing is a core aspect of what we heard in our interviews. I mean, I grew up in a family with a fair amount of financial instability.

53:32And so the concept of taking time off, of not knowing what you're going to do next, and this kind of, it's called like a protein career, where you're responsible for your career. You're responsible for making sure you have the energy to do it. You're responsible for making sure you have the qualifications, updating that over time. Um, and so that, that need I think is intimidating, but it's the reality. Right. And so, you know, I think one way you get permission is by talking to people and finding an exemplar. Um, so someone like you, someone where they had similar circumstances to be able to take time off, you know, that's, that's why I started this, the research under the sabbatical project, which I call it, where it's kind of creating community.

54:20It's bringing people together with coaches and things like that, right? And then I think the other thing is looking inwards and really trying to reflect on, I think, what David Brooks called eulogy values. Like, what do you want your life to have been looking backwards, right, from your funeral? And thinking about the stakes there. Like it's very easy to just put your head down, work, not pick your head up. And then you do so and you realize that you spent your entire life on something that wasn't your choice or, you know, without giving yourself the permission and flexibility to do it. So really trying to imagine the consequences of not doing it and also sharing in the joy of people who have done it.

55:07So it depends on if you need negative reinforcement or positive.

55:11Morra Aarons-Mele: I bet it's also really helpful. I speak from experience to before you go on sabbatical, well before you go, develop some sort of mindfulness practice, go to therapy, build cognitive behavioral skills to deal with your anxiety in the moment. my experience is um i mean as an entrepreneur i've been very fortunate to give myself chunks of time off not a sabbatical but like you know three weeks and the hardest challenge was turning off my own anxiety right and my own guilt and my own inner shaming and the only way i've been able to do that is through developing mindfulness skills and distress tolerance skills through modalities like DBT and acceptance and commitment therapy and CBT.

56:08Morra Aarons-Mele: I'm curious if that was a theme that came up or what you think about that. Absolutely. I mean, my sabbatical was a journey through meditation, right? And I think that, you know, a lot of people struggle to the busier you are, the more difficult it is for most people to do those types of things. And so ironically, when you need it the most, it's the most difficult, right? Carving out time to learn those skills. And so you get into a little bit of a vicious cycle. And so I think, I think developing those skills as much as you can to have the clarity of mind, to give yourself permission around, yeah, I'm thinking about this big, scary thing, but like really, what's the worst that can happen?

56:50And can I look around in my life for examples of people where not only did the worst thing not happen, but an incredible thing happened? Or can I look around my life for examples of people who like waited and waited until retirement and then retirement never came or retirement came for them, but then their partner fell ill. So these kind of, I think about a sabbatical is regret insurance, right? Like doing the things that you would regret not doing.

57:19Morra Aarons-Mele: at the end of your life. Regret insurance. But I think also, I mean, I think the difference also is that we can know all that intellectually, but on a Tuesday morning when we turn on our phone and we see a headline about the stock market or layoffs, it floods us. So we need skills in that moment to get back on track. Which leads me to another question. which is, you know, one of the things that you talk about in the book is that sabbaticals can feel really uncomfortable.

58:00And they aren't all, you know, joy and walks on the beach, as you said.

58:05Morra Aarons-Mele: They can be boring. They can be filled with anxiety. And they can be uncomfortable. Talk about why that's – is that good? Is that essential? Is that a bummer? I think it goes back to liminal space, right? And also if you think, you know, biologically, physiologically, mentally, hard work is what you need in order to change, right? You work your muscles out so that they can break down and build back better. You study, which is hard, in order to gain understanding of a new concept to be able to apply it to your life, right? And so, you know, a sabbatical is not a vacation. It's not just rest and reprieve.

58:50It's experimenting with new ways of living. It's doing battle with your mind and how you've kind of been conditioned to live, which is what you're talking about, that mental state that once you get enough space from it,

59:02Morra Aarons-Mele: you're like, man, that was really not healthy. I can't believe that I was living in that space for so long. And then you choose which way you want to reenter the workforce. You can totally return to a job with holding it less tightly, right? Or you can find something you feel is more aligned either lifestyle wise or mission for the next chapter. But one of the ways that I think you can stave off that feeling from others of judgment and difficulty is really by setting boundaries and disconnecting. So that's one of the keys to having a good sabbatical. Now, it's easier to disconnect if you're abroad, right?

