Burned Out at Work? Take a Sabbatical.
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Here's your money briefing for Friday, January 7th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. Most employers encourage workers to use their vacation time, you know, to take a week off here or there to relax and recover from the stress of their job. But what if you could take a few months off? As burnout from work becomes more common, many employers are including sabbaticals in the list of company perks.
And there's this organization called the Sabbatical Project that actually did interviews with 50 people who'd taken sabbaticals, and they found that there was a common theme of what they called functional workaholism, which is, you know, people just obviously working way, way, way too much.
On today's show, we'll talk to WSJ reporter Katie Binley about the growing trend, and we'll hear from a 28-year-old Vancouver resident who recently took one. That's after the break.
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Sometimes a week off from work to rest and recharge isn't enough.
What is driving employers to offer multi-month sabbaticals?
And for some, neither is two weeks or even three. As companies try to cut down on burnout among workers, many are allowing them to take several month-long sabbaticals to power down and relax before returning to their job. Like 28-year-old Yorai Paul. He took a sabbatical from his job at a polling software startup last year. Yorai, thank you for being with us.
Yeah, thanks for having me.
So Yorai, tell me, when did you take your sabbatical and why did you take it?
So I took it at the beginning of 2021. I think I started in February and ended up taking it for about four months. I think my biggest reason for taking it was kind of a mix of things. Burnout, being at a job for six years and kind of not knowing where I'm going next. and realizing that I kind of need to step away and spend some time working on myself and spending time doing some like work on myself instead of just working non-stop.
So Yorai, was there a lot of work and stress and anxiety that you were dealing with that led you to take the sabbatical? Tell us what that was like.
So at the time I was working at a technology startup called Slido and I joined the company in the early days six years ago as one of the first employees. So that kind of implied that it was just the work was intense. And I feel like I, in the first few years, kind of let my identity become the work itself, the startup. Like everything I was doing was the company. You know, if I went for dinner with friends and they would ask me how I'm doing or what's happening, I would just talk about the startup, which in some ways is natural and it's perfectly fine. But I think it kind of went over a line where When someone asked me, like, what are your hobbies or anything like that, I would say, you know, I don't have any or I just work during the weekends.
And I would kind of feel good about it and didn't see the other way. But then about a year ago, just before I decided even to take the sabbatical, I started to kind of see the other side and realize that,
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–2:04
2
What is driving employers to offer multi-month sabbaticals?
2:04–10:17
3
How did Yorai Pal describe his reasons for taking a four-month sabbatical?
10:17–14:29
4
What work-related stress and identity issues led Yorai to consider a sabbatical?
14:29–14:37
Speakers
4 identifiedMore from WSJ Your Money Briefing
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