Article
March 10, 2019
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by Stephen

Tips for Taking a Sabbatical

Photo by Brendan Church on Unsplash

Last week I wrote about what I accomplished during my sabbatical. I have also had some people ask how I was able to take the time off, as six weeks, or even four weeks, is a sizeable time commitment as well as lost income. So I want to cover some of those questions today, as I believe that a sabbatical is achievable with the right planning.

Setting a Date

Although I had been thinking about a sabbatical for probably over a year, I finally made the decision in early October of 2018. But I did not immediately stop work, mostly because I still had projects scheduled into December. So, I decided to start my sabbatical in January, when my schedule was clear. It was also nice that January coincided with the new year, and having a couple of months until my sabbatical started also gave me time to plan how I wanted to use that time.

What actually happened was that due to a couple of unforeseen circumstances, December was far busier than I anticipated and a few projects had to be pushed into January. This wasn’t too much of a problem because I simply pushed back the end date of my sabbatical, but it would have been nice to start on time. Next time I will be more watchful for potential scheduling issues.

Money Matters

This seems to be the question at the top of everyone’s mind: how were you able to afford to take the time off? I have to admit I did not put a lot of thought into the finances. My wife and I are fortunate to not have significant debt or a mortgage, and when I checked our bank account I saw that we had enough money to cover expenses for a couple of months without an income. 

If cash flow is an issue, I think a sabbatical is still possible with a savings plan in the months leading up to it. To paraphrase Michael Hyatt, from whom I got the inspiration for a sabbatical,  “What do I need to do in order to make this possible?” Framed this way, options can start coming to mind. 

Will My Clients Leave Me?

One fear I had to confront, which I think can be common among freelancers, is the fear that I will lose clients because I am not available. Personally, I have come to believe that this is a fallacy if you are an established freelancer with a good reputation. If clients want to work with you, they will come back when you are ready.

The other side of this fear is learning to become comfortable with missing out on work opportunities. This was surprisingly difficult because my default is to say yes, if my schedule is open and especially if it is a repeat client. There were a number of times when I had to remind myself that my calendar was actually full because I had a prior commitment to myself. 

During this sabbatical, I was not sure if I should tell my clients the reason I was unavailable. In the end, I did tell two of my clients and I was pleasantly surprised at how supportive they were. For other clients, I simply said that my schedule was already full and told them when I would be available again. I still ended up with a few projects booked for after my sabbatical, so my relationships with my clients seem to be alright.

Plan and Anticipate the Benefits

In the months leading up to my sabbatical, I created a list of possible goals and tasks that I wanted to accomplish. When I actually started my sabbatical, I then edited the list into a workable plan. While the sabbatical should not become another chore, I think spending a bit of time thinking through why you are making the time and how to achieve the benefits you are looking for will help make the sabbatical a more enjoyable and satisfying experience, even if the plan is simply to spend four weeks at the beach to unwind. Keeping the benefits in mind will also help with saying no to projects or with sticking to the financial planning to make the sabbatical possible.

In the end, for me, the sabbatical was definitely worth the planning and the temporary lack of income. I am already thinking of doing it again.

Article
March 4, 2019
0 comment
by Stephen

What I Accomplished During My Sabbatical

Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash

Taking a sabbatical has been one of the best decisions I have made for my business. I am already thinking about doing it again next year.

For those of you who don’t know, I recently took nearly six weeks off work, from mid-January to the end of February. I did this for two main reasons: I was feeling overwhelmed and a bit burned out from a very busy year in 2018. I also realized that I no longer had a clear vision for what I wanted to accomplish through my work. When I first started freelancing, my goal was to earn enough money to support myself, and for a few years that was enough to keep work challenging. Now that I have moved beyond the start-up phase, I found that simply being busy was not enough. I needed a new challenge to focus on.

So my goal during this sabbatical was to figure out what that new thing should be. 

I thought the answer was going to be writing, because I do enjoy writing and as my wife can probably attest, it is something I frequently talk about. It is really because of writing that I sought to work in publishing in the first place. 

But looking deeper, the reason I enjoy writing—and why I enjoy indexing and blogging and introducing people to each other—is because I enjoy connecting people to new ideas and information. I enjoy being the facilitator who enables other people to accomplish what they need. 

Part of this shift, for me, came from listening to the audiobook version of Authority, by Nathan Barry. The book is about making the mindset shift from being highly proficient in your particular skill to becoming a teacher of that skill. Part of me quails at the thought of calling myself an indexing expert, especially knowing indexers who have ten, twenty, or even thirty years of experience over me. Yet I also have to acknowledge that I am no longer a novice and that I do have experience and knowledge that I can share. 

So this is my first pivot. I will continue to index, and I also want to find opportunities to share the indexing knowledge that I have.

I actually did just that during my sabbatical, by writing an email course on indexing. The course provides an overview of the components of an index and the indexing process, from the initial pre-planning to the final edit, in seven lessons delivered over seven days. It took me five and a half days to write and publish the course, and I have to admit I had a blast doing so. If you are interested, you can check it out here.

Writing is still important, though. The shift for me was to realize that while I still want to publish fiction, I am also just as happy writing nonfiction. Writing is one of the ways that I can teach and facilitate, in a more direct way than indexing (though indexing is also in service to the reader, making the text accessible). This is my second pivot, to be intentional this year about making writing part of my business. The finer details of how this will happen still need to be worked out, but I have a few ideas for writing projects and have dedicated 9-10 every morning to writing, to make sure that words are produced. 

I did some other things during my sabbatical too. Besides a week away visiting friends, I still showed up at my office almost every day. In addition to what I have already mentioned, I spent time brainstorming and writing a two page vision document; read several books to help me reflect on my work; worked my way through the exercises in the writing book Story Genius, by Lisa Cron, to improve my fiction; established a new daily and weekly schedule; and I finally finished setting up investments for retirement, which is something I started a year ago and then let fall to the wayside. In a way, I used this time to try out and practice new habits and new forms of work, such as writing the email course. Without this time, I would have felt too stressed and squeezed to invest the time and effort. I also made sure that I spent evenings and weekends resting, which was sorely lacking before. 

Returning to this theme of vision and purpose, I think the biggest benefit from this sabbatical is that I do feel energized again about my work. If I had done nothing else, the sabbatical would have been worth it to have accomplished only this. I have a much clearer sense for what I want to accomplish in the remaining ten months of 2019, and most importantly, I am excited to get going.