Sesters Talk: Sabbatical

Hello everyone and welcome to the show. My name is Samma and I am joined by my sister, my co-host Faza. Hi. So today we have a pretty interesting topic. I think it's quite timely. We're gonna be talking about sabbaticals. It's true. So why do we start with a definition? Okay, so there are a few different definitions on the internet. Which one should I start you off with? Well I think historically or like traditionally we've heard about academics taking sabbaticals. So if you were to google the definition of the word sabbatical what would come up is a period of paid leave granted to a university teacher or other worker for study or travel traditionally one year for every seven years worked. Which is I think the way that most of us have probably heard it in like a context of our professors taking sabbatical. Usually they do their research, publishing a book, any kind of things that they're not necessarily able to do while they're actively have a huge teaching load. But nowadays I think we're hearing it more in people's non-academic careers when they want to take a break and they have other pursuits that they want to prioritize that they may not be able to do while they are working at the same time. And I think that's probably closer to what you and I have done with our breaks. Yeah so why don't you talk about your sabbatical when did you start? I started four months ago. Really? Yeah I quit my job in March and it's July. Interesting I feel like it's been longer than that in a way. Also shorter. But yeah time becomes really weird when I think you don't have these markers of time. So what have you been doing during during this time? What have I been doing? Yeah well honestly the first month I didn't do a lot and that was by design because when I quit my job I was really at a point where I was kind of at my limit mentally and I felt like I just needed to do nothing. I feel you on that like that was me as well. In fact why don't you talk a little bit about why you decided to take a break between quitting your job and whatever the next step is going to be for your career? Because I knew I was feeling unsatisfied and I knew that there were a lot of issues with my specific work environment and the team that I was on and so I knew that leaving would solve half the problem in itself but I didn't want to just hop to another company and pursue the same role just as a way to get out because I felt like I really needed to re-examine if that was what I wanted to do and if it was kind of a broad dissatisfaction with both the company that I was at but also just what I was doing in general so I felt like I was at a good point to do some self-reflection step away from the workforce for a bit and potentially retrain myself if I felt like something else was speaking to me. And that's in line with what a lot of people have been doing. We've heard it being called the great resignation. I think a lot of people feel that after the last two and a bit years of the pandemic that maybe we do need to re-examine our relationship to work and also maybe even the career paths that we've chosen or the expectation that we should have a particular type of career like you find what you want to do and then you just work in that job or a similar job. I don't know until you're 60 something. Yeah, I don't think that makes sense for us anymore. I agree. So yeah, it makes good sense for then you to take a break and say I don't want to just jump to the next thing. I really want to figure out why and what before I make the next step. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have any goals during your sabbatical? I did have some goals. I do have some goals. I think that there are some I think I actually had a three-phase plan initially but I'm forgetting exactly what those were but I think roughly the first phase was just recovering from the burnout that I was experiencing. So phase one was supposed to be resting and healing. I think phase two was more about building myself up from like a personal wellness standpoint so pursuing kind of health and fitness activities, taking on more hobbies, kind of enriching the non-work part of my life and then phase three was going to be figuring out what that next step was, career-wise for me. So I haven't been as structured with that approach as I initially thought. I definitely have had a bit of a mix between resting and pursuing a bit of you know traveling and other hobbies and then more rest. So it's kind of going in waves right now but I think that it has definitely helped with burnout that I was feeling. So I think phase one is pretty much complete. Yeah and I want to get back to the topic of burnout because I think that is something many of us have experienced recently and I think that at least from my experience of burnout the context of working remotely during the pandemic really heightened that and I think not having the right supports in place from a corporate perspective to transition your workload remotely and then being expected to kind of maintain the same level of efficiency or in fact even more. So I think a lot of people have been experiencing burnout and I don't think that we have the right supports in place to deal with the burnout but I think we can put that aside for a second. I can talk about my experience of the sabbatical. Please do. So I was actually inspired by you. You're welcome because when you were taking your break in