Thoughts on Sabbatical

I never understood taking a sabbatical. It always seemed an unnecessary break from work which I deeply enjoyed every second of. So I had never taken one before. Until now. After 13 years of working non-stop, the last 7 years of which were way more intense than I imagined, I decided to finally take a break from work.

Let me share some context. I was at Google from 2017 to 2020. Google is a seriously large company. It creates its own mega-sized bubble. The company was so vast that it became your entire world - your networking happened inside, your random coffee chats were with Google colleagues, and your career moves were planned within Google’s ecosystem. There was so much to read, so many new products to try out and so many activities you could participate in… all inside Google. You almost developed these blinders that kept you from seeing what was happening outside. While this didn’t feel like a problem at all at the time, it definitely was silently eroding my awareness of what all happened outside of the company. I know, you cannot be everywhere at all times. But believe me when I say this, very few jobs make you feel like they’re entirely your world – not in a bad way, but in a way that is all encompassing. You work there, you eat there… you’re a Googler.

The same pattern repeated at Unacademy. Managing a large team and handling challenging situations meant I had nothing left to give outside of work. Work was extremely demanding and intense. It was the culture. Everyone pulled more weight than they were stipulated to deliver. I cannot remember intentionally staying at home to work even for a single day. We often worked Saturdays. It was fun and we enjoyed it. But the body keeps the score. The mind even more so. Designing non-stop while also setting your own bar to ship nothing but the highest quality stuff is very demanding. It takes its toll eventually.

So that’s the context about the time before the sabbatical. I have never been someone who takes decisions with an on-ramp. I go in cold turkey. Late last year, I decided I will take a break. I left Unacademy. Not just that though, I decided to go completely off of any commercial work. No freelancing, no consulting, no side projects that need to make money, nothing.

I took a sabbatical. Without an end date in mind.

The first three weeks of sabbatical were rough. Imagine the vacuum that the absence of day-to-day work suddenly creates. I’m a workaholic - I’ve always stayed busy. If it’s not work, it’s side projects. If not that, it’s writing about work. I’ve never stopped. So you can imagine the kind of brakes I pumped. But having heard enough about sabbaticals from others, I definitely wanted to try it.

Waking up with no immediate tasks or responsibilities was surreal. For the first time in 13 years, I felt the absence of a familiar weight - the constant pressure of meeting expectations from peers, the responsibility towards my team, and accountability to a boss. This was a strange new lightness.

But time passed. It always does. I know it’s quite a cliche at this point to talk about freedom and how taking a sabbatical affords you that aplenty. But you have to experience it to truly understand what it is. I have worked in extremely high agency roles for the past 7 years so having operational freedom isn’t really new. I’ve had that. But having the freedom to say no to things I didn’t want to do, or I wasn’t quite convinced by, that is what became a new unlock for me.

Another liberating discovery was learning to pursue curiosity without the pressure of monetization. For the first time, I could explore interests purely for the sake of exploring, undertake projects without worrying about their commercial viability, and engage in work where the the primary reward was creative satisfaction or joy rather than financial returns.

During this sabbatical, I’ve focused on three areas that matter most to me: deepening connections with family, dedicating more time to writing, and experimenting with emerging technologies – particularly AI.

My mentor once told me that the surest sign of personal growth is when your problems evolve. You go from solving one type of problems to a newer type of problems. That’s when you know you’ve advanced further in life.

Taking a sabbatical truly lets you evaluate what the newer problem statements in life look like. What you would like to tackle next.

My wife and I sometimes joke about whether I’ll want to go back to full-time work at all. We’re considering different options for the future, but we’re not in a hurry to decide. For now, I’m happy where I am.