Why More Americans Are Investing In A Mid-Career Pause

The idea of an adult sabbatical isn’t new, and in Europe it’s actually pretty common, with many people opting to take a “gap year” either between high school and college, or between graduating college and beginning corporate life. Typically this time is spent on an extended round-the-world trip, with generations of folks following the well-travelled routes set out in the beloved “South East Asia On A Shoestring” travel guide.

The contrast between American and European philosophies around leisure time is most sharply underscored by corporate vacation policies: here in the US 10 days paid leave is the typical standard, whereas workers in Europe usually enjoy a minimum of 35 days paid leave annually. Perhaps as a consequence, up until recently, the idea of Americans taking extended breaks from the workforce was a pretty rare occurrence.

In my research for the piece I wrote about mid-career pivots, I was surprised to uncover a subset of folks that I wasn’t expecting to find in and around corporate America: workers that were intentionally making the decision to invest in a mid-career pause. The pandemic, and the seismic shifts it wrought on how we live and work, has precipitated a wave of workers questioning the accepted orthodoxy that you need to wait for retirement to pursue extended leisure.

For this piece I interviewed people that made the conscious decision to step away from the workforce for a minimum of one year. I wanted to understand their motivations for doing so, their concerns in making the financial commitment, and most crucially what they hoped to gain from the experience.

Getting A Sailboat Seaworthy, For A Solo Voyage To Paradise

Bryan Reed was on vacation in Europe, sitting in a hotel room in Amsterdam, when he got the call that has become all too familiar, especially for those that have built their careers in the Bay Area tech industry. Immediately following the call, his girlfriend Erin turned to him and said “you’ve been talking about sailing to Hawaii since I met you.” And so began a journey of self-discovery:

“I think there was some emotional catch up that I needed to do, but after a few weeks, I started leaning-in pretty hard, and got to working on projects on the boat. I started thinking tactically about the roadmap, and what are the steps to get me to Hawaii.”

Looking back, Bryan realizes that his stress-levels had been building since the onset of the pandemic. As a natural introvert, he actually enjoyed the enforced working from home at first, but as the pandemic dragged on he found himself increasingly restless: “I thought maybe moving jobs would help decrease stress, or increase interest, or like just change something.” Bryan left his role at a large tech firm and moved to a smaller start up, but there “was a small round of layoffs, and they removed a chunk of our organization. As soon as that happened, I was like, well, maybe this is kind of the universe telling me something.”

Although he didn’t immediately act at that point, the seeds had already been planted that maybe it was time to pursue a goal he’d been thinking about for a while. In a further sign from the universe, “I did a DNA test, and I found out that I’m 28% Scandinavian, and 48% English, which is basically Viking. So I like to think there might be some ancestral draw there.”

Even though Bryan had some advance warning that further layoffs were likely, there was still a period of adjustment, and of grieving, when he finally received the news. Although Bryan acknowledges that “there’s something pulling me out there – there’s something drawing me into the ocean,” he made a deliberate choice in giving himself a year away from work. He realized that working to an artificial deadline to get his boat seaworthy and beginning his voyage on a short timeline would just be replacing one form of stress with another. Investing the time is an intentional act:

“I think I’m probably going to learn patience. I’m probably going to find out some new things about myself hopefully. People say they find new parts of themselves that they never knew about.”

Once Bryan’s sailboat is fully seaworthy, he’ll depart San Francisco for a four week single-handed voyage to Hawaii. His girlfriend Erin will meet him there, and then he will sail back alone, for a total of eight weeks at sea. You can follow his adventures here.

Taking A Pause From Corporate America, To Swim The English Channel

James Raybould had been an executive at LinkedIn for more than a decade, when a childhood ambition started to resurface in his mind, and he too began to feel the pull of the ocean, but in quite a different way. He describes swimming the English Channel (the 21 mile stretch of ocean between England and France) as “a particularly British challenge.” As someone that’s always viewed himself as an athlete first, this was an endurance test that had been on his mind for a while.

James joined LinkedIn when there were fewer than 500 employees, and during his 12+ year tenure had the opportunity to work across multiple different business units, gaining experience across the organization. During that time LinkedIn grew to more than 20,000 employees, IPO’d, and then was acquired by Microsoft. James is quick to stress however that “LinkedIn’s mission and vision, and reason for being didn’t change, from 2010 when I joined, through to today.” He goes on to say that “there’s a lot of tech companies out there, but there aren’t many that are doing both interesting and important things, and that kind of hooked me.”

Because the mission of LinkedIn resonated so strongly with James it became “very easy to stay, and suddenly you’ve been there for ten years.” After beginning to wonder whether he wanted to sign up for what is affectionately known at LinkedIn as “another tour of duty” James started having transparent conversations with his boss about potentially leaving his role to spend a year training for his challenge. James realized “I could do a sub-standard job of parenting, work, and training, or I could take the most time-consuming part of my life, which is work, and remove it. And thereby give myself the best shot of doing this properly.”

In February of 2022 he signed up for an August 2023 “tide”, formerly announced his departure in April of 2022, before leaving LinkedIn for good that September. What followed was an intense period of training, both in the pool, and in open water around the San Francisco Bay, to get ready for his cross-channel attempt. In hindsight, although James enjoyed getting “crazy fit” (his resting heart rate dropped to 41), he now acknowledges that his reasoning for this particular challenge “wasn’t great” because he “doesn’t particularly like swimming.”

Perhaps most importantly, James was able to increase his time with his children by up to 50%, and significantly improved the quality of the time he spent with them. He came to appreciate that work can be a great source of affirmation, whereas pursuing a solo goal like distance swimming was a noticeable contrast, because ultimately it’s a lonely pursuit. James notes “being good at your job feels good, being good at swimming, less so.”

Since returning from England, James has been spending time coaching and mentoring, and operating as a fractional exec for early-stage startups. His year in the water helped him realize that, for him, “social beats solo” and that he enjoys things more when they’re “we oriented versus me oriented.” James acknowledges that while “the year itself had ups and downs, the anticipation of the year off made the last year at work much more enjoyable.”

For both Bryan and James, the breakthrough came when they stopped thinking “why would I do this” and reframed it as “why wouldn’t I do this?” A year away from work is an investment like any other, and if you’re in a position to make such an investment, the potential rewards can easily start to outweigh the risk.