fact before you decided to quit your job you actually decided to sort of change the structure of your job and go from being full-time to part-time and that was I think a way for you to give it your last shot at making it work before you ultimately decided this was just not the job for you. Yeah and I think when you took your three-day week, it was a three-day week right? Yeah. I saw that so much of your life opened up and I was really impressed and envious in a good way of like why should I be living for the weekend? You know my life is so much more than that and so I was really inspired by you and in fact it was our dad who suggested to me why don't you see if you can take a couple of months off because at that point I was also wondering like should I quit my job but I like my job and it was then it was a bug who said yeah what if you could take some time off and I didn't even know that was an option for me but I'm really fortunate that it has been that my company does offer a unpaid leave of absence policy which I'm currently taking for the next six months and that has been just a game-changer for me in the way that I see my time so differently. I think this is such an important age. Everybody I guess is at an important age of their lives but I feel that after the last two years of being pretty much isolated at home not traveling and then entering my 30s I really want to take this time to do things for myself while I'm still young while I have the means while I don't have any dependence I really do see this sabbatical time as a way to make up for the lack of personal life that I feel all of us have not been able to have since 2020 essentially. Yeah, I think that is kind of why we're seeing so many people take this time off is because I Think a lot of people have felt kind of robbed of a couple of years, and so this is us saying Like let's reclaim our time in whatever way that we can Which I think is definitely a good Change and I hope that it's like a permanent one. I hope so too. I hope that Companies see this as something that really is necessary for them to have a policy about For them to encourage especially their high performing Employees to take that time I See it also a bit as a generational type of I Don't know Not divide, but I think millennials We've gone through a lot in our relatively short working lives You know many of us graduated from university into an economy that was in shambles I think we've many of us have been under employed if not unemployed for like large parts of our twenties And then to just be met with you know not having the means to buy property and have sort of the traditional markers of adulthood That our parents generation had and even the generation above us had I think it was just a very dissatisfying experience to then be brought into another financial recession and to be told actually You're gonna have to do your job From home now. We're not gonna do any support to do so by the way and also then to rob us from our Important kind of personal lives which is nobody's fault specifically, but it just feels really draining I think for a generation Yeah, I mean I know when older people here millennial say that their pushback is always like objectively previous generations have been through worse like when they have lived through wars and bigger recessions and things like that, but I think it's also a combination of what we've been through Plus our expectations And that's a big shift and I think it's that mindset of Joining the assembly line versus wanting more for ourselves. Yeah, maybe you can talk about Gloria's analogy. Yeah, so this is a bit of a digression, but I was reading an essay by Gloria Steinem in the book Beyond Worlds and she had a really good descriptor kind of she talked about her experience growing up as a working class person in rural Ohio and she talked about how high school was such a big deal and Almost seen as like the pivotal time of your life because after that period of relative freedom You would then go to the assembly line And then if you were a man usually and then as a woman maybe that's you know you start having kids and Building a family and having a domestic life and I think that although she was talking about You know the 1950s and 60s when she may have graduated from from high school. I think that mentality of Still seeing your Hayday as a very youthful time in your life and then kind of just joining the workforce Maybe not the age of 18, but the age of 22 and the continuing Relatively without a lot of other things going on in your life besides maybe like getting hard and having kids family etc That's still the mold that I think we're expected to follow Yeah until very recently where I think it started to change But even then I think that those are the exceptions To the rule I think traditionally we're still expected to follow that Yeah Formula which I don't think makes sense at all No, I think as with pretty much any Thing that's presented as like a universal template I think there are obviously people who it does work for and so Yeah, not trying to downplay that or Look down on that if that is your choice genuinely But I think just starting to Push back and question like why is this supposed to be The thing for everyone. Yeah, regardless of your goals For your family life your career like all of these different Things that come into play um, it should be perfectly acceptable for you to follow that traditional