← The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Why You Should Take a Few Months Off Work (Live from SXSW)
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- [00:00]
Laurie Santos
Behind every successful business is a vision.
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DJ Dodonna
Bringing it to life takes more than effort.
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Laurie Santos
It takes the right financial foundation and support. That's where Chase for Business comes in.
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DJ Dodonna
With convenient digital tools, helpful resources and.
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Laurie Santos
Personalized guidance, they can help your business forge ahead confidently. Learn more@chase.com business chase for business Make More of what's Yours the Chase Mobile app is available for select mobile devices.
- [00:27]
DJ Dodonna
Message and data rates may apply JPMorgan.
- [00:30]
Laurie Santos
Chase Bank NA Member FDIC Copyright 2025.
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DJ Dodonna
JPMorgan Chase & Co. With Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford at the Center Stanford Medicine Children's Health is ranked as one of the top children's hospitals in the nation by U.S. news & World Report. As one of the few healthcare systems in the country dedicated exclusively to pediatric and obstetric care, they have an unwavering commitment to caring for babies, kids and and expectant mothers. Their exceptional care teams have developed treatments that have led to successful outcomes for many children with complex cases that could not be resolved elsewhere. Learn more@stanfordchildrens.org As a happiness expert, I know that mindfulness isn't just about meditation. It's also being present in our choices. And that's why I choose Dietz and Watson. They're family owned and operated and they never cut corners. Ever. They're totally transparent about what goes into their food and what doesn't, and that's why their meats and cheeses taste so great. I use their chicken sausage with no added hormones in my family recipes. With Dietz and Watson, I can be mindful about my meals and my choices. Visit dietzandwatson.com the right way to learn more about the dietz difference. That's dietzandwatson.com therightway pushkin work it consumes a lot of our time and a lot of our mental bandwidth. I bet you've had moments where you've longed for a vacation or even fantasized.
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Unknown
About hitting retirement age.
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DJ Dodonna
But there's another option for taking a.
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Unknown
Break from the grind.
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DJ Dodonna
A decision that can help you recharge and reassess.
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Unknown
It's called a sabbatical. As a professor, I've had the opportunity to take an academic sabbatical every few.
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DJ Dodonna
Years, and I've been very open on the show about just how rejuvenating and.
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Unknown
Important those breaks were.
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DJ Dodonna
But what if you aren't a professor? Can you still take a months long break from your job? It may sound like a pipe dream, but more and more workplaces are coming around to the idea that extended employee leaves are A good thing. So to discuss the rise of the sabbatical and its many benefits, I recorded a live edition of the Happiness lab at the 2025 south by Southwest Festival in Austin. And I got to talk with one of the leading advocates of the modern sabbatical.
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Unknown
Hello and welcome to the Happiness Lab live here at south by Southwest. I am here in front of a fabulous live audience, and we're going to be talking today about the importance of sabbaticals and taking some rest. And I'm excited to introduce my guest today, DJ Dodonna. DJ is senior lecturer at Harvard Business School. In his former career, he was co founder of EF Global. These days, DJ spends his time thinking about sabbaticals and their transformative effects. He's most recently become the founder of the Sabbatical Project, a nonprofit aimed at creating a world where extended leave is the norm rather than the exception. Sounds like a world I want to live in. For sure. DJs work on the transformative benefits of SAB sabbaticals has been labeled Harvard Business Review's new idea for 2025. So I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of sabbaticals this year than before. DJs work has appeared in the Atlantic, Time Magazine, Fast Company, Fortune, the Wall Street Journal, and lots more. And today we're going to be talking about the research behind why an extended break can be so important and what you can do to convince yourself and your employer that you might need one. Please join me in welcoming dj. So, dj, I'm curious how you became such a fan of sabbaticals. As I understand it, this started with a time when you yourself need a sabbatical, a moment that you call your ice cream sandwich moment.
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DJ Dodonna
What was that?
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Laurie Santos
So I entered sabbatical land, as I call it, as most people do, which is unintentionally so. If you don't take a sabbatical, a sabbatical will take you likely. I'd run my company for seven years and I was feeling lower and lower energy, tough to get out of bed, and I was growing even worse facial hair than I have now. And my co founders were like, are you okay? And I think at some point, you know when it was your dream job and you can't get out of bed to do your job, there's a problem. It brings up all certain types of emotions around, like, if this won't make me happy, what will? The ice cream sandwich moment was on a particularly sad kind of weekend. It was Friday, had no plans I was watching a very depressing Netflix series and I was like, I just really want an ice cream sandwich. I lived in Cambridge, and so there's plenty of late night mistakes you can make. But I didn't want to walk into the cookie place late at night on a Friday by myself. So I was like, I'll just place an order for this. And I didn't want the delivery driver to think that I was a loser. So I was like, I'll place two orders for ice cream sandwiches. And so I went down, got the sandwiches, you know, hey, I'll be right down. And I come back, I eat one of them, thankfully not two. And then I'd go to put the kind of pizza box sized thing into the fridge. And I woke up the next morning and my fridge had defrosted and ruined my floors. And I was like, okay, this is the sign that I needed to take a sabbatical. So that's how I entered into sabbatical land.
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Unknown
So you made this decision to take the sabbatical, like, but you are the head of this company that you were loving. Like, was that scary what went through your head as you made that decision?
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Laurie Santos
You know, one of the reasons why folks call it a sabbatical is because it's this tidy term for something that like, feels like your life is ending. Right. And so I think for me, you know, I talked to my co founder and he was feeling a little bit burnt out as well. Especially from the perspective of entrepreneurship. I think if you can't build up an organization that can survive without you after seven or 10 years, you haven't done an awesome job. And so we were both, you know, acknowledging, hey, let's, let's give some time to step away. But honestly, I had no idea what was on the other side. I started it with the pretense that I was going to come back to the company, but I just, I couldn't really continue anymore as was going. So decided to step away. Said four months feels, you know, like the longest time I've ever taken off by a factor of eight. But yeah, so that's what I decided to do.
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Unknown
And so what happened?
