We just had a Money Snapshot from a lawyer on a career break, and we’ve discussed how to indicate a sabbatical on your resume — but I don’t think we’ve ever had a fun open thread on whether or not you would take a mid-career sabbatical! So let’s discuss: Would you take a planned break? How long would you ideally take, and what would you do?

Hat tip to the readers, who had a great threadjack along these lines several months ago… Here was the original question that kickstarted the discussion:

Anyone ever consider (or actually take) a mid-career sabbatical? I am so burned out from work I’ve been fantasizing about it more than usual lately. In my ideal world I’d take a year off, sell my house and travel in the camper van I’m converting. I am thoroughly into the idea that you shouldn’t wait until retirement to do the things you want to do, and really like the concept of taking a mini-retirement during my working years. Anyone else care to fantasize with me? What would you do if you took time off from work?

Different Types of Sabbaticals

Some jobs allow sabbaticals and even encourage them — certainly in academia, but a number of readers noted that their law firms also allow this. Note that even if it’s allowed or encouraged at your workplace, sabbaticals are unpaid, so obviously you need to have enough in savings to cushion you during those months.

Another way people take a career break is as a long pause between jobs. One reader noted that she was planning one so she could travel to see friends and family:

I am tentatively planning on doing this next year but for 2-3 months. I have elementary-age kids and a partner with a flexible schedule. Our plan is to travel to see lots of friends and family we haven’t seen in years/have never visited and be able to spend real time with them and explore the areas we will visit. I am calling it a sabbatical but really it is a gift to myself after a natural ending point for one job and a respite before I look for/start another. I hope I can actually follow through with the plan!

Can You Take a Career Break or Sabbatical if You’re In a Big Job?

We heard from a number of readers with “big jobs” — Big 4, MBB, and even a small law firm — who noted that they were either planning or had taken a career break or sabbatical.

Another reader noted that she had quit her stressful job and was taking her time to find a new job (and, I’m sure, de-stress and reflect). She was filling her time with fun things:

I quit my job at a Big 4 back in March and I’m slowly taking my time to find a new job. I’ve been spending time on big house projects, visiting family, taking daytime fitness classes that normally do not fit in my schedule, and volunteering. I recently turned 50 and diligently saved for the past 25 years so I could afford to take this time.

Another woman at a stressful job was planning a sabbatical:

Oh my gosh yes. Do it. I’m a young partner at a law firm (small firm) and am tentatively planning a 4- week sabbatical next year. I have flexibility and no issue meeting billable par, but I know my firm will freak, at the same time, I want to do it before my retiring partner actually retires and while my main associate is between maternity leaves.

My dream for a year would be living on a pretty small budget and planning it could take another 6 months to re-enter. I’d probably do a monthly lunch with key contacts for at least 3-6 months at the end to try to make re-entry less painful. I’d absolutely try to take a leave of absence from my job if it was allowed. I’m single no kids so health insurance isn’t crazy expensive but I’d still want to make sure I understood coverage in all the places I’d travel. I can barely imagine a year but I think I would:
– stay home for a month straight. (I get you’re selling but I just crave time at home)
– see my relatives. One surviving grandparent, my retired aunt, etc.
– read so so many books.
– take walks. Get into a doable, consistent workout routine. Take classes at weird times that are smaller sized.
– take up a hobby with my hands for my long term mental health.
– volunteer for something that is way more time consuming than I can usually handle.
– learn to cook. Host inexpensive casual gatherings with a couple close friends every month or so.
– re evaluate whether I want to try to start a part time online business or consulting gig 4-5 months in.
– travel – safe, cheap, but I’d want to plan it after my first month because I just wouldn’t have time to savor anticipation on my way out to start the sabbatical. My pay depends on my work product so I couldn’t phone it in on the way out.

Still another reader from a “big job” chimed in about her experience when she left MBB in her early thirties:

I took about a year off, spent 2 months at a meditation retreat, learned how to kiteboard and did several other bucket list outdoor adventures, including a through hike. It was all pre husband and kids, but a decade later, we’re trying to do something similar with the whole fam.

Would a Mid-Career Sabbatical Stress You Out Too Much?

Still other readers noted that a mid-career sabbatical would stress them out too much, especially if they were just taking a career break after quitting their job. One reader noted that a sabbatical “feels like a pipe dream. I get the midlife and midcareer burnout, believe me.”