59:43Different time zone, that kind of thing. but but really kind of saying there's always going to be something i think um in the news or um at work that that will be kind of urgent and that will take away your attention um this is the time to experiment with what is it like when i turn all that stuff off and i think that requires um a lot of hygiene around away messages and you're if you're at a job like transitioning all of your responsibilities to someone else, making it so that you can't be reached for that period of time. You know, the best practices there, I think, treat it something like a great parental leave policy, which is the person is gone so long that that the work has to get done by someone.

1:00:31Whereas on a vacation, you know, work is just piling up while you're gone, you're going to have to do that work. And so I think it's good hygiene for the company to be able to transfer responsibilities out outside. And it's also good hygiene for you to say, what tasks have I picked up during this time that don't belong to me anymore? And, you know, how do I want to evolve and grow inside of this job?

1:00:54Morra Aarons-Mele: And it's scary as hell. And it's so anxiety provoking. Even when you go on parental leave and you're thrilled to have a baby and you're so busy, you and I have both interviewed so many people who have said, am I going to be useful when I get back? Is this person better at their job than me? You know, I mean, that, that inner dialogue is tough. I think, I think there's from the company side and from the individual side, there are these worries around from a company side, you know, if this person leaves for a period of time, will they never come back? Or if this person leaves for a period of time, will we get the work done, right?

1:01:35And, you know, from the conversations I've had and the companies I've studied, that's just, it's not really the case. I think the pros far outweigh the cons. First of all, most people return to their job, especially if the company gives them a sabbatical policy.

1:01:47Morra Aarons-Mele: Yeah. And, you know, the counterfactual, like you have to compare apples to apples. It's not like if they don't take a sabbatical, they'll stay forever working at the same pace, right? People leave, people get burnt out. Um, and, you know, when you're able as a company to replace people's responsibilities when they leave, um, you know, analyze what people were doing, it helps you, especially as a leader, make the company resilient, right? Like a lot of companies suffer from key person risk. Um, that's not a great way to run an organization. So it might be short-term inconvenient. So is parental leave.

1:02:28But, you know, for the most part, and that journey has been long, we as humans have said, this is a thing that we value enough to have like a little bit of inconvenience for the, for the people who remain. And, you know, really like parental leave isn't even accessible to everybody, right? So a sabbatical can be accessible to everyone, whether they choose to have kids or not. And it also is actually, you know, parental leave is not a sabbatical. It's, it's not, not restful.

1:02:55Morra Aarons-Mele: You're about to find out. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, so that's from the company side. I think from the individual side, people are worried. Am I replaceable? The answer is yes, right? Everyone's replaceable. There's no, but I think what people come back with is more confidence in themselves because they've done something hard. They've done something that isn't the predominant story in our culture. They survived and they even thrived. You come back with more energy, more creativity that you can apply to your work, you come back with a better self understanding, so you can create boundaries. And, you know, so that can either come back at the company you left, or if you leave the company, or if you, you know, don't have a company sabbatical policy, which is the majority of people at this point, it gives you confidence around the next chapter, clarity about what to do.

1:03:49So I think there, you can, you can definitely view it from a negative perspective around what's the worst that can happen. What I'm trying to do is tell this other story around time off as an investment, not as an escape.

1:04:01Morra Aarons-Mele: Oh, that's so I love that so much. I want to go back to the connectivity piece. You know, I was, as I was reading, I was laughing because, like I said, I took sabbaticals at many sabbaticals and one really long. I went to live in Southern Africa for many months at some point and was not able to really be in touch that well because it was a long time ago. And a few years ago, 2019, my mom, my son and I went on safari in Tanzania for two weeks and, you know, was like, I was running my own company. I'm gone. Everyone's cool. And I didn't have good connectivity, but at some point I turned on my phone in the Ngorogo crater to take photos.

1:04:49Morra Aarons-Mele: And I had five bars. Yeah. Perfect reception because it was like, must've been something big in the crater. I don't know. And it was like an assault of messages. Just, I mean, literally I'll never forget that moment, like looking at a beautiful elephant and then just my phone just burning up it's really hard to escape in this world totally it's so hard yeah i mean listen you you can literally flick your thumb and come up with you know 17 reasons to be anxious whether it's the stories from the world stories from your work um so i think it requires a lot of discipline right yeah um but this is why people go on retreat you know they go on retreat to get away from it all and I think if you can do that and if you can prepare the organization for your departure just like we do with you know parental leave like you have advance warning right then I think the benefits far away the costs and you know when was the last time that you spent more than a week or a few days without your phone it's just it's becoming such the water that we swim in that and you know even navigating when you're, when you're abroad, like, how would you get around without?

