--- title: What Sabbaticals Provide in the AI Age description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. Politics, world news, photos, video, tech reviews, health, science, and entertainment news. canonical: https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-sabbaticals-provide-in-the-ai-age/ author: Michelle Peng article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-07-19T10:30:00.325Z article:modified_time: 2026-07-17T18:21:27.541Z article:section: Charter og:title: What Sabbaticals Provide in the AI Age og:description: Breaking news and analysis from time.com. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jul 19, 2026 10:30 AM UTC   by [Michelle Peng](https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/) Jul 19, 2026 10:30 AM UTC With increasing pressure to [do more with less](https://www.charterworks.com/how-ai-is-squeezing-tech-workers-and-expanding-roles/), many people feel like they need a real break from work. But it can feel impossible to step away, given the stagnant job market and an accelerating pace of work. That doesn’t have to be the case, argues [DJ DiDonna](https://www.linkedin.com/in/djdidonna), a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, the founder of The Sabbatical Project, and author of a new book on sabbaticals, [_Big Time Off_](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9781668060896)_._ We spoke with DiDonna about his research on how to plan for sabbaticals, how extended breaks can benefit both workers and employers, and best practices for making time away from work as fruitful as possible. Here are excerpts from our conversation, edited for space and clarity: **What did your research reveal about the benefits of sabbaticals for individuals?** We can talk about all the increases in creativity and innovation from a company standpoint, but there are also more squishy things where people say, ‘I feel more human.’ How do you put a number on that? Folks describe feeling less like a machine that just works, eats, and sleeps and more like a person that savors the day, watches the sunset, values their friends and family. These are the things that we know from research that matter the most at the end of our lives. Sign up for Charter's newsletter to get the handbook for the future of work delivered to your inbox. Email Address You can unsubscribe at any time. By signing up you are agreeing to our [Terms of Service](https://www.charterworks.com/terms-of-service/) and [Privacy Policy](https://www.charterworks.com/privacy-policy/). **With all the pressure white-collar workers are under right now, how do you address fears of being left behind if you choose to step away?** Those are real fears. Some people certainly can't afford to be out of a job. The challenge is, if you wait on the external circumstances to give you permission or you hold out for the perfect time, it’s probably not going to come. That’s why roughly two-thirds of sabbaticals are catalyzed by a negative event. Very few people feel like they could take a sabbatical this year. Instead, ask yourself, ‘What are you doing in five years?’ You can plan your life around it financially, job-wise, logistics-wise. When things are changing quickly, you can either be stuck putting one foot in front of the other, or you can zoom out and ask, ‘Where is the ball going and how can I change my trajectory to get there?’ I hear from so many leaders who feel all this pressure to be fluent in AI. Normally, you’re too busy to add this other thing on top of all your work. When you take a sabbatical, you get to experiment with AI in a fun, pressure-free way. The time off allows you to approach stuff that might feel like work from a direction of play and experimentation. For example, one CTO I coach just launched a personal-coaching bot that he created on sabbatical to help him try to figure out what to do next with his life. **What are the pieces of a good sabbatical plan?** Make sure that your sabbatical is long enough, ideally measured in months, not days or weeks. Making sure that you are not involved with your current job. You should be fully disconnected from that prior work life. Make sure the first phase is focused on healing and detox. Get out of your head and into your body, so don’t swap out your current mind work for learning a foreign language or writing a book. Instead, just for a little bit, focus on something tactile. Do pottery, dance, yoga, climb a mountain. Then, in the next phase of your sabbatical, experiment. Think about your time off as a set of experiments and hypotheses. I wrote about John, a family friend who I always knew as a lawyer. I didn’t know that he had always wanted to be a writer, but life got in the way. He built up the courage to step away and give writing a try. In the end, he ripped up his manuscript and realized he didn’t want to be a writer. Sabbaticals give you a chance to test the counterfactuals, versions of your life to see if you’ve chosen the right one. **Why should employers offer sabbaticals as a workplace benefit?** Sabbaticals help you test whether your company is resilient. Can you withstand someone stepping away? Are you better when they come back because you've been able to transfer responsibilities and put people in the right seat on the bus? When people know that their company actually cares about them, they’re also more likely to be loyal. We don't have enough data to say for sure, but over 80% of people that take a sabbatical return to their job. And you have to compare apples to apples. What are the odds that people leave anyway? Often, an employee will say, ‘I'm burnt out. I'm at the end of my rope. I'm leaving.’ And their employer will say, ‘Wait, wait, what if we gave you a few months off to recover?’ From a company standpoint, it's a courageous move to say, ‘We value the whole human being and we're confident that we're a good company to work for. We want to reward people for the work they've done, and we want to have a workplace that people want to come back to.’ When I worked with Zappos \[to co-design their sabbatical policy\], a leader told me, ‘I don’t want employees to stay because they’re handcuffed to the desk.’ If someone leaves the moment you give them a chance to take time off, it’s probably a sign that they didn’t want to be there in the first place, and I think most employers would rather have someone that wants to be there. **_Big Time Off_** **is out July 21\. Pre-order it on** [**Amazon**](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1668060892?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback) **or** [**Bookshop**](https://bookshop.org/a/664/9781668060896)**.** **Read Charter’s** [**guide**](https://www.charterworks.com/sabbatical-policy/) **to creating an effective sabbatical policy at your organization.** --- ## Read more from Charter [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/) [Open article: AI Did Not Kill the Entry-Level Job. Leaders Did.](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/ai-did-not-kill-the-entry-level-job-leaders-did-/)  ### AI Did Not Kill the Entry-Level Job. Leaders Did. [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/ai-did-not-kill-the-entry-level-job-leaders-did-/) [Open article: Why the Office Isn’t a Cure for Loneliness](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-the-office-isn-t-a-cure-for-loneliness/)  ### Why the Office Isn’t a Cure for Loneliness [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/why-the-office-isn-t-a-cure-for-loneliness/) [Open article: How to Pitch AI More Effectively to Workers](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-pitch-ai-more-effectively-to-workers/)  ### How to Pitch AI More Effectively to Workers [READ MORE](https://time.com/partner-content/charter/how-to-pitch-ai-more-effectively-to-workers/) --- ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-sabbaticals-provide-in-the-ai-age/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-sabbaticals-provide-in-the-ai-age/"},"headline":"What Sabbaticals Provide in the AI Age","datePublished":"2026-07-19T10:30:00.325Z","dateModified":"2026-07-17T18:21:27.541Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-sabbaticals-provide-in-the-ai-age/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt490347584dd309c2/6a5a727ba1fc06ebadf86655/charter-didonna.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Michelle Peng","jobTitle":"","url":"https://time.com/author/michelle-peng/"}],"articleSection":"Charter","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt490347584dd309c2/6a5a727ba1fc06ebadf86655/charter-didonna.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"charter-didonna.jpg","caption":"","creditText":"","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/partner-content/charter/what-sabbaticals-provide-in-the-ai-age/","name":"What Sabbaticals Provide in the AI Age"}}]}] ```