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Laurie Santos
So when I think about how I describe my sabbatical, because everyone's sabbatical is different and I don't want to intimidate folks that might not be able to do or want to do the thing that I did, there's like the marquee events. So I did this 800 mile pilgrimage in Japan. I really wanted to investigate on the spiritual side, something that I felt was important, but rarely urgent. Right. So that was kind of like the marquee event. But really some of the more impactful moments on the sabbatical were things that I don't put up on the billboard. So I was nursing one of my parents back to health. So I moved back home at age 32, cooked a lot of meals. I helped a cousin of mine move and another cousin of mine build a deck. So I hung cabinets myself and got to have that experience. And, you know, I wrote my first song. I bought a ukulele on Amazon, which is super embarrassing, and brought it along on the trip. And so I wrote and performed my first song in a place where definitely no one would know me. So that was. That was helpful.
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Unknown
So I think we're going to talk about what you learn from this and some of the benefits soon. But I want to start with some definitions because I'm a nerdy professor and that's where I go. And so how do you define a sabbatical?
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Laurie Santos
So the definition that I think about is an intentional extended leave from your routine job. So intentional, not that you have to have made the decision to take it because most sabbaticals kind of happen to you, but that once you're on sabbatical, you stay there. Right. And so as soon as we leave a job, our new job is to find another job. Right. It's, like, very hard to be in that kind of liminal state between careers, between jobs. So in order for it to be a sabbatical, you got to, like, create space, not look for another job extended. So it has to be measured in months, not weeks. I think we like to say at least three months. I took four. I wish it would have been six. Most people, I think, would like to take between six and 12. Nine is very symbolic because you're kind of like creating something anew and then from your routine job. So most folks, especially type A achievers, probably some in this room will say like, all right, I'm going to go off work and then I'm going to learn how to be fluent in a foreign language or I'm going to write a book or something like that. And what we found in the research is actually that. That active rest. So doing a job that is not your job can actually be fulfilling and healing, as long as it's not similar to your routine job at all. Right? So don't do, like, consulting projects to make a little bit more money. Like, really switch out of your routine job routine work into something that feels fulfilling. So write that book, like become a yoga teacher. Certified. Right. But it has to be very different from what you're doing.
- [09:36]
Unknown
It's kind of a funny word, right? You use this term extended leave. It's not a vacation, it's a sabbatical. It kind of sounds almost old school, like the Bible, like a sabbatical. Right. I mean, is that intentional? Where did this concept come from?
- [09:50]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so the root of the word is ancient, comes from Hebrew scripture, Shabbat. Right. And so this concept that you work for six days and on the seventh day you devote that to worship, that also expanded out into. You're supposed to till the fields for six years and then let them lie fallow for one year. And so that's the notion of the rest. Right. That you have to have rest in some sort of period of time. Then it was kind of taken on by academia. So late 19th century, the President of Harvard, I went through and looked up the notes, like the minutes, the meeting minutes, which is fun. They had done research on, like, how much breaks do faculty need in order to replenish themselves and also to do research. So they would have to go over to Europe to figure out, like, what's actually going on in the academy. And the funny thing about that was that in the definition there, it talked about rest and recovery and. And also pursuit of science and knowledge. And if you look now like the rest and recovery piece is totally dubiously absent from all these kind of academic sabbatical leave policies. But that's the basic history of the terminology. Yeah.
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Unknown
I mean, as a professor, many people in academia get something like a sabbatical. I think it's going away. But this is really rare in other fields, right?
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Laurie Santos
Totally rare. And it's increasingly rare in academia. Right. Folks that are not getting paid for it or it's shrinking down into a semester. Maybe we can talk about your sabbatical later. But it's, you know, about 5% of companies offer this policy. It's much more prevalent, you know, in kind of like tech and companies where they're really trying to recruit talent and retain talent. It's increasing. So it's doubled since 2019. And it seems to be increasing over time, but still definitely the minority, especially like a paid sabbatical with some sort of benefits and that sort of thing.
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Unknown
And so you've done this cool project where you've been studying sabbaticals scientifically. You've done hundreds of interviews, dozens of different academic studies from your research. I' curious, who is taking sabbaticals and why are they taking them.
- [11:46]
Laurie Santos
So when I first started out, I thought I was the customer. And so people who are in their mid-30s and 40s who burn out take sabbaticals. And then what I started to realize is that folks are starting as early as kind of gap years. They're tagging along with their parents, sabbaticals. So when I thought about the research in the book, it's kind of going from gap years to twilight careers. So kind of like pre retirement type age. So it's really anyone that either has something forced upon them or takes this opportunity to take time off, I think gap years are a great example of that.
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Unknown
And so why are they taking them? Like, what happens?
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Laurie Santos
Yeah, you know, 2/3 of sabbaticals are catalyzed by a very negative event. So either a personal health crisis or you get fired, or, you know, let's say like a global calamity or pandemic forces you to think about work totally differently. And then there's also positive catalysts, right? So you sell your company, you get like a kind of employment leave, things like that. And then I like to say this neutral catalyst of if you have a company, if you work for a company with a sabbatical policy, then you get to take that time off and you don't even have to think about it. And you know, there are a lot of companies that offer that. And then also countries that enable people to do it. Like in Sweden, you can take six months off to try to start a business. In Australia, if you're a civil servant, you get six months off every seven years.
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Unknown
Man, I didn't realize there are countries that were doing this. That is exciting. And that also reminds me that your research has shown that there's lots of misconceptions when it comes to sabbaticals. So let's go through some of these. I think when I think of sabbaticals, I first think maybe we're just dealing with like a longish vacation. How is the sabbatical different than that?
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Laurie Santos
So everyone who has taken a sabbatical has also taken a vacation. And they're saying that something profoundly different is going on. When you're on vacation, all the things you're on vacation from are piling up in the back, right? Your inbox is piling up. You know that you have to come back to work and get things done. When you're on sabbatical, you're gone long enough so that those things are off of your plate. So you can actually kind of deepen into what's going on and you don't have to worry about what's happening at work.
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Unknown
So different misconception is this idea that sabbaticals are basically a midlife crisis. It's your freak out. You don't know what you're doing. You're burning out. Like, I guess that's maybe part of some sabbaticals, but that doesn't define it.