1:06:07Morra Aarons-Mele: I know. Right. And then, so it's, it's a gateway drug to using the rest of your phone. So definitely a challenge, but you know, I think, I think if you can experiment with small ways to do it, right. So what would a five day meditation, meditation retreat look like? What would, you know, walking five days of the Appalachian trail and just really sink into, you know, how does this feel? How would it feel to do a longer break? Can you batch all of your vacation days, so you get two or three weeks in a year and put them all together, so that you kind of get a taste for that. And, you know, inevitably, you say, this is just not long enough.

1:06:45And then that's kind of how you tiptoe your way into sabbatical land.

1:06:49Morra Aarons-Mele: Yeah, I mean, I think that's, I think, I think what I hear you seeing is that the skills that you build being on sabbatical, the identity that you might develop, the muscles that you might develop are powerful well beyond the time that the sabbatical ends. Wouldn't we all love to be able to have discernment over our phone? And you got to learn somehow. Yeah, it's not, the world's not going to do it for you, right? And we have enough evidence, I think, of that so far. Yeah, you know, one, one observation from our research is that people think about their sabbaticals in terms of the level of importance of peak life experiences.

1:07:42So wedding day, birth of their kid. I mean, it's amazing if you think about it, right? Like, to have something that you can choose to do, hopefully, right? Hopefully you don't end up in sabbatical land from a negative catalyst. But something you choose to do that will put a mark on your entire life. You get to choose it. You get to figure out the timing. And if you don't do it, it's just not there, right? I mean, how many people live with those sorts of regrets? So like I said, look at your calendar in 2033. Start saving up. Let your imagination run wild of what you would do. You know, ask people in your community, when have you seen me the happiest?

1:08:25What kind of things, you know, did I used to do? Look at your old journals just to get inspiration. But it's not going to happen unless you get after it.

1:08:37Morra Aarons-Mele: Last question. You mentioned companies having sabbatical policies. Give us a sense of that landscape. I'm sure you have resources for people listening if they're like, oh, I want to start one at my company. Just talk a little bit about that. Yeah. It's, you know, listen, I think companies having sabbatical policies or any sort of kind of work-life balance policy, it definitely oscillates with the economy. And so, you know, we saw a lot during the Great Resignation where you had places like Citibank and Goldman Sachs, setting up sabbaticals. There's a lot of really interesting nonprofit support for nonprofit leaders to take sabbaticals, which is really heartening.

1:09:21And so the most important thing is giving people enough duration. So can you give them more than two months? Can you give disconnection where you're truly shutting off their access to email, creating like a chain of people that could do various tasks so that it's truly only like the most urgent task that rings the bat phone. And, you know, ideally giving people some sort of assistance, either some sort of pay, is it health insurance? Is it partial pay? Is it full pay? Can you give access to coaches, therapists, that sort of thing?

1:10:00And yeah, just giving them permission, because what you see is that if the leaders at the organization aren't doing this, we saw this with like unlimited vacation time. If the leaders aren't doing it, then no one else is going to do it inside the organization. So really leading by example inside the organization. And, you know, asking folks, I think a lot of these sabbatical policies are hidden inside of companies where when a person reaches a breaking point, they ask their manager like, hey, you know, I need a break. I need to take a few months off. I need to take care of a ailing loved one. The company makes it work.

1:10:37And they're like, man, why did I have to wait until a breaking point to build up the courage or to get the ability to spend time on something important to me? So if you can have courage to ask around inside the organization and ask someone if it's possible, more often than not, I think you'll be surprised. But we have a long way to go. I think it's around changing and updating that story around work and time off and what you have permission to do. you know so ask people in your network ask friends and family um and you know get inspiration encouraged to do it and you can find some on my website the sabbaticalproject.org and in the book big time off the transformative impact of sabbaticals and how to take one it's

1:11:18Morra Aarons-Mele: really a great read you know even if you're not interested in sabbaticals it's it's a really it's a very thoughtful book so congratulations and um onward thanks so much i'm looking forward to hearing about your next sabbatical.

1:11:34Morra Aarons-Mele: That's it for this week's show. If you like the show, follow us and tell your friends and please leave us a review. It really helps the anxious achiever get found by people just waiting for our content. I'm your host, Maura Aarons-Mele. Lots more to come in the next episode.

1:12:00Thank you.