The Sabbatical:

New Perspective, Rest, Education, Renewal

Welcome to 2015 everyone! Also called “rest with a purpose”, the sabbatical is an appropriate discussion after a good long holiday break! We hope that the holidays gave respite and reestablishment, and that you enter the New Year full of new energy and vision! If not, maybe it is time for a sabbatical.

The idea of rest is one we can all relate to, every week we look forward to a day or so of it. Even our language codifies the concept of rest: In Old English sabat means “Saturday as a day of rest”. An in Mosaic law, the seventh year was a sabbatical year, “in which land was to remain untilled and debtors and slaves released”. Universities often grant sabbatical years to their staff, not for rest but in order to focus and engage “in research or other activities that will advance the faculty member’s scholarly achievement or that will enhance the reputation of or otherwise benefit the university”.

What if you took that a step further? What if you took a year purely to advance your own interests with no other end goal than being curious and investigating something of value to you? Well designer Stefan Sagmeister does just that. Every seven years, Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh his creative outlook.

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