- [14:00]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So we talked about the times when people take the sabbaticals over the course of their life, and we talked about whether or not you take a sabbatical or sabbatical takes you. So that can certainly be the case where you're living a life that doesn't feel authentic to you long enough that you feel like you have to kind of burn the boats and, like, cast off lines. I think I was a little precocious in my midlife crisis, like, a little bit earlier than midlife, hopefully. You think about it like a dental cleaning appointment. You want to take these cleaning appointments. We don't love them, but you try to take them every six months so that you don't have a root canal emergency. So the whole goal of this is, can you identify inflection points in your life to take them off as opposed to waiting for some big crisis to pull you into sabbatical land?
- [14:41]
Unknown
All right, here's another misconception that I think comes on the employer side. The idea that a sabbatical is basically just a golden parachute. Like, you take a break from a job that you're thinking about basically getting the heck out of anyway. Is this the case?
- [14:54]
Laurie Santos
So what we found in the research is that the super majority of people that take a sabbatical that's enabled by their company come back. So over 80% come back to their job. So it's not really a golden parachute. Now people do leave. But the difference, and we can get more into this around kind of what's in it for companies. The difference is you are spending a bunch of time preparing the company to do all the tasks that you're doing before you leave on sabbatical. And so you're kind of like preparing the company for you to be gone. And you're also like, allowing the company to see, like, what are all the things that you do, who else could be doing it, who could be stepping up in your midst, things like that. So not really a golden parachute, but people do leave. I think the argument is, if someone's going to leave as soon as you let them out of the door and off the leash, were they doing great Work.
- [15:38]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [15:39]
Laurie Santos
And.
- [15:39]
Unknown
But do we have data on it? Like how many people actually take off after a sabbatical?
- [15:43]
Laurie Santos
About 20%. Yeah.
- [15:45]
Unknown
So it's non zero, but it's not like 80% or 100%.
- [15:48]
Laurie Santos
And you know, 100% of the people who don't have a sabbatical policy at work are taking off to take a sabbatical. Yeah, right.
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Unknown
That's fair. That's fair. And that gets to a different misconception, which is this idea that sabbaticals are sort of costly for businesses, but you've argued a better way to think about them as an investment. What do you mean?
- [16:04]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, I think, listen, as I was saying about an entrepreneurial company, if it can't survive without you leaving it as a leader, that's a problem. Similarly, turnover is just something that happens. Like how many people here have left a job? Right.
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Unknown
That was a lot of hands for the listeners.
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Laurie Santos
Haven't left a job. So people are going to leave anyway. And as a company, you have to be prepared. You have to be resilient to survive turnover. People are going to quit, they're going to go on parental leave. And so it is practice. It's like building a muscle of figuring out what tasks you have, offloading them onto other people and really kind of investing in that muscle as a company.
- [16:39]
Unknown
So when we get back from the break, we're going to see why a sabbatical can be such a helpful investment, not just for the person taking it, but even more for the company that allows it. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.
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DJ Dodonna
With Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Stanford. At the center Stanford Medicine Children's Health is ranked as one of the top children's hospitals in the nation by U.S. news & World Report. As one of the few healthcare systems in the country dedicated exclusively to pediatric and obstetric care, they have an unwavering commitment to caring for babies, kids and expectant mothers. Their exceptional care teams have developed treatments that have led to successful outcomes for many children with complex cases that could not be resolved elsewhere. Learn more@stanfordchildrens.org it's that time of year when we all get the spring cleaning home improvement bug. And Wayfair is the best kept secret for all things renovation. My living room needed a serious refresh. I needed some pillows and art that wouldn't break the bank, but would still look kind of like me. I couldn't believe what I found on Wayfair. They had these amazing soft pillows that perfectly fit my vibe. And the selection was so huge that I spent just an hour looking at options before choosing one. The best part? When my new pillows arrived, they were even better than in the pictures. And every time I sit down, I feel like I'm in a totally new home. If you're thinking about tackling a home improvement project this season without the hassle, Wayfair has everything you need. Wayfair even carries top brands like GE and Moen at surprisingly affordable prices. Plus, it's so convenient. Delivery is free even for the big stuff, and they can help you set up your new items. Shop the best selection of home improvement online. Get renovating with wayfair. Head to wayfair.com right now. That's W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair Every style, every home this show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Therapy can feel like a big investment. You've got to get those sessions into your schedule. Take the time to learn the skills you need to feel better. And you've got to pay for it. That's a lot, but it's kind of like going to the gym and your state of mind is just as important as your physical health. Let's talk numbers. Traditional in person therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 per session, which adds up fast. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. With BetterHelp, you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, saving you big on cost and on time. Therapy should feel accessible, not like a luxury. And now it's within reach. Therapy can be helpful for learning positive coping skills. It can help you set boundaries and empower you to be the best version of yourself. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform. BetterHelp is convenient too. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus you can switch therapists at any time. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.comlaurie to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp h l p.comlauri l a u R I E. You're listening to a live edition of the Happiness Lab recorded at south by Southwest 2025 with my friend, the Sabbatical Expert, DJ Dedona.
- [20:04]
Unknown
I started this next section of the.
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DJ Dodonna
Show by asking DJ to give us a breakdown of the average sabbatical and to explain how the benefits of taking a break tend to unfold.
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Laurie Santos
Yeah, so from a personal perspective, I think you can Expect a lot of things. And if you're coming into the sabbatical super burnt out, then you probably need to heal. And that's going to be the first thing that you get. So in the research, in my interviews, I talked to a ton of people that had some sort of physical ailment, whether it's ulcers, stomach, gastro stuff. And they've been told by doctors this is stress related. But until they actually stepped away from work long enough for that to heal, they couldn't kind of grok that right. So I think healing is one of the first things. Creativity is one of the next things. So you're taking time off and you're doing whatever you want to do. And that ends up kind of reigniting a lot of creativity. For me, it was writing silly songs on ukulele. But whatever you would like to do, we think about working on ourselves as work as opposed to play. So there's this concept of identity play as helping you kind of run little experiments, figure out what you want to do next. And then I think confidence is a huge one. No matter if you have a sabbatical policy at your company or not, it's pretty scary to launch off for an extended period of time. I'd never taken more than a couple weeks off work since, I don't know, middle school. And so to take four months off, that's scary. Especially if you're leaving your job. What are you going to do on the other side of it, that sort of thing. And so being able to do something that seems scary and then come back and say, actually I'm fine, really builds up people's confidence to take big steps and big leaps. It's also hopefully running experiments on your sabbatical to say, oh, I thought that I wanted to write and I actually like writing. And so that builds up confidence in the ability to do it.
