The Power of Time Off

Many thanks to my colleague Kati Järvinen, for bringing Stefan Sagmeister’s TED talk to my attention. In it, he describes how he made a conscious decision to take a one-year sabbatical every seven years and the impact of this decision. Conceptually, he took five years out of the retirement phase of his life and interspersed them through the career portion. The effect on his creativity has been enormous, as he illustrates through the talk. The seven years following his first sabbatical was fuelled by ideas that sprang from the year off.

I’ve experimented with shorter breaks and found them beneficial, both to me (I recharge my ideas bank) and to my customers (who benefit from these). Sagmeister’s talk has set me wondering, what would it be like to take a longer break … would the benefit be even greater?

Make sure to watch the entire film, the final sequence is a peach.