formula But it should be equally as acceptable for you to say You know, let me work for five years take a year off pivot. Yeah, this is a marathon. All this sprint You know agreed and I think that the old format lent itself also to these almost culturally expected crises like a midlife crisis and a divorce and like all these moments that show you That the format didn't work Yeah, but those are expected periods of unhappiness that I think yeah, you're just expected to deal with And I think we've seen that yeah, we've seen examples around us and speaking of the millennial generation and just being like you know what? I don't want to I don't want to go through those periods of unhappiness Why should I? And so We don't want to wait until we're 60 something to travel the world where maybe we're not going to even be in good enough health to enjoy it And do the adventurous things that we always wanted to do There's nothing to even I think give us the security that at that age we will be financially able to afford that I mean like on an individual basis maybe yes, but as a generation We don't have the security blanket of a pension Even people who worked in jobs which traditionally have had that They're finding that the pensions are much less than what they were promised or they're not even you know going to last them For as long as they need them too So these again traditional models are no longer applicable And so I think that's really where the sense of dissatisfaction Again speaking more generationally comes from of like we did all the right things that you told us to do but then this I guess promise of what we were working for never actually came to fruition Yeah So I think that's why many of us are charting our own path and deciding They were just going to do things differently And I feel like that's where you and I also fit into that So even though we are making these individual decisions I'm kind of tying it back to what's happening On a larger social level with many people our age Yeah So for me I have three main goals during my sabbatical Number one is to reconnect with friends and family so We haven't been able to travel for the past two and a half years Obviously haven't been able to see those who don't live in close proximity to us And even if they did live in close close proximity to us because in Canada with their regulations about you know Bubbles and how many people we can interact with socially we haven't been able to see people that were close to So that was the big thing for me was reconnecting with my friends and family and I've been able to do that Which is which is wonderful. Yeah the second thing was really focusing on My well I guess also part of it is is my physical health making that a priority I've always felt confident that if there's something that I could learn as in like mentally A new skill, new language, new program Whatever I never felt that that was out of The realm of possibility But I put a lot of restrictions on physical things that I could do like Oh, I can't run fast. I can't jump. I can't climb. I can't whatever And so I never even tried So it's part of that is trying new things with like physically trying new things But also taking that kind of a step higher and saying what would I do if I wasn't afraid? These fears have held me back if I remove those fears What would I like to do? So what would I do if I wasn't afraid and what would I do if I wasn't afraid to fail? Because that's also I think as a perfectionist Something that has limited me In that if I'm not good at something the first time I try it I just give up and decide that it's not going to be worth pursuing But if I don't have that as like I don't need to be the best at this thing I can just do it to learn a new skill or to enjoy myself What does that open up for me? And then I really like the way that you put this, which for me the way that I phrased it was sort of living the fullness of the human experience and the way that you put this was thinking of myself almost like an alien visiting earth. Do you want to talk about that? Yeah, I think this is actually something our dad said when he retired and he had been planning to retire early for a really long time and he finally did it and a lot of his friends who were similar ages were still working and they were questioning what would he do in his free time and wouldn't he get bored and he was always like, I don't understand people who just anchor their life purpose to their work. And he was saying that if there was an alien from another planet coming to visit earth for a limited period of time on specified what would you show them. And I think most people would say things like they should travel a bit, they should see different cultures, they should experience art and music and all of the things that we have to offer nature, sports, whatever it is. I think very few people would say put them in an office at a desk for most of their waking hours and obviously it's simplifying it because we're assuming that the alien doesn't have bills to pay and families to feed, etc. But this conversation really is only for people who I think have reached a stage where they do have the option to leave, even if not permanently, but take a few months off work. And I think just reminding yourself that you are on this earth for a limited period of time and it would be such a shame to leave without having experienced all of the wonderful things that the