Stefan Sagmeister, of N.Y. design studio Sagmeister, Inc., closes his studio for one year every seven years and has found incredible success because of doing so.
In a February 2009 TED talk, Sagmeister speaks of The Power of Time Off. During these years when the Sagmeister studio is closed, they don’t take any client projects on, and Sagmeister himself usually takes off to explore a different part of the world for the year.
“Like many things in life that we love we adapt and become bored,” Sagmeister says. “After a short while everything begins to look the same.”
After a certain amount of time Sagmeister began to find that his studio’s design work was starting to look the same. A plastic eyeball hidden away in the pages of a book eerily reminds us of a perfume bottle similarly buried in the pages of a hollowed–out book.
By removing himself, and his fellow workers, from their regular environment, Sagmeister was able to not only gain a fresh look at the world, but also nurture the things that he loves doing.
According to Sagmeister: we spend about 25 years of our lives learning, then about 40 years where we’re working, and we typically tack on another 15 years on the end for retirement.
It might be helpful to basically cut off 5 retirement years and disperse them in between the working years. Doing this is clearly enjoyable, but more importantly: the work that comes out of the years flows back into the the working years and society as a whole, rather than merely benefiting a grand child or two.
Taking part in a sabbatical has proven to be a successful campaign not only for Sagmeister, but also hundreds of thousands of other creative thinkers: authors, artists, educators, and scholars.
Take a moment to plan out your future over the next 40 years. How can you take part in a sabbatical or something similar? How can you break with your working routine to find more purposeful or creative work?
