Career transitions & working identity / pt. 3
On taking a sabbatical, the importance of fallow periods, and navigating the "neutral zone" of transition
“The best work ethic requires a good rest ethic.” - Kevin Kelly
I’ve come around to the view that the practice of sabbatical-taking - once the preserve of academics - will soon be something actively encouraged in the mainstream and lose its stigma as being a place for washed up careers. It’s already being discussed in some pockets; return to work programs have reportedly doubled since 2016, and some unlikely places - like investment banks - are acknowledging that people who’ve been away from work - for a minimum of two years, mind - may have fresh insights, creativity and perspective to offer. In a world facing accelerating change, increasing numbers of people are discovering that constructive answers to difficult problems may be found in meaningful pause rather than mindless pursuit. I’m one of them.
COVID and the changes it brought about significantly altered, or at least kickstarted a recalibration of the place of work in our lives, superificial and deep. I know I went from being immediately grateful for remote work to questioning whether, given the shortness of life, the manner in which I made my living was at all meaningful.
I’ve long wanted to take a gap year in my life - a desire stemming from the year 2013, when, two years into my first job, I’d realised deep down that I needed a wilderness passage of sorts, a time of non-doing, and non-grasping, where I could simply be and get to know myself more deeply. My gut instinct was that allowing some time to roam would do me some good and help birth a more authentic path forward into the rest of my life. At the time, however, I was not financially independent. I also had no idea about what to do next, let alone how to finance my ambitions. My parents then were dead against the idea of me taking time off, and so I did the closest thing to a sabbatical: I went off to do a year-long liberal arts program at a fancy new college in India. I don’t regret it: I met some wonderful people, learned a bunch of things about the world and myself, and a lot of good came from that experience which still follows me to this day. I then moved to the UK for a Master’s degree, and worked for 6 more years.
I’d been consciously saving for a year off during this time, and while I may not have planned it such, things panned out in a way that four months ago, I found myself faced with a decision: jump straight back into the job market and take the next thing that came up, or take some time to pause, rest, reflect, and rejuvenate. I chose the latter, and I couldn’t be gladder. This happened at the appropriate time: I was burned out, drained, anxious. Creatives need to fill the well from time to time. I know my well had been running dry for at least a couple of years. It was time for a long overdue top up.
I was originally going to write a post detailing what I’d done so far on my sabbatical and the benefits and changes I’d observed in myself. But there are already some wonderful people extolling the virtues of dedicated time off work (I’ve indexed my favourites at the bottom of this piece).
Make no mistake, sabbaticals are great.
But they’re also challenging.
I seem to gravitate towards writing about messy, complex issues in my posts. So, instead of touting the benefits of my sabbatical and the wonderful things it’s done for me (which I will in good time), I’m going to use this post to discuss the nature of transitions - as they relate to career - how we mostly get them wrong, and how we may get them a bit more right.
I’m going to explain the ‘neutral zone’ of a transition, the difficult, limbo-like space in which an individual flirts with various possible selves - past, present, and future - and that leaning in to it may be the ideal ‘strategy’ (for lack of a better word) to allow for a full inner reorientation to take place. A sabbatical or career break is in my view, a deliberate creating of a ‘neutral zone' for career transitions, and I will share some strategies I and others have used for navigating it.
Before I proceed, one might ask: why take a sabbatical at all?
In a Moloch-worshipping culture, it’s easy to scorn Slack. But there’s a sound, natural logic to rest.
Consider that as part of crop rotation, farmers deliberately leave tracts of their land fallow while cultivating others. While the other tracts of land flourish and produce crops, one is left lying barren.
From Robin Cangie’s post, The Wisdom of Fallow Fields:
“When a field lies fallow, it doesn’t look like much is happening. All the other fields are producing bright and colorful crops; we can watch them change from day to day. But the fallow field is just a pile of dirt. It was a pile of dirt yesterday. It will appear to be the same pile of dirt tomorrow.
But within that pile of dirt, a flurry of activity is happening. Worms burrow tunnels that nourish and aerate the soil. Organic matter decomposes into life-giving nutrients. Rainfall gathers into underground water. The health of next year’s harvest depends upon this rich, invisible dance beneath the surface.
Even at 12 years old, when I first learned there were such things as fallow fields, the wisdom of this approach struck me. Now, as I gaze outside my office window to the unmistakable signs of winter, it occurs to me:
Humans need fallow periods, too.”
Let’s talk about transitions.
I’ve just finished reading the book ‘Transitions’ by William Bridges, an expert on the topic. According to Bridges, the thing we get wrong as a society about a transition is that we equate it with change: (emphasis in bold mine)
“But it (transition) isn’t (change). Change is your move to a new city or your shift to a new job. It is the birth of your new baby or the death of your father. It is the switch from the old health plan at work to the new one or the replacement of your manager by a new one, or it is the acquisition your company just made.