planet has to offer, you know. And I think we just get really complacent in our routines and it's easy to just carry on whatever path you're on. But I think going back to your point that is where the midlife crises and things start happening is when you get the realization that time is limited a bit too late, unfortunately. Yeah, absolutely. And I can speak from the perspective of having been a tourist recently, traveling, I went to three different countries in the last three weeks or so. And in all those places I was there for a limited amount of time, I really wanted to make every day count. And when I would tell people, "Oh, I'm in London, I'm in Rome, I'm in Athens," they would all have suggestions of things to do. Like, "Oh, you must do this, you must eat here, you must, you know, check this thing out." And I feel that that is obviously so nice that people want you to have this really amazing experience when you're there, see the best of the best, experience the best of the best. What a sad thing it is that we don't see every day that way. And again, I don't want to be oversimplifying people say, you know, like, if you only had, if this was your last day on Earth, like obviously none of us would be going to work. But we know that it's not likely going to be our last day on Earth, but we do have bills to pay. And so obviously we're not going to just like, yeah, not go to work that day. But I think the mentality, though, is I want to experience this place, this life, this time. And that work is a means to that. Like, it's a means to an end. And so if you lose track of the end goal, then that's a dangerous place to be, I think. Yes. And I think what I've learned from the sabbatical, first of all, I have to say I'm really thankful that I was able to take this time and that everybody was really supportive for my manager to the HR teams to people who would be taking on my workload. Everybody was super, super supportive. Everybody felt like, oh, I wish I could take this time too. And I wanted to say, you know, you can. It may not again be six months completely unpaid, but find a way to prioritize whatever is important to you. And for me, that was international travel. That was focusing on my physical health. That was being a bit more creative and trying stuff out. That probably is not going to be appealing to a lot of other people, but I'm sure that there's a thing that you can do. Yeah. I don't think we should limit ourselves by saying, if I cannot have this peak of whatever I think a sabbatical looks like, which may be something more like what I'm describing as like backpacking around the world. If I'm not doing that for six months or that's out of reach for me, then I don't need to take any time off at all. That's not it. Nobody's ever going to tell you in a corporate context. Like, why don't you take a break? You know, like, there's not that much work to do. Why don't you go prioritize yourself? That's never going to happen. There's never going to be that natural break in your work. And I was talking about this with some of the women that I work with that if I, the only kind of break in your career that seems to be expected or accepted is parental leave and maternity leave, that's not really a relaxing break. You have a lot of responsibility, a new baby to take care of, especially if you've just had the biological child like yourself, there's a lot of healing going on. It's not really a relaxing break. Not at all. Not really. Not really. More stressful, I think, than your job. Absolutely, because there's so many unknowns and unexpected things happening, whereas there's somewhat of a routine expected in your 9-5. I should that be the only break that any of us gets. It just doesn't make sense. And also at the same time, having only two days a week to focus on whatever is important to you, which, again, in my experience, was often I was tired during the weekend that I didn't really want to go and, I don't know, go hiking or do some kind of adventurous thing. I was just tired. Agreed. So I think we've made the case for why sabbaticals are important. If you were to give advice to somebody who's interested in taking the sabbatical, somebody in a similar position to you, what advice would you give them? I think it is important to set intentions before your sabbatical. I think there's going to be a range of how structured you want it to be. I think even just between the two of us, my first month or two were definitely less fruitful compared to yours. You left your job and then you went on your york trip almost immediately, whereas for me the first six weeks or so looked like a lot of just doing nothing and like sitting on my couch watching TV. But that's what I needed to do based on my mental state. But that was part of my intention, as I said, was to rest. So yeah, I wouldn't put a ton of pressure to like make a super strict schedule for your sabbatical, unless that is specifically what you want to do. But I think just going into it, knowing what you want your main overarching point of focus to be is useful so that you don't start feeling directionless. Yeah. I agree. That has been the biggest help for me is looking back at my goals. And I've actually shared those goals with a lot of people when they ask me about my sabbatical and like, well, these are the three things that I want to do or that I want to focus on. And again, I can see myself actually achieving those goals because