The eureka moment, the sudden inspiration that had Archimedes leaping from the bath and into our physics lessons, came to him when he wasn’t at work. The naughty man was skiving.
Edison, famously the inventor of the electric light bulb, is also famous for having said that success was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. How did he invest that perspiration? Popular understanding was that it was in dogged trial and error. Maybe some of it was. Perhaps some of it was spent in house work, gardening or dancing with geese because apparently, it is when our mind is allowed to relax its focus that it becomes most fecund.
What do you do when you’re in need of that breakthrough solution, pivotal idea or liberating inspiration? Current best practice seems to have us working harder, longer, later and with building frustration and self-loathing. Which is odd because this approach doesn’t seem to work very well.
Apparently, when short of a way forward one of the worst things you can do is try to think one up. What we need to do instead is, something else. Something that allows our minds and bodies the freedom to wander and wonder. Something different. Something stimulating.
The habit of allowing ourselves a recreational diversion has become known as sabbatical. Not a new idea but we don’t tend to learn from the experience of millions of people over thousands of years of history so it has to be regularly discovered. Some of the world’s biggest and most successfully innovative businesses are now paying their staff to invest 15% of their hours in personal, non-work related projects. They know it means an increase in corporate resourcefulness.
When considering the habit of sabbatical:
Don’t
Expect instant fruit from an almost dead vine.
Sabbatical seems to work best as an investment in our resourcefulness rather than a solution to our barrenness. So if you’re chronically dried up following ages of underinvestment call your r & r what it is – recovery and recuperation – and then, once back to life, look to making sabbatical an investment habit.
Vegetate
Sabbatical isn’t the same as amusement (literally - without thought) or sensual indulgence. Inactivity and bland input is not likely to refresh your resourcefulness.
Wait for it to happen to you
Take responsibility. Think long term. If your current employment doesn’t allow you this sort of freedom change your employer / way of working. Build it in – grow the habit. Start with an hour a day.
Do
Get away
Away from work; away from home; away from the folk who would like you to do something for them; away from the routine, safe and familiar. The longer the better. I reckon your most lucid, free range, visionary and objective thinking will be during or after periods away.
Make it a habit
1 in 7. A day away each week, a week away each couple of months… A web search will have you listening to one of the most successful designers in the world, Stefan Sagmeister, talking about his habit of taking one year sabbatical from work for every 7 years of his working life.
Diarise
Are your sabbaticals already in your coming year’s diary? Or booked even further in advance? If not they won’t happen.
Get distracted
Engaging our minds and bodies in completely different activities seems to refresh our creativity.
Be with inspirational people.
Jim Rohn said that we are the average of the people we spend our time with. If most of the people we spend our lives with are fed up, burnt-out, whinging time servers; look out. Let’s make sure our sabbaticals are shared with fresh thinking, motivated, gracious, visionary investors.
Personalise it.
Take note of how other folk are enjoying sabbatical but then have a think about what would your ideal sabbatical look like, sound like, feel like, smell like… Do you know what sorts of thing would make for your recreation? Why not plan your ultimate sabbatical?
Find freedom.
Freedom to do the things you really want to do – not a period of catching up on the list of things you feel you ought to have done.
Be creative.
Inactivity and amusement lead to boredom, demotivation and stagnation. Whole person activity and engagement seems to be the thing. Take on a creative project or two; a fresh role; or an opportunity to learn / develop a new skill.
Sabbatical: Want to be a brilliant creator, a resourceful worker or just someone who’s interesting to be with? Build this life bringing, recreating habit into your life.
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