…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.