- [21:47]
Unknown
And it seems like from your research, when you talk to people, these benefits are really common. This is just what you hear everybody.
- [21:53]
Laurie Santos
Who takes sabbaticals saying, yeah, I mean, it's funny because I came back from my sabbatical and I said that was really changed who I was as a person. So this kind of identity was enmeshed with my company. And if the company was successful, I was successful. If it wasn't, I wasn't. And so I was able to kind of break free from that. But I wanted to check to make sure it wasn't just my experience. And so the more folks that I talked to, the more you just kept hearing these terms like, peak life experience. It's up there with, like, having a child, like, getting married. So you're creating an event for yourself that will be one of the most important events of your entire life.
- [22:28]
Unknown
It also seems like you take time to notice the things that you're not doing. You've talked a lot in your work about this idea of functional workaholism and how a sabbatical can help you penetrate into that a little bit. What do you mean?
- [22:39]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so we talk a lot about burnout. I view burnout as a spectrum. So you're kind of like. You're, like, burning out, right? You're existing on a spectrum where you're not doing your best, not feeling great. That's kind of hard to realize unless you step out from it. And stepping out, I'm assuming you've all had the experience where you go on a vacation for a week, and right at the end, you're like, oh, man, I was just sinking into it. And then you have to plop back into work. So stepping out long enough to say, wow, the way that I was working and the way that I was living was actually not serving me. And I wanted to just step out of that for a little bit. I might want to make a big change. But obviously, people's experience of COVID varied widely. But I think a lot of folks saw, oh, man, now that I'm back at home with my family, I actually want to do that more. And, like, the way that I was kind of returning back to my family or, you know, even how I was working was not really great. So you needed some perspective and a long enough break from the norm to understand that.
- [23:29]
Unknown
It also seems connected to this idea you've talked about called regret insurance. Right. Maybe a benefit that comes later in life. What's that?
- [23:37]
Laurie Santos
Imagine you're the age of your grandparents, and you're telling your grandkid a story. What do you want to have in that story? Bronnie Ware, who is a palliative care nurse, talks about the five regrets of the dying and this notion that you have not lived a life authentic to yourself. If you close your eyes real quick and think, like, what would I want to do with my life if I could do anything? Can that happen in the life that you're living now? Maybe, but probably not. Like, it takes a little bit of time, and taking six months off in the scheme of working for 40 years is just not that much time. It's less than. It's like 2%.
- [24:10]
Unknown
I mean, if you knew, then what you knew now, would you still choose the sabbatical? Would you do it differently?
- [24:14]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, actually, one of the things that spurred me into taking my sabbatical was advice from a mentor. I went into that mentor's office and I was complaining, hey, this is hard. This is tough. The company's not working as much as I would like it to be or whatnot. And he said, dj, if you knew then all the things you know about your life and your company now, would you join that company again tomorrow? And it was very clear. I was like, absolutely not. And so I think the tough part about our lives is it's lived kind of with this inertia. You've made a bunch of small decisions, and all of a sudden you find yourself in this path. And so I guess encouraging you to think about, would you want to return to this exact life? And if not, how are you going to run experiments to figure out what other track you need to be on? So, long way to answer your question. But I look back at that time and it's the most dense period of memories in my entire life. It was eight years ago, right now. I was walking in Japan. And so that will serve me, I think, for the rest of my life.
- [25:07]
Unknown
So it seems like sabbaticals are serving the people who take them. But now I really want to jump into these benefits that employers can get, because I think this is one of the reasons that sabbaticals aren't just equal for everyone, that not every company is doing this right. I think employers are really worried about whether this is going to be incredibly costly for companies. We talked a little bit about some of these benefits, but I want to do a deeper dive. Like, what are companies really getting out of this when they set up sabbatical policies?
- [25:30]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, I think it's a great point in the sense that the best case scenario is that a sabbatical that doesn't require you to blow your life up, doesn't require you to save up for 10 years, is possible because your company values you enough to do it. And so all of us who work at companies who are managers are also people. So we're taking our people hat off and putting our company hat on. So this resilience is just a huge piece, like having a company be able to withstand what they call key person risk. One of the interviewees was the principal and founder of this boarding school in South Africa, and he'd been there from day one. It was 10 years in, and he stepped aside for six months because his spouse was doing a degree in Europe and by stepping away, he was able to see that some of the things ran really well in his absence, maybe even a little bit better. The operations side and then other stuff like fundraising fell off an absolute cliff. And so the organization got to see what it was like when he stepped away. And junior folks got to step up into roles and have kind of career stretch experiences. But also he got to figure out, like, okay, if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, like, this thing is going to fail, and that's not great. And so really developing the resilience to say, okay, if I do want to transition out, what kind of skills do I need to kind of manage inside of the organization? So I think tenure and loyalty to the company. We talk a lot about people finding meaning at work, but at the end of the day, I'm sorry, most companies cannot provide a ton of meaning and purpose. And so, yeah, yeah, and that's fine. That's fine. But I think what the company can do is they can give you time to yourself to do the thing that's meaningful for you. I think the impact of that is that people have more loyalty to the company. One of our interviewees was from the US treasury, but they had this long service leave policy where you can take six months off, and she got to go and do, like, mountaineering and trekking in Latin America. And it was long enough to say, I like trekking, I like being on vacation, but I also really like the work, you know, international development work. She was not planning on having a family. She's like, I appreciate the ability to step outside of my work for a stretch and become kind of appreciative of that work again. And I know I can do it every seven to 10 years. So that kind of like, loyalty. And I also think that creates authentic company culture because there's a financial advisory firm in Seattle called Brighton Jones that has these sabbaticals every 10 years, and people come back and they're doing like a slideshow of their sabbatical. And everyone's excited for those folks because they know they get it as well. And so the company values you as a whole human being. And also they get to celebrate your experience because they know they get to take it, which is different than someone being like, I had a great honeymoon. You're like, oh, man.
