The case for sabbaticals: Why businesses benefit when workers take ‘Big Time Off’

0:10Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Coming up on today's show, what if the best career move isn't taking a new job, but taking time away from work altogether? Together, we meet a Harvard academic making the case for the modern sabbatical.

0:30DJ DiDonna:Almost no one can afford or thinks it's possible for them to take extended leave in the next year. But if you start asking yourself, what are you doing in 2031 or 2032, then everything becomes a lot more possible. And later, we'll head to Japan to hear from an entrepreneur finding new markets for one of the country's oldest crafts. Each one has a handmade element from artisans who've been doing this hundreds of years. Beautiful patterns, handmade that not everyone can do anymore. A lot of the things that we're going for here is very subtle beauty. This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

1:19you're listening to the entrepreneurs dj didona is a senior lecturer at harvard business school where he teaches entrepreneurship in 2019 he founded the sabbatical project to define explore and research the idea he's also the author of the new book big time off the transformative power of sabbaticals and how to take one, and has advised more than a dozen organisations from non-profits to Fortune 500 companies on the creation of their policies on career breaks. I caught up with DJ to discuss the importance of intentionality in taking time off. DJ began by outlining his take on the very concept of a sabbatical.

1:58DJ DiDonna:Well, I think the sabbatical term is one that I don't love. I think it's one that people use because you're kind of borrowing prestige and you're borrowing an excuse to be away from routine work, which I don't feel like as humans we should need, but it serves a purpose here. And so we use it. And I think the term sabbatical can also be intimidating, right? It's borrowed from academia. Are you doing something important with your time off? And I like people to think about it more as an empty container to fill something that matters to you in your life. So something that by the end of your life, if you would have regretted not doing or something that's been on your bucket list, but you just haven't given the time or attention to.

2:40DJ DiDonna:So it's kind of like the lack of something, but the space for it. No, I like that. And it's interesting because I guess a lot of people, as you allude to there, and certainly set out in the book, it's often treated as a, it's a reaction, isn't it? Maybe you are between jobs. There's a redundancy. You've maybe been unwell. You have a change in life circumstance. And then the sabbatical sort of is parachuted in as a, in a reactive way. But I guess part of your thinking and part of the idea behind changing that perception as well as then the action is to view it differently with a much greater degree of, I guess, sort of intentionality.

3:16Tell us how people should calibrate their expectations and ambitions when they come to this space that you've described.

3:22DJ DiDonna:Yeah, I think intentionality is the right word. And you can even go another step and say, you know, sacredness. I think that time to ourselves, time with our families, time to do things that are really meaningful to us should be a human birthright. It shouldn't be something that we apologize for, for having to step out of work. So in my research and in my book, I talk about having inflection points in your life, you know, from gap year to midlife, you know, raising children to empty nesting, where you take the chance to kind of honor and celebrate the stage you've just been through. and also plot and plan the next one, just so that we're not framing it only through productivity lens, just kind of save our life and reignite old creative hobbies or discover new ones.

4:08DJ DiDonna:So I'm trying to create a ritual over the course of your life where you step back, step to the side before you burn out and reach these kind of unintentional sabbaticals, which account for the majority of the time off that I've studied. It feels kind of implicit in our conversations that we're talking about, the objectives, the ambitions, the benefits for the taker of the time. And important to sort of spin this round, DJ, and let me ask you about the employer's perspective, because I guess there's a lazy narrative here that is, oh, you're just kind of signing people away. What happens to productivity?

4:46They're going to be kind of doing nothing for dot, dot, dot. But again, we need to challenge that assumption. And actually, there's a very clear use case, isn't there, in terms of the manifest benefits to employers of helping to actually facilitate these kind of breaks for their senior staff?

5:02DJ DiDonna:I think of a quote by Warren Buffett where he says, time is the enemy of the mediocre company and the friend of the great company. So for any company thinking about like a quarter, the next quarter ahead, having someone step away is inconvenient, just like having someone quit or having someone go on parental leave. But similar to parental leave, we've decided that it's important enough of a human experience that we're on board to carry water for our coworkers while they're gone. So, you know, first of all, it's about saying this is important enough to make some sacrifices. However, what we found in the research is that, you know, smart organizations build the muscle of people leaving and returning.

