I wrote a bit earlier in the year about how holidays are healthy, allowing us to de-stress and get motivated, but Stefan Sagmeister goes quite a bit further. In this TED talk he explains how he closes his New York design studio every seven years for a year-long sabbatical.
Sagmeister talks about the idea that you have around 25 years of your life for learning, around 40 years for working and only 15 years for retirement – the time when we supposedly get to do the relaxing or inspiring or new things we’ve always wanted to do.
Of course this assumes you go to university (I didn’t) and probably that you’ll be able to retire at around 65 (I won’t). For many of us the learning bit is much shorter and the working bit is much longer, so the idea of having a sabbatical every 7 years – basically bringing ‘forward’ a year of your retirement into your working life every 7 years is an attractive one.
The problem of course is that there are very few businesses that could consider such a radical idea – you have to be able to afford it, clearly, and you have to have clients or customers that will come back. While there might be long-term benefits, as Sagmeister explains, the short-term risk and revenue hit would make this impossible for most companies. And if you don’t run your own company, the idea that your employers would be up for this is probably quite unlikely. However, when you see the creative inspiration Sagmeister gets from his time off, and you imagine the possibilities of the things you can do, you can see how amazing it would be to do this.
So, does this concept have to require a full year? Is there something more realistic or achievable, that means somehow perhaps we can find ways to get out of the daily routine and explore how to keep inspired, to refresh creativity and importantly, keep mentally healthy? And how would that differ from a holiday or a day off? It’s a difficult one, when you work 5 days a week, that’s for sure!