- [28:10]
Unknown
You've also argued that it can help employees increase their innovation over time. And it's not necessarily that they're skills building, although that happens in some cases with sabbaticals. It's more just that time off builds this innovation.
- [28:23]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So one of the interviewees was the CTO of a tech company, stepped away and was engaging this kind of identity play I talked about. So was a developer in college, but had really not played around with mobile app development and so was like futzing around and created this app to help text to speech folks. Right. And so that turned into being a company that he started, started from just wanting to learn and play. I think this play muscle is really underutilized and I think it's really important to have folks step away and regenerate their ability to solve problems creatively because you don't know what's coming around the corner as technology accelerates. So you have to be able to see outside of the box.
- [29:04]
Unknown
And that's helpful for companies when people come back too, I assume.
- [29:07]
Laurie Santos
Totally. Yeah. I mean, you have to solve problems inside of companies. Right.
- [29:10]
Unknown
And so it started to seem obvious that the sabbaticals are a good idea for workers. They're a good idea for companies, probably a good idea for like society and us as people. Right, right, right. But only 5% of non academic companies are doing this. And so, DJ, this is now your life's mission, your dream, to make sabbaticals more equitable. But to do that, we have to overcome all the barriers that we and our employers feel when it comes to giving us a sabbatical. And we're going to get to those barriers when we come back from the break. The Happiness Lab live from south by Southwest. We'll be right back.
- [29:51]
DJ Dodonna
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- [31:41]
Laurie Santos
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- [32:38]
DJ Dodonna
Sabbaticals.
- [32:39]
Unknown
Seem like a good idea, but let's go through some of the worries that people have when considering a sabbatical or just the actual barriers that come up when you detonate your life for six months. In some ways, one of these barriers is that Optics right? I think people are really worried about what this is going to look like. Is that something that you experienced?
- [32:57]
Laurie Santos
When I first thought about what the barriers were around seven years ago, Optics was one of the biggest ones. So what are people going to think about the fact you took time off that has changed significantly since then? I think one of the enabling features is that LinkedIn introduced a career breaks role that you could put in, which is tremendous. So hundreds of thousands of people now proudly talk about their career breaks. The other thing is just like the story about a successful business and a successful life is also changing. So people are starting to hear in addition to the CEOs running multiple companies sleeping under the desk thing, they're starting to realize that folks like Steve Jobs was studying calligraphy for a year. And you have the CEO of Impossible Foods figured out his company on sabbatical. There's actually a lot of roles for you to kind of find that creative energy when you step away. The other thing I think about, if you're interviewing for a job and you tell them that you took a career break and they disqualify you for the position, that's a great sign that maybe you didn't want to work at that company. It's like a kind of a revealed preference. And also, I've also found that in interviews, people want to talk about, oh, you traveled for six months, what did you do? What was your favorite? That makes you an interesting person. And it also shows that you had the courage and self confidence to take time off and do something for yourself, which I think the majority of people are going to be like, that's awesome. I want this person on the team.
- [34:18]
Unknown
So it seems like the story is changing, but it also seems like we need to change the story in our own heads. Part of the problem of optics seems like it's what we think other people are going to judge us about, but it also is a lot about what we're judging ourselves about too.
- [34:31]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. I did a study of my Harvard business school classmates 10 years out, and 90% of people were concerned about how a career break would look. And less than 5% of people actually cared whether or not someone took a career break. So it's this weird dynamic where you assume that people might take you less seriously, but it's just not the case. And the way to kind of solve that, in our research, we identified this concept called exemplars, which is fancy for examples. So, like, find an example in your life. Someone that looks like you, someone that has a similar job to you, who has taken this time off so that you can actually see for yourself, like, oh, I'll be fine on the other side.
- [35:07]
Unknown
I love that example because it seems like part of the problem with sabbaticals is for many people, this is just going to be the first time you're letting yourself do something that's not work for any stretch of time whatsoever.
- [35:19]
Laurie Santos
It's very uncomfortable. It's not a natural feeling. It kind of creates a vacuum because you had all these responsibilities. And even though you want to not be checking email when all of a sudden you're cut off from email in your calendar the first Part of sabbaticals can be difficult. And that's one part I think folks don't get. Like, you're on sabbatical, must be amazing. And you're actually beating yourself up about leaving, not knowing what you're going to do next. And so it is like an identity transformation. And in order to transform yourself, you got to really do some thinking and some breaking apart of who you are.
- [35:52]
Unknown
Okay. So that's the optics internally and externally. Another big one just practically is responsibility. We have professional responsibilities, personal responsibilities. We're like logistical challenges. How did you navigate this stuff and what are some suggestions?
- [36:09]
Laurie Santos
So I think that almost no one can throw all of their responsibilities off tomorrow. Right? And so if you treat it like an emergency root canal, like, that's difficult. If you say, what is everyone here in this room doing in 2031? Like, no one has any idea, Right? So if you say, like, in 2031, I'm taking six months off and you work towards that. And 2031 is coming up, actually, yeah.
- [36:31]
Unknown
2031 is not very far away, but it's going to be awesome for the folks in this room because everybody started nodding when you said that. 2031, right.
- [36:37]
Laurie Santos
So if you can set some time in the future and say, like, I'm committing to take six months off, then all of a sudden you can save up for it. You can signpost it with your employers and it's not a big deal. This is just part of who I am. I take six months off six years from now. The other thing is, you hear a lot about responsibilities. I have kids, like, they have. Like, how am I going to pull them out of school, put them back in school time and time again? It's difficult. But the people who have children who take sabbatical have the most inspiring stories, hands down, because they'll say stuff like, I just had begun to think about my kids as a set of responsibilities and tasks, like, take them here, pick them up from here. When in actuality, what's happening is people are showing their kids what is astronomy. Oh, you're seeing the stars from Patagonia. Seeing them and getting excited about that. Like, what is zoology? And you're going to the Serengeti and you're seeing, like, animals up close. What is geology? You're in the Grand Canyon. And so it enables you to see the world through their eyes and actually give them an experience that will sit with them for their entire life. There's a movie called Blink that we saw. I don't know if you've Seen it, but distributed by Nat Geo. And it's this family in Quebec where they have, I think, three or four kids that have this kind of ocular degeneration disease. And so they only have a certain amount of time that their kids are going to be able to see the world. And so they decided to take a year off so the kids could absorb as many images about the world as possible. So I think about that taking it from a responsibility that you have to take care of to a responsibility to allow your kids or you and your spouse or yourself to get to experience the world in a different way than our just routine life.
