Sabbatical helps ambitious people take a mid-career break.

Including:

Frameworks, foundations, and guides so you can get the most out of your break, however long it may be.
Thoughtful interviews and essays about living your life in seasons, not giving up all of your ambition.
100% free of digital nomad slacker nonsense.

If not now, when?

Hi! I’m Sean, the publisher of Sabbatical…

…and I think the way we talk about our careers is broken.

In 2016, my wife and I got married and then promptly quit our jobs to travel and think about the next step in our careers.

Before departing for the trip, I spent weeks looking for guidance and advice for how to make the best use of this truly unique moment in my life. Instead, I mostly found advice on how to be a digital nomad and avoid work and commitment all together. Or "travel hacking” that didn’t quite align with how I saw the opportunities created by traveling.

In 2023, I was back in the same boat. I had worked five years at a high-growth startup and was thinking of taking another break — only to find the discourse around careers hadn’t changed much.

It was still all either “hustle culture” work-all-the-time advice or a kind of “FIRE” / digital nomad approach to avoid work all together.

I started Sabbatical to normalize a third way, to encourage ambitious sprints followed by purposeful periods of rest and reflection in order to live a life more aligned with our values. I wanted to show what was possible and to encourage companies to offer paid sabbaticals as a benefit to their teams.

I’m glad you’re here — I suggest starting out by subscribing to the newsletter. And if you have a sabbatical story of your own, I’d love to feature you in an upcoming issue.

On a Mexican food pilgrimage in Oaxaca

In the Namibian desert

Screaming like a baby while
bungie jumping in NZ.

Sabbatical is for you if…

You are an ambitious professional who loves working hard for the right thing at the right time, but are burned out by hard work for the sake of it.

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You are a People ops or HR leader wondering if a sabbatical benefit is right for your organization.

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Sabbatical Stories

Candid conversations with people who have taken a career break. We cover how they paid for it, what they learned, and what they would do differently.

Interviews

Richard Banfield: Why Wait For Retirement?

Tragedy spurred Richard to adopt a “thin-sliced” retirement approach. One where he builds in thoughtful breaks every few weeks to explore the world, educate his children, and run life experiments.