I've had them clearly defined. And if I was to go back, hopefully at the end of this and reflect, I could then say, yes, I achieved what I set out to. And I can relate all of these adventures and travels and things back to those three goals, as opposed to just sort of like aimless, whatever it is that you're doing. I think also seeing this as an investment in myself has made some of the financial stuff also okay. I spent a lot of money on my trip. I was away for three weeks and I spent a fair amount of money. I would say much more than I would spend in a normal month, just like living in Toronto. And sometimes I would look at my expenses and just feel a bit overwhelmed like oh my god I'm not making any money because I'm on an unpaid leave of absence. And I've spent so much more than I normally would. But again going back to my goals where I wanted to experience new places and cultures and things. And this is again kind of a one-cent lifetime, not that I'm never going to travel to Italy again, hopefully I will because I really enjoyed it. But like okay I'm here and I really want to explore and take a cooking class and eat delicious food and see the sights and those things cost money. And now that I'm back I really value again that investment of spending the money on those things. So it's not just obviously time that you're spending it's also money and because you're not earning during this time it does look like a negative cash flow type of situation but you're gaining value in other ways. So that's also something I've been trying to sort of remind myself of. Yeah. I think one of the things I wanted to do was also push myself out of my comfort zone. I want to feel challenged not unsafe, not uncomfortable. But to really say like okay when you do have these opportunities in front of you what are you going to do with them? What are you going to do in this one wild and wondrous life? I can't remember who said that but really thinking about those things. Yeah. Okay you're here you're ready this is you living do something with it. And I'm the kind of person who responds well to that type of challenge some other people may not. So sometimes when I was in those uncomfortable situations not uncomfortable in a dangerous way but like I'm in a new country nobody speaks the language I don't really have any friends and I don't know what to do which is kind of what I was feeling in Athens the first couple of days that I was there. It was a bit uncomfortable but then I decided that I'm going to make the best of it and I'm going to find a routine with what I have available to me. And I ended up having a great time. I went to a lot of bookstores and I walked a lot of places and I went to kind of the artsy districts and the queer districts and places that are not traditionally touristy but I had a great time there actually much preferred them to the traditional touristy areas even though in a lot of the bookstores that I went to they didn't have an English book so I didn't end up buying any English books. I'd have to I went to a special store for that but still it was a good time I felt inspired by the challenge. Yeah so go forward when we eventually have to rejoin the workforce what kind of things would you want to see companies do more of in terms of policies around sabbaticals or just general policies to help avoid the burnout problem in the first place? Well I will definitely be sharing my sabbatical experience with my manager and the HR folks that I was and I'm sure that my co-workers would also be interested to know about my sabbatical so I'm going to definitely share the experience and share the way that I went about it. In my workplace it was kind of traditional and prior to the pandemic the attitude towards remote working working from home was that it was impossible to work from home and now we have a policy that is work appropriately and there's people who may never go back into the office if their job doesn't require it and that's completely okay so a lot of things can change in a very short period of time I think people just have to experience it and understand it before they can accept it so I'm going to be really open with sharing my experience and talking about how impactful this time has been that it's not just a extended vacation which again there's nothing wrong with but I think maybe people think that's what a sabbatical is about but if we go back to that original definition of studying, traveling, researching any of the things that are important to you but may not be part of your core daily work I think that there are a lot of people who actually would love to take a sabbatical if they knew that it could be feasible for them and I think companies if they want to have happy employees who are sustainably employed should be offering these leave of absence policies or sabbatical policies and giving a lot of encouragement for people to take them before they get to the stage of being burnt out before they get to the stage of saying you know what I'm just going to quit my job because retaining people, especially good people, should be the priority it should not be pulling them back from the edge offering them more money it should be seeing them as whole complex human beings who have things going on outside of their day-to-day work lives that need attention and offering a way for them to pursue those things and it may not even be that they need to take six months off if there's more I