- [38:12]
Unknown
I also think that it's probably really great for parents to show kids and to model, like, be that exemplar for taking some time off and also just, like, not be so burned out around their kids. Like, I do worry with some of, like, my adult friends with kids that those are kids that have only ever seen their parents super stressed out. And I feel like it must just be rejuvenating for kids to see parents taking time off, too.
- [38:33]
Laurie Santos
Absolutely. You have to model this behavior. Right. And I actually have two good friends who are on sabbatical in Kenya right now. And just seeing them kind of go from having groceries delivered, meals delivered, like, no time to do anything, into, like, teaching their kids how to ride bikes, you know, it's just. It's really inspiring. And life is too short. Right. Again, a silver lining of the pandemic for many people is that you realize that life is fragile and it's short, and you just can't bet on 2031 even. Who knows? So maybe you should set it to 2029 when you take your sabbatical.
- [39:04]
Unknown
Yeah, we got to get. To get it in as soon as possible. Okay. So we've talked about optics, we've talked about responsibility. I think the elephant in the room when it comes to sabbaticals is cost. Right. Just financially. I think if you survey most people, my guess is most people are going to say, that sounds awesome, but it's just completely out of reach. How do we solve for this?
- [39:23]
Laurie Santos
So, I mean, the first and obvious answer is that if this is supported by companies, countries, like our culture, then it's not a problem at all. And if you can plan in advance. Right. So a couple people from the study were teachers. They had taken a sabbatical right. Before they got married and backpacked around the world. So we want to do this when our kids are a certain age. So they saved up for 10 years because it was important to them, and they did it. And it turned out, actually they drove a Land Rover across to the tip of South America from Arizona. And it turned out that there was so much maintenance with the Land Rover that the guy got really good at it. And he came back and he was like, I actually want to start a Land Rover business. So now he refurbishes Land Rovers and takes people on tours. But, yeah. So if you're thinking about it as something that has to happen tomorrow, very few people can afford it. If you're planning it out and saying, this is important to me, I'm going to save 5% a year, then it's not that big of a deal. The other thing I would say is that I've heard this over and over again where when you're at a company, your raises are kind of on a schedule. It's like, you get a 5% raise, or here's what you're eligible for when you switch jobs, you actually get paid a lot more because you're being valued at the market rate for your skills. And so lots of folks are saying, I quit my job. They wouldn't give me a sabbatical. I joined another company and I got a raise. So that essentially made the sabbatical free. So your mileage may vary, but that's a dynamic that we kind of get trapped in as we've been at a company for a long time.
- [40:51]
Unknown
You've also noted that it's also just worth asking because lots of companies have policies that are like this that might be hidden or not talked about, too.
- [40:58]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, there's these secret policies. I think that if you want to do it and you're kind of set on it, and you're like, listen, I'm either leaving or they're giving me a sabbatical, like, at that point, you're going to leave. And so you can talk frankly with your manager about this. And I've seen this many times where someone says, all right, let's work this thing out. Can we wait a year so we can prep the team? Okay, cool. How about, like, we're not going to give you full pay, but how about partial pay? Or how about just retaining benefits? And what we find is that most people, if you just retain benefits, because that's the scary thing, they can save up for it. And so, again, how far in advance are you planning on doing it? But I would talk to people who aren't your manager first and try to find an exemplar, and then you can kind of broach that subject and One of the reasons why we have kind of a support group on Facebook and LinkedIn where you can ask other people what their best practices were in doing it. You can find people who maybe worked in your industry or in your company who have taken it. So that's helpful.
- [41:51]
Unknown
Okay, so this is how kind of personally we can sort of fight some of the barriers. Let's talk about maybe some of the structural barriers. Hopefully there are folks in the room who are themselves employers, maybe big CEOs of companies who are hearing about these benefits and want to start offering sabbatical policies or want to develop a company policy that can help folks do this. What do employers actually need to make sabbaticals a thing?
- [42:12]
Laurie Santos
So in order to make it equitable for folks, it's got to have to be paid. Right. So allow people to be able to take it and not take a huge financial hit. I think in order to make it successful, the worst thing that can happen is you roll out a sabbatical policy and it's too short or you don't allow your employees to disconnect and then you've had people who are gone from the workplace and then also haven't gotten the benefits. And so give folks enough time, ideally months. You know, what we found in the research is that it takes about six to eight weeks for you to really become yourself again. Think about that. You take a two week vacation up to two months to really feel like, oh, I'm me. I'm not just this collection of jobs and responsibilities. So give them enough time and ensure disconnection. So best practice, disable the email autorespond. You'd be surprised if you have an autoresponder says, I'm coming back to the office in September. I'm deleting this entire inbox. Like email me in September. Folks will just email you in September. It's not the end of the world. So disconnection, I think duration and support.
- [43:13]
Unknown
So you've also talked about some ways that companies can make this the norm or make this scene as like not a bad thing to do. What are some ways that companies can do that?
- [43:19]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so the norm that exists is this so called work devotion norm where people are kind of like feel like they have to be devoted to work. They can't be seen as taking time off. This is why things like unlimited vacation, which is a total boondoggle, doesn't work because you don't see people taking time off and so then you don't feel like you can take it. So I think the first thing that leaders can do is take the breaks themselves to kind of model this. So Sweden also has. Man, Sweden's getting a lot of love this episode. Sweden also has kind of world leading paternity leave. And what they found is that even though you get paid paternity leave, fathers wouldn't take it unless their bosses took it. You got to model that behavior, you got to celebrate it inside the company in order for folks to take it.
