3 things that I've learned so far on sabbatical

What my gut was trying to say all along

For many years, I wrestled with whether or not I should take time away from the corporate world. And I made many attempts to do what people advised: just “follow your gut.”

But most of the time, my gut communicated in grumbles. And it was hard to tell what was intuition versus indigestion. Perhaps from one too many microwaveable meals, just before bed after my last call with Singapore at 10 o’clock.

My work-from-home desk in 2020 — where many late night Zooms were held.

Sure, there were signs that something needed to change. But those signs weren’t “neon” enough for me.

Not one shooting star across the night sky? Not one 4-leaf clover conveniently left on my doorstep? Not even one prophetic piece of prose nested in a Chinese biscuit from last night’s takeout of General Tso’s chicken?

I wasn’t picky. Any sign would do.

But alas, no cosmic sign — iridescent, Irish, edible or otherwise — came. My gut was stammering and the ~universe~ was slacking.

Not only that: while my body was sending me cryptic signals to stop working so intensely, my surroundings were sending me strong ones to keep going. The working world is built on feedback loops that go beyond “feelings.” They can be financially life-changing — unequivocally real. And it’s that concoction of mixed messages that muffled my gut’s guidance for so many years.

But now that I’m far away from my previous work-life (quite literally, halfway around the world), my gut has gotten a hell of a lot more clear. Indeed, there’s a whole backlog of its hot takes that were scratching at the surface. And when given a bit of quiet space, its voice becomes clear.

It had plenty to say, all along.

And plenty of precisely what I needed to hear.

— 3 learnings from my sabbatical, so far —

1️⃣ — It’s easier to tell yourself that you’re doing it for the money, than to admit that you’re doing it for the clout.

I’ve been spending my days in a small town in Bosnia & Herzegovina where English is barely spoken, the primary “industry” appears to be pastry production, and the only resumes that exist are the ones shared through word of mouth.

LinkedIn doesn’t link you to much in Trebinje. Here, I feel distinctly unknown and unimportant.

My morning routine involves bumbling in broken Bosnian with elaborate hand gestures to the stoic Balkan woman at my local bakery, attempting to indicate which profiterole I want in the glass display.

She is not amused.

And when I’m not being egregiously clumsy, my days are spent in a curious sort of anonymity. No one needs me. No one cares about me. And I have precisely zero grams of clout.

The small town of Trebinje, Bosnia & Herzegovnia

But when I was working, it was just the opposite: I felt influential, and important, and needed, on a daily basis. I was a “domain expert.” And while that power wasn’t what I was originally going for, it somehow morphed into what I wanted.

At some point along the way, that feeling of self-importance and influence, stopped merely being a nice feedback loop validating the quality of my work. Rather: it become the fuel motivating it.

Praise for my “invaluableness” and the affirmations of my heroic contributions became the cookies that I craved, even more than the compensation. And that almost feels grosser to admit: being an egomaniac feels worse than being a capitalist.

“Clout” can, of course, be a genuinely good thing to go for. If you want influence and power in order to accelerate your ability to create some specific type of impact — change that’s meaningful to you or the world — there’s nothing soulless about it. In fact, it’s strategic. That motive is worthy and smart.

But I wasn’t motivated to work hard for the utility of power, now or in the future. Rather, I liked the praise of power, for the sake of it. Put simply:

I wasn’t working hard to have influence, to achieve some goal. I was working hard to feel influence. Validation was the goal.

And that’s the cheapest motive for “clout.”

In the deepest parts of ourselves, I think it’s a fear many of us struggle to admit aloud. Sometimes, we don’t work hard for a goal. We work hard to fill the uncomfortable absence of a goal.

And feeling important, or significant, or special, or influential comforts us into forgetting what’s actually missing.

But what’s been interesting on sabbatical, is that when you rip out all of the positive feedback loops, you also find that you stop craving them. The clout that quietly controlled me is no longer something I’m addicted to. In fact, it feels silly that I ever even craved it all.

Funnily enough: maybe when you’re not so busy trying to earn affirmations, you bypass the whole reward loop you were working so hard for anyway.

You merely stumble into already being content, instead.

