Identity Work

Ep 59 | The One Week Sabbatical

2026-03-24

Adam and Stephen revisit the sabbatical conversation, but with a twist: what if you don't need seven months abroad to get the benefit? After Adam's wife took a one-week retreat and came back changed, the two wrestle with what actually makes time off restorative versus just time off. The episode lands on a surprisingly grounded insight: the value of a sabbatical isn't in finding the right answer, it's in resetting what you expect work to give you in the first place.

Takeaways

You don't need to quit your job. A week in a quiet, natural setting with no laptop and no notifications can do much of what a months-long sabbatical does. The key is removing noise, not maximizing duration.Sabbaticals are not vacations. A vacation has an itinerary or a beach chair. A sabbatical has intention: a question or tension you're sitting with, even if you don't resolve it.Your brain has two noise channels. One is work itself. The other is all the life maintenance that fills your head: groceries, broken appliances, errands. You only need to eliminate one of those channels to create real space for reflection.Recalibrated expectations might matter more than a new job. Adam came back from his sabbatical and took essentially the same role. The difference was he stopped expecting work to feel like magic and started expecting it to be a place for challenge, learning, and connection.The 80/10/10 framework deserves a denominator. If 80% of work is neutral, you're optimizing for how good that 80% feels, divided by how high your expectations are. Lower the denominator and the whole equation changes.

Chapters

00:00 - Sabbatical Round Two 02:03 - Structuring Restorative Time Off 07:48 - Sabbatical vs. Vacation 09:24 - Christy's Retreat and Its Surprise 11:09 - Meaning Is a Feeling, Not a Job 14:04 - The 80/10/10 Work Framework 18:23 - Why This Episode Resonated 26:25 - Trendspotters: AI Layoffs 29:28 - Delve Deck: What should be normalize? 33:17 - Closing Reflection

Listener Reflection: What would you actually need to remove from your week, not add to it, to create the kind of quiet where real thinking happens?

Número de episodios

52

Último episodio

2025-11-18

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The podcast for high achievers who seem to have it all, yet still feel something’s missing. Co-hosts Stephen and Adam bring humor, honesty, and a touch of mid-life wisdom to conversations about how work shapes our sense of self, and how we can reshape it to find greater meaning in work and life.

With careers spanning consulting, private equity, start-ups, and entrepreneurship, they share research-backed insights and real-world stories that help uncover new ways to drive more meaning each day. We’re excited to have you join us on this journey!