- [44:01]
Unknown
What are some examples of positive impacts on organizations for their leaders? Is it just the people at the top that benefit from this or do you also see frontline workers taking these things and benefiting?
- [44:10]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so it's a lot more rare to have folks across the spectrum of the organization just because of the financial responsibilities and things like that. So I talked to this startup called Skylight. At the beginning stages of a startup, if you've ever worked for one or started one, no one's taking a sabbatical at the beginning, but if you can get through the first like four or five years, then you can make some space. And so the CEO Michael, their first employee, was just really burnt out and so allowed her to take two months off, come back. And then during that time, it's a little bit cheating on the sabbatical, but she had investigated a bunch of AI tools and got trained up. And so she was able to bring that back, which was integrated into the product and actually made it quite successful and kind of changed the trajectory of it. The other example that I like to tell is there's a CEO Cheryl Johnson of this organization in Detroit, so the Coalition to End Homelessness. And there's funders that fund nonprofits in places like Detroit, Louisiana, San Francisco, Boston. They convince the boards of nonprofits to allow their leaders and their employees to take time off and they fund it. Right. And so the point of that, again, to prevent this key person risk at a nonprofit where the leader is super important, charismatic. And so they're like convincing these boards to let these nonprofit employees leave because, like burnout started in the care sector, right. Among like nurses, healthcare workers, nonprofit leaders. If you really care about your job, you don't want to leave it because you feel like you're letting people down. And so I think in the nonprofit industry, actually you see that a lot as well.
- [45:40]
Unknown
You've also seen some of these creative solutions that some jobs have come up with. You talked about this idea of a prebaticle, which I think is actually a kind of clever one. What's that?
- [45:49]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, so this came from the great resignation Everyone was like, I quit my job. It's amazing. And then a lot of people got really, you know, nice offers at other companies and other jobs. And so, like, actually, I'm just going to start this other job. And I think it's kind of foolish to think that your burnout from a job is going to, like, end just because you joined another job.
- [46:08]
Unknown
Yes. You take your box, and by the time you get to the car, the burnout's over, Right? Yeah.
- [46:11]
Laurie Santos
You're running on adrenaline. Right. So you're bringing, like, the adrenaline over. But I think companies actually benefit from ensuring that people take time off. And the easiest sabbatical to take is if, like, you have a job. So I teach at a business school, and, like, you get a job at a consulting firm and you can push your offer so you know that you have a job coming out of it and you don't have to worry about money. And so I think, like, allowing folks to make sure they come into your organization not burned out, excited to hit the ground running, is a great one.
- [46:40]
Unknown
All right, so let's say somebody's listening right now and they're convinced it's time. They're ready to overcome all these barriers. The extended break is what they want to do. What are some practices for the sabbatical? Curious who are ready to hit go on actually taking a break.
- [46:54]
Laurie Santos
So I think the first thing is you got to ask around. So try to find an exemplar. I think setting the container for a sabbatical is super important. So I don't really want to give people guidance on their particular sabbatical, but you got to, like, set enough time. You have to ensure that you are disconnected enough. And partially that means traveling, if you can. So getting out of your geographic space, and partially that just means getting out of your routines, because that's a vacuum at the beginning of your sabbatical when you subtract all of your responsibilities. It can help to have some structured things, especially at the beginning of your sabbatical. Like, you want to do something gets you out of your head and into your body. Yoga, teacher training, pottery. Like, stuff where you're using your hands.
- [47:34]
Unknown
Hiking, building cabinets, we heard.
- [47:36]
Laurie Santos
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Do not suggest going to ikea. It's not stressful. Getting out of your head and into your body and thinking about the phases of a sabbatical as healing at the beginning and then experimentation in the middle and then integration at the end. So really, like, finding these, what they call, like, counterfactual experiments. Like, what would my life Be like, if I did this versus what I'm doing now. One of my favorite stories was a consultant who would take a sabbatical every four years. And he was like, when I retire, I want to run an eco lodge. And so he spent a sabbatical volunteering, working in the kitchen, working in the back office of eco lodges, and was like, this is actually not for me. Right. And so running these experiments so that you don't have regrets later in life.
- [48:19]
Unknown
You've also talked about the importance of using your sabbatical to focus on relationships. I know why this is so important. From the happy to science. The science just shows that social connection is so critical for happiness. But why can this be so important and transformative in a society? Sabbatical, specifically?
- [48:33]
Laurie Santos
A, I think you can go too far inwards. And so I think about sabbaticals as having three archetypes. There's like, the achievers that really want to get something done, kind of type A folks, B, the explorers. So people that just want to, like, see the world and explore outwards and also like, more seekers that want to find out, like, I wanted to do that spiritual journey. So, like, and then there's, like, folks that need kind of healing. And so, you know, one of the tough things is that you. You spend so much time thinking about yourself and what you want because, like, you're parched. You want to, like, go out and do all the things that you end up just focusing solely on yourself for happiness, like, focusing on relationships is important. It gets you out of your head and into more, like, what do we actually care about? Like, what are we doing here? And then second, I think as you. As you get older, right? Like, everyone has their own schedules and you're trying to, like, align stuff. And so this allows you to take the scheduling hassles of one side of that equation and take it away so you can actually plug into someone else's life in their convenience. So it can kind of like spur and catalyze and refresh these relationships that might have, like, run a little dry.
- [49:35]
Unknown
That's so interesting is some of the Happiness Lab fans know. I quite famously took this my own sabbatical when I was feeling really burned out. And I think one of the unexpected benefits was this sort of relationship building. Mostly because of that schedule issue that you just mentioned.
- [49:49]
Laurie Santos
Right.
- [49:49]
Unknown
I wanted to see a friend or catch up, and they were like, when can you meet? I was like, 1e time. Like, I got nothing going on. Right. And that was just transformative, right? Because it meant that Those meetings and those relationships actually got built and that those connections actually happened.
- [50:03]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. There's all these things that we say are important, we know are important, but we don't make time for. I talked briefly about this urgent versus important kind of dynamic. So I'd urge you to think about, like, what are important relationships that you haven't given a lot of love to? Like, what are important things that you want to do in your life and take stock. Be like, how old am I? How many years have I been working? How many times have I taken the chance to do some of those things? And I'm guessing the answer is pretty rarely. And so figure out, okay, you have to make the time to do it. So relationships are one of those.