5:41DJ DiDonna:It builds resilience. It eliminates key person risks. You actually know, can the business survive when someone's gone, especially a leader? You know, we often take on so much as leaders and we forget that we need to be zooming out and actually having a broader perspective. Retention, you know, having an individual feel as though their company cares about them as a full person gives them the chance to recharge, to focus on something that's important to them, increases retention and increases loyalty, which is, I think, the opposite of what folks would say and what folks would assume. I worked with a Fortune 50 company where the head of talent said, we don't want to trap people at the organization.

6:23DJ DiDonna:If the minute you give them some time away, they decide to leave, probably it was not a good fit at that point in time anymore. Right. So bringing in people that actually want to be there. And then also serving as a way to kind of upskill junior employees in people's absence and bring back creativity that you gain naturally by being out, by working on things that are more kind of exciting and more personal to you. So there's some pretty powerful reasons to undertake this kind of period. What stops people then, DJ? You make the case eloquently there. What are the common reasons people give for not, well, maybe not taking a sparticle or one of these breaks or perhaps not even countenancing, not even thinking about it?

7:05What are some of those humps in the road that stop people from looking at that?

7:08DJ DiDonna:You know, I think people struggle with actual responsibilities that are difficult to overcome. First and foremost, financial responsibilities. Can you afford to take time off? You know, dependents, children, spouse, trying to align schedule. But then also we have this perception. What will people think of you? you know, this work devotion norm that we all have to kind of fight against. And, you know, what I'd say is that people are limited by their own beliefs, you know, that they inherited from their parents that they see in their peers. And on the financial and logistical responsibilities, you really have to set the calendar a little bit far forward.

7:44DJ DiDonna:So almost no one can afford or thinks it's possible for them to take extended leave in the next year. But if you start asking yourself, what are you doing in 2031 or 2032? Then everything becomes a lot more possible. So some of the most inspiring stories in my research come from folks who worked in nonprofit, who were teachers who had to save up for seven to 10 years in order to make something like this possible. But they're able to do it. And at the end of the day, on a 40 or 50 year career, taking six months off total is 1 % of your career. And so saving up, putting the calendar kind of in the future when you can actually save up and make those responsibilities more manageable is how people overcome these hurdles.

8:31DJ DiDonna:And the last thing I would say is the goal of the sabbatical project and my work here is to make this supported by companies, countries, country policies, so it's actually an equitable benefit that all people can take advantage of. Let me ask you a little bit about a couple of the sort of, I don't know if they're turns of phrase or ideas that you broach in the book. I really like this idea. I think you described, I can't remember exactly where it was, about this idea of reclaiming sideline parts of yourself and using this process to facilitate that. I don't know. Maybe that resonated with me. Maybe I need a break, DJ.

9:05I don't know. But I like the phrase and I like the idea behind it. Can you tell me a bit more about what you mean by that?

9:11DJ DiDonna:I think what spurred me to do the research here was my own personal sabbatical experience where, you know, my identity was so closely intertwined with my company, which I had started, that it became impossible not to think about work, not to think about my calendar. And I think once you have a chance to separate yourself from work for long enough, and what our research would indicate is it takes like six to eight weeks to really kind of disengage that work identity, then you can investigate things that might have gone by the wayside in your history. For me, it was music. It was the spiritual search, things which are important to you but rarely urgent in the everyday life.

9:49DJ DiDonna:I think we all know that there are things we want to get done. And what ends up happening is that the urgent things get most of the due time. And so, you know, it gives you that space to kind of say, what would I be working on if I didn't have this lens of productivity or didn't have to kind of excuse my time on it, and instead indulge in it because it was interesting or fun or important. Well, you mentioned your own experience. Can I ask you about that? Because it's a pretty extraordinary undertaking just any time, far less, as you said, as a sort of as a kind of departure point from the norms of what you were doing.

10:28Can you tell us a bit about about what you did?

10:29DJ DiDonna:Yeah, and I want to make sure to caveat that each person has time and the ability for a different sabbatical over the course of their life, right? Someone who's on gap year with few responsibilities has a very different option set than someone who has a few kids or different responsibilities. So I was at a time in my life where I could really investigate the spiritual search a little bit more. I spent six weeks walking on a Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan, the island of Shikoku, where you visit 88 temples where Kobo Daishi brought kind of Buddhism from mainland China to Japan. So that's like that's the marquee event.