In other words, change is situational. Transition, on the other hand, is psychological. It is not those events but rather the inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate any of those changes into your life.”
Society gives a lot of importance to new external changes. But neglected are the internal psychological states one must go through in order to successfully transition to a new situation. Pair that with the loss of traditions and rituals - rites of passage - that helped individuals let go of an old chapter in their lives and pave the way for a new one, and we have a society that is incapable of dealing with transitions in an integrated, holistic manner.
Bridges notes that a transition often has three parts: an ending, a neutral zone, and a beginning. I’d like to spend some time talking about the neutral zone, because while endings and beginnings are more obvious; it is the uncharted waters of the neutral zone that most of us avoid, are unacquainted with, and in which we are are most likely to drown were we to suddenly find ourselves in them.
What is the neutral zone?
It’s the time in between an ending and beginning, “a ‘neither here nor there’ psychological space where identities are in flux and people feel they have lost the ground beneath their feet.” Think of it as limbo, a kind of purgatory place, a transit terminal.
What does this feel like? I can talk about this from the perspective of my sabbatical.
I’ve had days when I’ve felt comfortably aloof from my old identities and days when I feel like not much has changed. Sometimes I feel my psyche choking on the old mental habits and limitations I imposed on myself in the past. Sometimes, I feel free as a bird. It is disorienting. I’m not so sure who I am anymore. Some days I’m “intolerably spiritual” in the words of a friend, some days I worry for my bank account. I’m also ambiguous about my productivity during this time. On the one hand, I’ve allowed myself to follow my curiosities, learning new things, and not forcing anything. At the same time, I can’t shake the nagging feeling that I’ve not embarked on any major project as of yet.
Vague. Tentative. Contradictory. Confusing. Messy.
This is the neutral zone.
There are days when I feel an intense clockwork and churning in the back of my mind; but I can’t see it because it’s happening behind closed doors. I know I’m moving towards something. I just don’t know what it is, and I don’t have quantifiable metrics that will sit neatly on a slide deck. I only have a stronger intuition, a better sense of my curiosity, and can identify energy sources and sinks.
Bridges offers some bracing comfort:
"We need not feel defensive about this apparently unproductive time-out at turning points in our lives, for the neutral zone is meant to be a moratorium from the conventional activity of our everyday existence. In the apparently aimless activity of our time alone, we are doing important inner business."
Reading this has also given me the courage not to cave into my fears and prematurely abort my sabbatical, despite the temptation arising from time to time. As I’ve learned the hard way, there is a real risk to neglecting the neutral zone. We are not machines or appliances switched on and off at will. Even if you successfully make a ‘change’ without allowing for the gap of a neutral zone, your past self will tend to follow you into your new context, only complicating further the process of transition.
I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I’d never taken breaks in between jobs, and that that was a mistake. In the time I’ve been able to reflect on these periods, I realise why. If we don’t allow for time for an old working identity to settle, it tends to carry itself with us. I’ve experienced this in nearly every job I’ve worked: a part of the past tends to want to assert itself in a new, unfamiliar environment and gravitate towards known niches.
Here are my own words from a previous post:
“Instead of leaning into the new environment and being patient to see what emerged, I gravitated towards what I knew, and jumped eagerly at any opportunity that resembled familiarity and gave me a sense of competence. I was unwilling to sit with uncertainty, with ambiguity, and to allow time for truly creative ideas to percolate. I was in a new context, with new requirements, and new challenges. Instead of trying to lean in to the new, I fell back on the old and familiar. Worse, I even tried to assert it as much as I could: uncertainty and ambiguity have a way of making the ego assert itself in a stronger way than usual.”
And here’s an extract from Herminia Ibarra’s Working Identity, which my own experience corroborates.
“Oscillating among the different possibilities allows us time to come to new and different ways of integrating who we were then with who we are now and who we are becoming. When this self-exploration and self-testing ends prematurely--either because we are not able to tolerate the contradictions or because we are unable to assimilate new information about ourselves - we risk either letting go of the past too rapidly or holding on to it too rigidly.”
Still, I admit, while reading about and listening to the experience of others certainly makes me feel less alone, it doesn’t make the fog of the neutral zone any less difficult. In the end, our stories are our own, and we must all grope towards the light at the end of the tunnel by ourselves. So, here are some tools for navigating the neutral zone, combed from both Bridges’ book and my own personal experience.
Tools for navigating the neutral zone
Surrender: Accepting your need for time in the neutral zone will prevent you from trying to speed up your transition or regress to a previous mode of being. This is the biggest leap of faith: you have to trust that you’ll know when the time has come for you to start doing. Till then, you’ll have to resist the temptation to leave the neutral zone behind. Reading Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul was of great help in understanding what letting go means: keeping my heart open, even in the face of difficulty and challenge.
