Take a three-month sabbatical from work
By the eleventh week, the freedom that felt impossible in week one has turned into a low hum of boredom, and you start drafting emails you don't need to send yet. Getting here required months of written notice, the exact length set by whatever the employer feels like requiring, since UK employers make their own rules on eligibility for unpaid sabbaticals, plus a return-to-work agreement spelling out that your desk, or an equivalent one, will be waiting. Three months seems to be roughly where most people's nerve, and their employer's patience, runs out, rather than pushing for six. You go back on a Tuesday, oddly, because Monday was a bank holiday, and nobody in the office quite believes you were ever gone.
Practical
- Cost
- $3,000–15,000 in living costs
- Best time
- Any time, though many align it with a quiet period at work
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time it takes
- Three months, unpaid
- What people get wrong
- People plan the trip or project but not the re-entry, and skip the written return-to-work agreement, which is what actually protects the job — verbal promises about it tend to evaporate. Most also underestimate how long it takes to switch off, and how bored they get by week eleven.
- With
- Alone