don't know flexible working arrangements where you can pursue those things outside of work without having to take a whole break from your career that probably would be really wonderful for companies but definitely if I was to be looking at new companies in the future I'm very happy with where I work at the moment but I would be expecting a leave of absence policy I'd be expecting that they've considered this especially with high performing individuals because I can speak for myself when you are performing at a level that is very high when you do give a lot to your work you also need to decompress and it's not because I can't handle the pressure I can't handle the stress it's like no you have a level that you can give to whatever it is that is your focus at that time and it's going to be high quality high energy and occasionally that high energy high quality focus is going to have to go to something that's not necessarily like productive labor and so the energy that I'm giving to my travels and sabbatical and reflections is also high which is why I think I'm getting a lot out of it so I think dispelling myths that people might have about sabbaticals that is just a extended vacation and just doing nothing with my time which again is not a bad thing but that's really not what I'm doing and I don't think that's what you're doing either and maybe even offering them specific guidance of like how to frame this policy I actually want to do research I actually want to do some quote-unquote productive things during this time if that was something that my company actually encouraged me to do because it might actually benefit me when I return back to the workplace what if they gave me a stipend for that you know like these are all ways in which you can also make it beneficial for the company that you're going back to so again as I see work-life balance becoming a more nuanced topic than before I think especially when it comes to high performers or when it comes to women right I think the burden has always historically been on the employee to create the work-life balance but I think employers have a role to play as well especially when they see the benefits that it creates for them when they're not losing their talent yeah do you have any thoughts to add there? I mean I think that captures most of it I I am encouraged to see a few kind of usually newer companies leading the way on being more proactive about retaining talent like I think one thing that I've seen is companies doing a biannual reviews of salaries and just like adjusting them based on market data rather than negotiating on a one-on-one basis with the employee use and forcing them to advocate for themselves which I think can also be a draining process and contribute to feeling like you're under recognized under appreciated yeah so companies can take that initiative and say you know we are doing an audit of ourselves and our competitors and we can recognize ourselves that this person might be under paid let's fix that before they have to take it upon themselves to do the research, negotiate for themselves, potentially at the risk of seeming to like adversarial, you know, that kind of stuff I think is the direction I would want to see companies grow. Yeah. And different things motivate different people, you know. So I was offered potentially not a huge raise, but a small, I don't know, offering. And that just wasn't enough for me. That wasn't the motivation. I wasn't taking this break because I wasn't being paid enough. I was taking the break because time is valuable to me. And I couldn't, I mean, I can't make time out of something else. So even if companies offer you more vacation, if they doubled my vacation, kept my salary the same, that's still a huge benefit for the company. But also thinking about how these things are perceived, I think now having a gap in your resume, you took six months off to do your own individual research or travel or whatever, is not perceived as like a waste of time. I think it's seen as valuable. LinkedIn even offers that as an option for you, like a kind of template of how to phrase or sabbatical on your LinkedIn resume. It's something that people should be expecting to see more of. I think individuals, employees, those who have the financial means to take that time should do it more as well. And again, that pushes companies to create better policies and infrastructure around that. I'm encouraged. Yeah. Yeah. I'm hopeful. Me too. And I hope that this also gives maybe women and other folks who are kind of marginalized a way to not have to code switch as much, maybe, where you don't have to just put this one side of you away to fit into the corporate workplace and then basically lose yourself in the process, which is I think something that you and I both experienced a bit. And I felt like reconnecting with that part of me was just so important. I didn't want to sacrifice it. I didn't want to push that back by a few months or anything. It just felt so urgent to reconnect with. Yeah. I think sabbaticals definitely offer that. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thank you, Fuzzy, for some great questions and for sharing your experience. Do we know what we want to talk about in our next episode? Do we? No, not yet. So if you have any suggestions, please feel free to reach out to us and we would love to hear your feedback on this episode as well. Okay. Thank you and have a good one. Bye.