11:06DJ DiDonna:And it certainly is, you know, core memory and experience in my life, which has informed kind of how I live now. And but I think some of the more important things that I did are much more mundane. and taking care of my mother, who was sick at the time, spending a month cooking her meals, being present with her. And in your mid-30s, you just don't get that much time with your family anymore. I also exchanged my kind of Microsoft Excel fingers for swinging a hammer and remodeled a kitchen, built a deck. So things that kind of built up my self-confidence around my ability to interact with the physical world.

11:45DJ DiDonna:So pilgrimage, huge accomplishment for myself, but really it's the smaller, more mundane things that everyone has access to. And those really stuck with me. And I think one of the great achievements in the book is that you obviously tell parts of your own story and you bring your research to the fore, but you also highlight some, I guess, case studies, aren't there? They're use cases about exactly the kind of potential that can be unlocked by these periods. It's always remiss to ask an author to pick a favourite, but I'm going to do it, DJ. Is there a favourite one that to you really embodies the best of this experience that you write about in the book?

12:23DJ DiDonna:Yeah, you're putting me in a tough spot. I would say a favourite because it's so unexpected. Because, listen, everybody knows that a vacation is fun and a long vacation would be more fun. I think what the research showed is that the scope and scale of a sabbatical has a profoundly different impact on folks more at the identity level. But, you know, a successful sabbatical story is interesting. But one of my favorites is there was a career trial lawyer who studied English in college, got married right after college, and went to law school because he felt like that's what he needed to do to support the family.

12:58DJ DiDonna:Worked for 25 years. And, you know, that concept of like, I should have been a writer, I really want to write, just kept coming back in his mind. And so he finally said, that's it, I'm quitting. I'm going to become a writer. And so he quit his job. And that enabled him to, you know, walk his daughters to school, be at home for dinner, which is not something that was possible with his work life. And he spent three months kind of up in the office typing, writing it out. And after three months, he came down, ripped the manuscript up, put it in the trash, forbade anyone from reading it, and said, actually, I don't like doing this.

13:36DJ DiDonna:I'm not great at it. I want to be a lawyer again. And I think that's one of my favorite stories because I think about sabbaticals as regret insurance. And I think a sabbatical gives you enough time and space to try on an identity, try on a thing for size that you'll regret not doing over the course of your life. And for him, he wanted to write the great American novel. And he realized afterwards that he actually was good at what he did. He liked the community that brought him. But he got to say, that wasn't me and I'm glad I tried it. And so I think it's about living a life without regret, more about what you, you know, trying things you wish you would have tried as opposed to regretting doing something that you wish you hadn't.

14:17And TJ, tell me, because it's funny, I'm sat in the UK, you're in, I presume you're in the US. And there's often these conversations around just people's time generally, how scarce their time off is. I know it's typically a little bit less forgiving on your side of the pond, maybe. You hear these horror stories of people, you know, mums back at work in, you know, within a week and this kind of thing. Is there a worry that actually the sabbatical conversation, you know, it's like, oh yeah, let's walk before we can run. Actually, we need to work on work-life balance. We need to look at the day-to-day before we look at these bigger, more impactful sort of breaks or chunks of time.

14:59Or is that a mistake? or actually is there equal benefit at looking at all of these things all at the same time?

15:06DJ DiDonna:Yeah, listen, I think we've been talking about work-life balance and curing burnout and, you know, 15-minute meditation apps for a long time. I don't think there's any evidence that those are really changing the story here. The reason I spent so much of my time in my life studying sabbaticals is because every person who has taken one has also taken a vacation. They have also tried these work-life balance things. And what they're saying is there's profound change that happens in your life, what's called in the research a peak life experience, that informs the rest of your life, that serves as a marking point through which you view the rest of your life in sabbaticals.

15:44DJ DiDonna:And so I'm all for everything that looks like a healthier relationship between work and life, four-day work week, increasingly paid parental leave, which the U.S. is the only high income country in the world that doesn't have mandated government supported paid parental leave. But I think that this solution deserves, it deserves people trying it, deserves people talking about it, who have done so, because giving that example gives people permission and inspiration to do it themselves. And I think if it takes people a few tries to step into it, I hear a lot of folks in the States talk about, you know, four weeks or six weeks, which I remind them is, you know, a European vacation.

