Reflections on a sabbatical

Dec 29, 2019

Considering this personal site was built during my sabbatical, I suppose it wouldn’t be weird to have the first post be about my sabbatical?

A sabbatical? When?

After leaving my previous role as a product designer at Zendesk, I decided to take time off, and promised myself to head back into tech only when I felt ready. This ended up becoming a 5-ish month sabbatical from Dec 2018 to ~May 2019. The decision was driven by the fact that I’ve always found long breaks after immensely restful and rejuvenating, instead of short breaks interspersed throughout the year.

What do you plan to do?

Quite surprisingly, and perhaps sadly, everybody who learnt that I was going on a long break asked “What do you plan to do? What’s next?” Almost everyone seemed universally surprised when I sheepishly grinned back and said “I honestly don’t know.” Some people expressed envy, some started telling me about their past experiences, some started envisioning what they would do if they were in my shoes.

🤷‍♀️ Oops.

Did you actually do anything then?

I ended up saving the world!

😶

Well… Obviously not. 😅 In the end, my time was mostly split across:

  1. Getting many hours of 💤
  2. Waking up with zero plans on most days and trying to figure out what I should do that day
  3. Sitting around and writing / reading / arguing with myself (in my mind) / people watching / staring into space
  4. Creating this site with Gatsby (which I’m pretty proud of, considering how rusty I am in coding. I taught myself enough React for this to be functional!)
  5. Cleaning and decluttering my house (definitely nothing to do with Mari Kondo, though she was all the rage at the time of my sabbatical)
  6. Taking my mum to a vacation
  7. Walking around Singapore a lot
  8. Meditating (almost) daily
  9. Exercising a lot more
  10. Meeting up with a lot of friends
  11. Spending time with my wonderful nephews
  12. Landing the job I’m currently have at SP Digital

How was it then?

The sabbatical seemed to take off my blinders.

The reactions I received were surprising, as mentioned. Taking a break for myself seemed almost an act of bravery and courage? How would I fill up all my time? How do I deal with questions? How do I cope with the voices in my head when there’s no busywork vying for attention?

It was all very curious. Why is taking a break for ourselves such a big deal? Why do we seem worried about not having anything “productive” to work on? What constitutes “productivity”? What does this reflect on us?

Many hidden anxieties and questions did surface during my break. Far from being terrified and disoriented by them, the sabbatical provided me ample space to be curious and to accept each of these anxieties kindly. Eventually, I actually felt that I could better align my personal values to the design work I wanted to do.

Many peers also asked where I’d be travelling to. There was a sense that I needed to travel, without which I would not be doing my break justice. 🤔 Why? While I did eventually plan a short vacation with my mum overseas, most of my thinking and relaxation was done in Singapore. No nature / beautiful sights / new environment needed. Just lots of peace and quiet. This made me wonder—was I similarly imposing judgement on others on how they should live their lives?

And… so on and so forth. I could go on about the takeaways. Perhaps I might write more intimately about other findings when I have sufficient courage to put so much online. 🤷‍♀️ In a nutshell though, taking a sabbatical was one of the best things I had ever done for myself so far. It’s hard to justify and measure, but I actually felt that I was advancing my skills as a designer / researcher mentally, psychologically and emotionally, through understanding myself a lot better and seeing how my skills could be utilised in service to others.

Do it again?

I would definitely love to, if the conditions are right. To be fair, being able to responsibly go on such a long break is an immense privilege, one which I was very fortunate and grateful to have. 🤷‍♀️ We shall see.

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