2️⃣ — High-functioning anxiety is not the same as ambition, and the former will only distract you from finding what you want.

From afar, my days now don’t actually look all that different from my days in the corporate world. I’m still just a self-important monkey booping buttons on an expensive typewriter.

Everyday, I sit at a desk for multiple hours straight.

But, I never feel like it’s buh-nanas for me to be working this hard on my personal project. Something about this flavor of “hard work” just feels right.

Primate on a typewriter, from my apartment in Trebinje

And through that, I’m realizing that although the “productive” output from hard work may look the same, it’s misleading. Because the inputs driving it can significantly differ.

High-functioning anxiety often masquerades as “ambition.” And we prefer that narrative — to tell ourselves, and our peers.

But that’s not only problematic for the obvious psychological duress of anxiety itself. It’s problematic for another reason — and I’d argue, an even bigger cost.

When you’re latched onto a false ambition because of your anxiety, it diverts energy and focus from finding your actual ambition.

Our high-functioning anxiety with a picky palette for strictly “productive” things gobbles up all our time and energy in service of a goal — while stunting exploration into areas that may genuinely inspire us. The truth of what we want to create, contribute or achieve in the world.

Perhaps I’ll always be a monkey on a typewriter in some form 🙈. But I’ll promise myself one thing going forward: I’ll always know what I’m typing for.

3️⃣ — We don’t honor free time nearly as much as we claim to value it, because we lack proof of its value over our current patterns.

It’s a tremendous privilege to be able to to take time off and not think about making money — and one that I’m hugely grateful for. But it’s also a gift many people can afford to give themselves for some window of time, and consistently choose not to.

Like many people, I always claimed to value happiness and free time. But when the inevitable crisis du jour came up, I readily cut it out. And even when there wasn’t a fire drill, I feared the future regret — a massive work backlog sullying the distant memory of the free time I carelessly indulged in. Best to “get ahead on Monday!” by starting on Sunday, instead.

The bad news is: what we say we value is notoriously unreliable.

But the good news is: what we actually value is objective and calculable.

It’s whatever we spend the majority of our time on and consistently sacrifice our free time for.

Now that I’m not constantly busy, I actually have the headspace to consider why I was locked in my own dungeon of cognitive dissonance — making tradeoffs misaligned with my values.

How I've been spending my free time: wondering around markets, and reading.

Why didn’t I just log off at 5pm? Why didn’t I just not open my laptop on Sunday? Why couldn’t I just believe that protecting more of my free time would make me exponentially and durably happier?

It’s a simple answer, in retrospect: I never took the task of testing it seriously.

I never took the time to try to ruthlessly honor my free time, because the rewards weren’t obvious upfront, and the risks were.

We know the opportunity cost of free time, because that’s what we’re already currently honoring. More money, more admiration, more achievement — whatever part speaks to you most in the puzzle with no last piece, and the never-ending game.

What we don’t know for sure, is what we’ll gain.

That’s why it’s so important to lean into what you’re feeling and experiment with how you use your time if you feel that something’s off. Because the only way to get proof of what you’ll gain with more open-ended free time, is to dabble in having more open-ended free time. That could be as big as a sabbatical, or as small as harder boundaries in your current workdays.

The value of free time — even before you know exactly how you want to spend it — is that it allows you to iterate on intuition.

And that, friend, is the real long-term happiness play.

A final note on following your gut

It’s exciting, but also slightly scary, to take a sabbatical. You’re making a conscious decision to stop playing a game that everyone else is playing. And the only thing you have to go off of, in most cases, is your gut.

But if you hear your gut whispering at all — if you find yourself wondering — know that it has already had to jump over the hurdles of all the patterns and precedents of your life, to even cast a hint of doubt.

It may not have the answer, but it’s put in a lot of work just to bubble up the right question: Hey — do we like living this way?

Trust that doubt from your gut. And while you’re at it, give it a thank you, too. Because while our gut may be a crappy communicator at times — not particularly prescriptive, not particularly precise — I’m realizing that it’s always directionally right.

We may not know how this gut thing works. Or, what it even looks like. But even when it doesn’t look like it, know this:

It’s always looking out for you.

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