16:25DJ DiDonna:But if it takes them as kind of like a gateway drug to get into the practice of just releasing our work identity and the hold that work has on us just for a little bit, you can always return to work. No one's going on sabbatical and never working again. So that's what I'm advocating for. And I wrote the book to give actually some rigorous evidence around it and to present some case studies where it is actually the norm in a lot of societies and a lot of companies, even in the States and a lot of individuals. It's just not the predominant story around how we work and how we live. So working to change that.

17:00No, absolutely. And congratulations on the book, which I think does a great job to deliver to exactly that ambition. Maybe as a final thought, DJ, with the book, with the sabbatical project, that you work in this area more broadly and at the risk of asking you a kind of entrepreneurial type question flashing you back to your sort of former life in fintech. What's the objective? What would make you happy? What would you constitute as a success? Because I guess it's less about, you know, XYZ growth, YOY, et cetera, et cetera. But it's about something that's maybe more abstract. It's maybe more human.

17:34But what would success look like both with the project and with the book now?

17:40DJ DiDonna:Yeah, you nailed it with one of the adjectives you used, which is one word that people kept using to describe their experience was it made them feel more human. And that's kind of like a woo-woo objective. I don't think anyone says, I need to feel more human. I need to take a sabbatical. But you keep coming around to the activities and the feeling and the health and the creativity that it gives you are very human characteristics that we kind of exchange for this maniacal focus on productivity. So I would wish that people would have the experience to feel more human. And I think in order to do that, sabbatical policies need to be equitable, available to everybody.

18:22DJ DiDonna:And we're hoping to try to do that. When I looked at Monocle's website, what I saw was this notion that it's for people who, despite all the challenges, want to venture out into the world. And that's what I would hope for sabbatical takers. Despite all the challenges, venture out into the world, venture back to yourself. And I think it actually has the power to change the world. That was DJ DeDonner, founder of The Sabbatical Project. And you can find out more about the project and DJ's work by heading to thesabbaticalproject.org now. And do be sure to pick up a copy of DJ's new book, Big Time Off, The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One.

19:02It's available now, published by Simon Ackerman.

19:14You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. When people think of Japanese craftsmanship, they often picture centuries-old traditions passed down through generations. Today, a growing number of brands are finding new ways to bring those traditions to audiences around the world. One of them is Yuichi, a company that works with Japanese artisans to create handcrafted porcelain designed to turn everyday rituals into more meaningful experiences. Monocle's Ryuma Takashi spoke with Yuichi founder Peter Galante about building a business and the future of traditional Japanese craftsmanship. We provide very fine ceramics to the worldwide market and we work with artisans in Arita on the island of Kyushu.

20:03For those of you who may not know, Arita has very fine porcelain. We work with master artisans and we don't buy and resell products, but we collaborate to produce products for the current market. So one example is an espresso cup. We found an artisan who would make an espresso cup up until we went there about three years ago. Mostly, the artisan we worked with focused on teacups, coffee cups. But most artisans, they only make what they think a coffee cup should be. So we work with the baristas in Tokyo and we bring the specs, the kind of ideal cups to the artisans and the artisans see. Then they make the cups.

21:04Then we bring the cup back to the Tokyo baristas to confirm that this is the right shape. And then after that, we ask them to produce beautiful pieces, handmade, some handmade element to this. So how did you first discover Arita Wear, Aritayaki? And why did you decide to turn it into a business? In Japan, they have a system called the Furusato no Ose, which is instead of paying tax to, we're in Tokyo. So instead of paying tax, local tax to Tokyo, you can pay to outside of Tokyo. And the place that you pay sends you a thank you reward. and it's usually 30 % on the dollar or 30 % on the 100 yen.

21:48So if you donate 100 ,000 yen, they'll send you back something worth 30 ,000 yen. I used to get many porcelain products from Arita. During COVID, this is when this business started. Everybody's working from home and we were free to travel in Japan very carefully, wearing our masks and and for Arita it was very challenging business-wise. The main sales channels were department stores which were closed and two inbound tourists who could not come to Japan. So there was a small window when I could meet the top artisans in Arita. Normally you can never meet them. But because they were free, I was able to meet with three makers, two of the three makers for the imperial family, the original maker for the imperial family.