What I Learned from my Sabbatical

What I Learned from my Sabbatical

When doing nothing is the most productive long-term choice

Mike Stein

Oct 06, 2026

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An effective sabbatical isn’t a time when you don’t do anything for your career.

It’s a time when you

do nothing

, for your career.

Art by Anson Maddocks. This image is unofficial Fan Content permitted under the Fan Content Policy. Not approved/endorsed by Wizards. Portions of the materials used are property of Wizards of the Coast. ©Wizards of the Coast LLC.

“But it doesn’t

do

anything!”

“No – it

does

nothing.”

(Hey, good ideas have come from stranger places.)

I took my sabbatical two years ago when I took a leap of faith into both an uncertain job market and an uncertain

me

:

I had no idea what I wanted to do next

. It was a hard step to take and one that I’ve been reflecting on lately as I’ve caught up with old colleagues and, now well beyond that sabbatical, realized what was transformative for me and might work well for others.

Here’s what I learned from mine that could help you shape your career and life goals, even if you aren’t planning to take a sabbatical soon, or ever.

What I did

For over 10 years, my company was moving so fast that the inertia of the chaos became comfortable. There had been so much important work and so many interesting personal growth opportunities that I didn’t really have the time to think about working anywhere else. I had a great decade there, more than anyone could ever hope for.

Then it gradually became clear that I had done everything there was for me to do there. It became harder to find new ways to grow.

Burnout risk reared its head

alongside

other symptoms of cultural decay

. The

rhythms of surges got more unbalanced

. What the business valued most was moving away from what I was best at.

Finding the next exciting thing would, for the first time in ages, require looking elsewhere.

I had worn so many different hats at my company that I didn’t know how to describe myself to the outside world. Trying to find similar role openings for a lateral career move proved surprisingly difficult to fit in, as well as surprisingly unmotivating. I realized that I would need some time away in order to have the space to figure out what I’d want to do next. Even though I didn’t know what the rest of the steps would be, the clear first step was to break the inertia and step away.

So I parted ways and took the following approach to my sabbatical:

First, I maximized unstructured time

. For my entire first week away, I forced myself to set zero intentions, not look for any interviews, and not put anything on my calendar at all. I needed to recharge, but I also needed to start by seeing what I would

want

to do with unscheduled blocks of time, in life at first, before turning that energy to my career.

I, productively,

did nothing

.

Then, I set up as many catch-ups with my network as I could

. I reached out to all of my former coworkers whose skills and interests were even vaguely similar to mine, and I listened to what they had been up to since we worked together. I hoped to find the secret common thread to what people like me are “supposed” to do next.

Throughout, I recentered myself in my home life

. World travel and novel life experiences are a part of many sabbaticals, and if the grand epiphanies you seek may be under waterfalls that need to be chased, then, godspeed. In my case, I had gone on my grand adventures already and I needed smaller epiphanies from the proverbial rivers and lakes of my personal life. I meditated in the mundane while trying out new ways I could invest in myself and my household.

Only after the above were completed and stable, months later, did I resume thinking about my career.

I started not by jumping right back into interviews, but with broad brainstorming about the types of activities I could do. Which were most impactful to the world? Most valuable to the job market? Which best leveraged my skills? My passions? Which of these factors mattered the most for the next phase of my career? This channeled the realizations I had made to reshape my personal life into ideas and philosophies that were worth bringing to my professional life.

What I learned

My unstructured week led me to revise several outdated assumptions I had made about myself, and I continued to grow into them in the semi-structured months to follow. I was surprised that I didn’t find myself drawn to my piano, or even the new stack of books I ordered. Turns out you don’t fully revert to all of your college interests just because you’re not working, but I did realize I wanted to fit competing at strategy games back into my portfolio, and I eventually found new hobbies that doubled as good exercise routines (swimming and pickleball).

More surprising was that I found I was never bored.

I never stumbled upon a limit on how much time I enjoyed being more present and helpful at home, and I never found myself missing contributing to the high-impact, high-velocity missions of my previous work. So this led me to a foundational decision on what my career would look like after the sabbatical: my primary mission for my 40s and 50s is my family, which means working normal hours, not startup hours.

My learnings from catching up with my network and seeing its vast diversity of sizes and shapes of career paths showed this was possible. There turned out not to be a secret common thread on what I was “supposed” to do next. There was one throughline across all of my former colleagues’ current career phases, though.

They were all happy

.

This gave me the confidence and support to cast aside the imagined expectations on myself and to instead forge my own way, following the right balance of skills, passion and impact to my current goal of leveling people up at their operations, through

consulting, coaching

and, of course, writing this newsletter.

Put it into practice

Take time where you can find it, even if it’s not a full sabbatical

. I’d recommend trying to take at least a few weeks between jobs, but even just

carving out some time over the holidays or while on vacation

to run some intentional sabbatical-type exercises can help you regularly reorient your career plan around your evolving big-picture goals.

Make sure you

do

some nothing, too

. Sometimes, you need to give yourself open-ended time to let yourself lead you to what you want. You’ll discover motivations and goals that can be impossible to find when you’re hard at work.

Before your sabbatical ends, decide what you’re keeping

. You learned things about yourself during whatever amount of time away from work you took: hobbies, habits, passions. When you pick your career back up, you probably can’t keep them all.

So, which ones are most important and most worth keeping in your life?

Carve out and protect room for them in your calendar

before

your new responsibilities start pulling on as much of your time as they can get.

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