- [50:35]
Unknown
And so any advice for how to pick what to do? Because I think, especially if you're entering the sabbatical for that period of healing, if you're feeling really burned out and you're thinking, like, now is my time to find my passion, that can kind of feel a little bit exhausting. But you've talked about we shouldn't be going for passion. We should focus on tiny curiosities. How does that work?
- [50:53]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. So, full disclosure, I took this from Elizabeth Gilbert. Like, she talked about, chasing your passions is stressful. What if you don't know what your passion is? What if your passion doesn't fulfill you and instead just thinking about what you're curious about? And so if you're like, I've always wanted to be a master potter, and then you spend your entire time trying to find someone to apprentice with, that can be devastating when it turns out you're. You're not good at pottery? As opposed to saying, like, what is it like to travel on this part? Or for me, what would it be like to hang cabinets? Even though I have no idea what I'm doing? And it was okay.
- [51:25]
Unknown
It seems like it's kind of getting back to that play mindset. Like, you don't have to do your sabbatical perfectly to kind of get some huge benefit out of it.
- [51:33]
Laurie Santos
Yeah. And I think actually this is going to sound trite, but the mistakes are part of the thing. Right. So there was a person from our study who was like, I really want to learn backcountry skiing. And so they moved to British Columbia for a couple months. I got these lessons, got certified. And then they eventually found themselves tracking, like, how many vertical feet have I skied each day? And they had, like, a spreadsheet. And then they realized, like, oh, I'm the problem here. The Way I attack things is the problem, not like the job. And so even if you sub out of that job, do you want to work on yourself or do you want to just take who you are and say, okay, I want to actually attack some other problem I'm passionate about with the same energy and vigor.
- [52:13]
Unknown
And so, as folks are thinking about sabbatical right now, in the middle of 2025, when we're having this conversation, I think there's also an interesting question about not just how do we take sabbatical, but should we be taking sabbatical when the world feels like it's literally on fire? What's the advice for that?
- [52:29]
Laurie Santos
I think this goes back to the burnout and caretaker piece. Right. So put your oxygen mask on before your kids. You need perspective as to what's actually going on, what's important for you, and to get the resources to kind of take a different tack. Right. And so I think it's an opportunity to step back and I think it's a great opportunity in a time of where you're feeling not so great to say, who do I want to be in this next phase of my life and what skills or direction do I need to take in order to get there?
- [52:59]
Unknown
Okay. So I'm watching the clock tick down in an extreme way, which means we've got to get to our parting thoughts. So parting thoughts on why we need this life and career investment and why we should take sabbaticals more seriously.
- [53:12]
Laurie Santos
I mean, back to the regret insurance, I would just really think about what are some things that you would like to have as a part of your life story and actually document those, like write them down in a journal and then think about, like, when are you going to actually be able to do them? I think often we live in this inertia. Oh, well, this is the life. I'm looking two weeks ahead. Right. But really trying to take a step back and say, like, what are things that are important to me that, that I won't be able to do? A stat that I looked up that was kind of surprising was if you're like a 40 year old male, which is what I am, I use male because our stats are worse. Your chances of making it to retirement age are 5 and 6. So your chances of not making it are 1 in 6. If you're a 50 year old couple, you have less than 50% chance of both partners reaching retirement age and being able mentally and physically to travel. Yeah, I'm great at dinner parties.
- [54:02]
Unknown
Yeah.
- [54:04]
Laurie Santos
And so, like this, we're gonna wait till retirement thing. This bucket list thing is not guaranteed. And I hope that, like, the, the pandemic gave us this, like, touch of, like, life is precious, but like, waiting until you can retire is just not guaranteed. Both what are the things you wish you could do? And then also, oh, my gosh, like, I might not be able to do them. Hopefully we'll, like, spurt y'all into action.
- [54:24]
Unknown
2031, 2031. Who's putting in their Google calendar today? Right. Thank you for joining us for Happiness Live, live at south by Southwest. Thank you so much.
- [54:38]
DJ Dodonna
I hope you enjoyed my chat with sabbatical expert D.J. deDonna. But that's not the end of the live show. Fun, because I had a chance to record several other podcasts at south by Southwest. And next I'll be sharing a show I did with a new voice in podcasting, but a voice you might already know pretty well.
- [54:54]
Laurie Santos
Well, hey, Professor.
- [54:56]
Unknown
Hey, Michelle.
- [54:59]
DJ Dodonna
That's all. Next time on the Happiness lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. The nationally ranked neuroscience center at Stanford Medicine Children's Health provides nurturing care for a full range of brain, spine, nerve and craniofacial disorders in infants, children and adolescents. Their physician scientists collaborate to advance treatments that allow them to successfully treat many children with complex cases that could not be resolved elsewhere. Their surgical facilities, among the most advanced in the country, empower their excellent multidisciplinary team to do their very best work for children. Through a blend of clinical expertise and individualized treatment plans, their experts help children reach their fullest potential. Learn more@stanfordchildrens.org did you know that nearly half of California's adolescents struggle with mental health challenges? That's the key reason why California's Department of Healthcare, Access and Information HCAI recently introduced a new state certification program aimed at helping children and youth who are struggling with behavioral health challenges. Their new Certified Wellness Coach profession was created as part of the state's Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative to increase California's overall capacity to support the growing behavioral health needs of the state's youth. People with related work experience or recent graduates in fields like social work and human services or psychology can start the process of becoming certified now by visiting ca wellnesscoach.org to learn more, visit ca wellnesscoach.org as a busy professor and podcast host, I spend more time than I'd like to admit eating on the run. I want to make sure I stay healthy and get enough protein, but I don't always have time to prep a healthy meal. And that's when I turn to Premier Protein. With tasty flavors like chocolate, cafe latte and cookie dough, Premier Protein makes it tasty and easy to meet your health goals. Both their ready to drink protein shakes and their protein powders taste great, which means I get a creamy quick meal that fits perfectly into my busy schedule. Visit premierprotein.com and go to where to Buy, to find a retailer near you or to find where to Buy online. Premier Protein Sweeten the journey.