Last summer I had the gift of being able to take a month-long sabbatical. (Thank you, Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Board of Directors!) This program was put in place by the Foundation in 2019 and made available to all employees (not just the CEO) but due to COVID all the employees eligible for sabbaticals had to delay taking them for three years. Our program allows for four weeks at seven years of employment. It does not require any explicit work-related learning activities, but it is totally flexible and up to the employee to choose how to use it.
To be honest, I had not taken more than two weeks off from work in my entire adult working life (which is more decades than I care to admit). And as in the case of most folks, the decision of what to do became a family conversation because I needed to consider doing my sabbatical with my wife and daughter. And, then of course, figuring out WHEN to schedule four weeks out of the office has to work around my work schedule, my wife’s, and my daughter’s.
In the end what worked was summer of 2023, from roughly mid-July through mid-August. I ended up choosing to spend a month in Italy, and we rented a home in the Liguria region, in a tiny, ancient mountain town called Torria that dates back to medieval times.
I began with the personal goal of being in a remote, slow-paced, beautiful setting, with limited tourism, with the ability to truly unplug, to disconnect from work, to deeply engage in the practice of reading for myself, to cook, explore, contemplate. And to make it easier to avoid the temptation of checking work emails or logging in remotely, before I left, we severed my connection to the office network, making it impossible to access email or files. Of course, away messages were used, and a staff member did check my email regularly to respond to anything urgent and reduce the volume to be addressed upon my return.
My wife did however need to continue to work remotely, so Wi-Fi was important for her, and we had to do some negotiation around her work Zoom meetings. And because we were also with our almost 12-year-old daughter, we had to find ways to keep her engaged.
This was the value of our location – the town itself was a beautiful, historic village (population of 150) in the mountains of Liguria, surrounded by ancient olive trees terraced into the mountains. Yet the town was only about a half hour drive from the Mediterranean Italian Riviera coast, allowing for beach days, and exploring the coastal cities like Sanremo and Nice (France was only about a one-hour drive away).
But there were many days where my wife and daughter took trips (sometimes overnights), but I stayed in Torria, reading, walking, cycling (the house came with bikes) and just BEING. Coincidentally (or maybe not – thanks to technology maybe listening in on me!) I ran across a social media post about the Dutch philosophy of “Niksen” which is the practice of just being. Here is a quote from a New York Times article on the philosophy:
Generally speaking, our culture does not promote sitting still, and that can have wide-reaching consequences for our mental health, well-being, productivity and other areas of our lives. Technology doesn’t make it any easier: The smartphone you carry with you at all hours makes it almost impossible to truly unplug and embrace idleness. And by keeping ourselves busy at all times, we may be losing our ability to sit still because our brains are actually being rewired.
Indeed, the benefits of idleness can be wide-ranging.
Ms. Mann’s research has found that daydreaming — an inevitable effect of idleness — “literally makes us more creative, better at problem-solving, better at coming up with creative ideas.” For that to happen, though, total idleness is required.
“Let the mind search for its own stimulation,” Ms. Mann said. “That’s when you get the daydreaming and mind wandering, and that’s when you’re more likely to get the creativity.”
This resonated so deeply for me and matched what I had intuitively wanted to address in my sabbatical, to force myself to just BE, to not feel compelled to be productive. Because in fact, as someone inherently curious and driven, even vacations and “downtime” are almost always programmed with activities – skiing, hiking. Visiting museums, going to performances, socializing with friends and family. All these things are wonderful, of course, but they are not being still, not truly taking a break.
Also, coincidentally the Chronicle of Philanthropy published a story during my sabbatical on the challenge of burnout among nonprofit leaders and the crucial role sabbaticals can play in addressing it. I am keenly aware that as a foundation leader I am in a position of privilege and not subject to anywhere near the same level of stress and trauma that those on the front lines of nonprofit work face – worries about making payroll, serving communities and people in crisis. Yet, I too, felt burdened by the constant strain of doing the most with this position of privilege I am in, deploying these resources as wisely and effectively as possible, feeling the pain of not being able to do enough, never truly unplugging or disconnecting. And as a funder of the arts, feeling the constant pull of needing to see the work at museums and galleries, to go to exhibitions, go to theatre, music, dance performances, festivals. And of course, this is not painful, it is driven by a personal passion for the arts – yet it in a sense still makes “down-time” work-related, being “productive.”
So it was, ironically, a sign of the effectiveness of my sabbatical that I went the entire four weeks, in a country filled with extraordinary museums and performing arts, that I did not set foot in a museum, or attend any performances. Of course, I did deeply immerse myself in place, community, history, architecture, nature – but nothing formal or structured. Even with my cooking I followed no recipes, I just went to markets, bought fresh local ingredients, and improvised. But I did do a LOT of reading. While I love the tangible and tactical sensation of the old school practice of reading physical books, the practicality of not being able to travel with a suitcase full of books got me to break down and get a Kindle. What did I read?
Mostly, I did a deep dive into Afrofuturism writing. I had already read Octavia Butler’s Parable books and been blown away by them and have also always had a keen interest in science fiction books, especially those that use the genre to reflect on what it means to be human, issues of climate, technology, science, culture, political systems. I read Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (also known as the Lilith’s Brood novels) – Dawn, Adulthood Rites and Imago. Then I read The Inheritance Trilogy by NK Jemison, a Black woman writer very much inspired by Butler – this trilogy encompasses The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of Gods. I had read in the past works by Anthony Doerr – All the Light We Cannot See and Cloud Cuckoo Land and had been astounded by his beautiful language, and creation of compelling, magical narratives and characters. So, I also included his book Memory Wall, a beautiful collection of stories all around the theme of memory, spanning four continents and different cultures.
And, yes, I did break down and do a family excursion to Cannes to see Barbie (dressed in pink, of course), and a I did do some BEACH (thank you Ken), and a whale watching excursion. We also did a day trip to Turin (such beautiful architecture!) and at the very end a couple of nights in Milan. But the vast majority of my time was spent sitting, reading, walking, thinking, in this beautiful tiny mountain village.
I am not only grateful to the foundation’s Board for offering this benefit to all employees, but to the Colorado Health Foundation and other funders who fund sabbatical programs for our nonprofit leaders, and to all nonprofit organizations that create and offer such programs to their employees. I hope that more funders invest in such programs, and that more nonprofits can create their own policies. As a Board member of Philanthropy Colorado, I was also involved in crafting and approving a sabbatical program for that organization, and based on that experience and our own here, I can say that these programs also strengthen resiliency and team culture and capacity. You must develop plans for filling the responsibilities of whoever is on sabbatical, and that creates leadership opportunities, and more broad-based understanding of the work of whoever is on sabbatical. This is actually healthy for the organization.
I did not go into my sabbatical having a name for what I wanted to accomplish – but in the end I came out of it realizing I had been practicing Niksen – doing nothing, which was, in the end, really something.
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