Solitude: Cultivate alone time. While it may be tempting to seek connection with others, the purpose of your descent, your withdrawal, is to better hear your own inner signals. If it is hard to come by in your day-to-day, Bridges advises a “passage journey” - an excursion to a place of solitude, away from digital distractions and people, and in a setting unfamiliar to you. The idea is to simply live for a while in a setting that corresponds to your situation in life.
Observation: Bridges advises maintaining a log of your experiences in the neutral zone. The way I do it and have done it since 2016 is Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages. Most mornings, the first thing I do after waking up is spill my thoughts straight on to the page. It’s an ideal time in which to reflect on and assimilate your daily experiences. Most importantly, it helps you put a finger on resonant experiences, and forms a compass directing you towards what you need and want. It also gets psychic gunk out of your head first thing in the day, unlocking powerful mental momentum.
Storytelling: Bridges advises writing a story of your life to-date. Reviewing and reflecting on the past may give you a sense of where you’ve been and where you’re going. Perhaps in the act of writing it down and from the vantage point of the neutral zone, you may begin to view the past differently than you have. You may also rewrite your own narrative and undo old ruts of thought and interpretations of events. There’s a paradoxical tendency in the neutral zone not just to hold to your past, but to simultaneously reject it. Writing my story has allowed me to see the arc of my journey better and appreciate why I did what I did. As a result, I’m kinder to the person who made those decisions. I’m using Jordan Peterson’s Self-Authoring Suite as a way of reviewing my past, seeing my present, and planning for the future.
Exploration: It takes a while to excavate your inner longings, desires, and to be able to hear signals from your interior. But following the call of your exploratory attention, which draws you towards things you’re curious about, is what holds the key to your future growth. Not everything you try needs to be productised, optimised, or even broadcasted. Sign up for that quirky workshop. Mushroom cultivation? Breathwork? Home DIY? Do it all without regard for where this all may lead. Act on Joseph’s Campbell’s dictum to follow your bliss and trust that doors will open where there were only walls.
Embodiment: Cultivating embodiment practices: meditation, yoga, swimming, breath work, and strength and conditioning training have gone a long way to keeping me in good health and good spirits. Practising yoga, for instance, has not just helped unlock my body in ways I’ve never experienced before - it’s been a good metaphor for flexibility in a period where my very identity is being stretched. Being suddenly transported to a childhood memories during a backbend, and feeling mournful for one’s past during a spinal twist…escapes rational comprehension. These practices have also been a pathway to a deeper connection with my body, and by extension, the inner voices of my gut and intuition. They’re helping me suss out what’s good for me and what isn’t. They’ve been louder than ever, and I get a near visceral response to most situations telling me if I’m on the right track or not.
One of Kevin Kelly’s many pieces of advice is to do work in areas there are no words for yet. I’d add that maybe we could work on areas where words are still uncommon for, or yet to catch on.
William Bridges - whose book Transitions has been a fantastic complement to my neutral zone, wrote that he fantasised about launching a new profession: maieutics.
“Derived from the Greek word for midwife, maieutics (as I imagined it) was the name for the assistance that a professional could provide people who were struggling with the death-and-rebirth process of transition.”
Did Bridges’ fantasy come true? I think it did.
Over the past two years, I’ve had the good fortune to find a wonderful coterie of people online who’ve shared their stories, experiences, and wisdom on navigating transitions. I’ve jokingly termed this lot Sabbatical Twitter. This post is my hat-tip to all of these practitioners of maieutics. By being vulnerable and sharing their experiences, they’ve been instrumental in bringing me to a place where I was able to give myself permission to go on sabbatical.
Joel Louzado - special shoutout to my high school senior and friend who seeded the idea for a sabbatical from this tweet.
Sid Sharma (more commonly known as SVS), who is writing the Sabbatical Handbook. I think he’s the Indian OG of sabbaticals. He made a podcast appearance recently here. He spared a whole hour to talk me through the psychology of a sabbatical and how to approach it. He oozes a quiet, easy, contagious confidence.
Tom Morgan - Tom and I have corresponded since I reached out to him after he appeared on this Infinite Loops podcast two years ago. He’s been open and vulnerable with his career transition story: from working a regular job in finance to becoming the most interesting man in finance. The books I’ve read on the subject of transitions are a result of his recommendations. I can’t recommend his newsletter enough - it may change your life.
Cecile Marion - Cecile has created her own sabbatical course after taking her own. Her post spending one’s savings on sabbatical helped me reckon with my own fears about money.
Paul Millerd - I read Paul’s book The Pathless Path shortly after I crashed out of my last job. If you’ve been on the default path for some time, like I have, Paul’s unpacking of the psychology and history of modern work life alongside his own story, will give you pause. It’s fast becoming a pamphlet for people considering dropping out of the default path.
If you’re on sabbatical or thinking of taking one, do reach out. I’ll be very happy to talk to you, and it’ll be my way of passing on the favour these kind people above have done for me.
enjoyed this! I've also written about my sabbatical journey before
This was a great read! Thanks.