Another reader shared her tips on what to do instead of a career break:

…I can’t imagine wanting the stress that comes with getting a job, house, etc., again. The key is figuring out how to create balance in your own life. For me, that’s really understanding that my job isn’t my value in this world, it’s what I do to live the life I want and my employer’s stresses are not mine to take home.

Stock photo via Stencil.

The post Fantasy Open Thread: Would You Take a Mid-Career Sabbatical? appeared first on Corporette.com.

Have you had specific timelines for goals, whether personal or professional — such as be married by X age, get a new job after X years, or make partner or join the C-suite by a certain age?

The other day, I heard an HR executive say that people really need to be executive level by the time they’re 50, or else they risk age discrimination and the perception that they’re not really doing a good enough job to be promoted. I thought this was fascinating, both because it struck me as true and extra hard on women who might be taking their 40s to lean out as working mothers or elder caregivers — but it got me thinking more about goal timelines in general.

Have you had timelines and goalposts in your mind for work, family, and other aspects of your life? How did you set the timelines and goalposts — were you inspired by family members, friends, colleagues, or some other resource?

(Obviously, the saying is true — God laughs when you make a plan — so I’m not too interested in whether you’ve MET the timelines. I’m just more curious if you did have certain timelines, what they were, and how you set them…)

Here are some examples of ways this could look:

Timelines for Career Goals

• Success milestones: Do you have a specific age by which you’d like to be at a certain level of success (such as executive level by the time you’re 50)?
• Salary: Have you ever told yourself you wanted to earn $X by a certain age?
• Retirement: Do you have a timeline in mind for when you’ll retire?
• When to job hunt: Have you had timelines in mind for when you should look for new jobs? (I’m thinking of many people I worked with in BigLaw who had a clear timeline for when they would get out, either from the perspective of “I did my time and am now going to a lifestyle firm” or “I’m staying here until I pay off my student loans.”)

Timelines for Personal Goals and Dreams

• Marriage: Have you had a specific timeline for when you’d like to be married?
• Babies: Have you had a specific age by which you’d like to start having children (or stop having them)?
• Money: Have you had specific benchmarks in mind for your savings goals, such as getting out of debt, having a certain net worth — or other financial goals?
• Fitness or health: Have you had a milestone birthday in mind for doing something specific, like lose the weight or run the marathon?

My Own $.02 on Women’s Timelines…

I was fascinated by the HR executive’s point about “executive level by age 50” because I had never heard it described like that, and in general I’ve never thought about these types of things in that way.

To be honest, though, I kind of struggled with a sense of direction once I got out of school. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a career plan, because I had 15 different ones that I was actively networking and building paths towards… Looking back, it may have been that my plans were overly ambitious and (dunh dunh dunh) didn’t have a specific timeline.

Professionally, I remember working with people who had specific goals for advancement, particularly when I was in magazine journalism — they were laser focused on the title of Editor and job-hopped aggressively until they moved past the lower rungs.

I also definitely worked with people who had more lifestyle-focused goals, such as leaving the city by age 30.

In BigLaw, particularly, I definitely worked with people who buckled down to put in their time and get the experience until they could move to a smaller, more lifestyle-friendly firm or in-house experience. They didn’t measure the timeline by age, though, but rather “I have to be out of here by Year 4” or so. (This was actually really smart of them!)

On the personal side of things, I definitely had a timeline in mind for marriage and children… I wanted to be married by age 26 and have my first child by the time I was 29 because I’d read that breast cancer chances can be greatly reduced if you breast feed before age 30. Ah, plans! (I got married at 31 and became a mom at age 34.) I remember getting a bit stressed as those birthdays flew by… When I turned 30 and was totally single, it almost freed me in a way, because the timelines had been completely blown out of the water.

Readers, what are your thoughts — have you had timelines or benchmarks in mind for professional or personal goals? How did you create those timelines? If you’ve failed to meet certain benchmarks, have you adjusted the timelines or jettisoned them completely?

Stock photo via Pexels / Gustavo Fring.

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While work-life balance improved for many people during the pandemic as they were able to suddenly able work from home, remote and hybrid work arrangements brought their own complications — so today we thought we’d round up a few books that focus on work-life balance.

One of the three specifically explores the post-pandemic workplace (it still feels premature to say “post,” right?), another focuses on women and burnout, and the third is aimed at working moms. (Note: You will not find a mention of Lean In in this post — oops, except for that one.)

Readers, have you read any books on work-life balance? What are your favorites? How do you feel about the term “work-life balance” in general?

Psst: We’re planning to do regular mini-roundups like this for books on certain topics — if you have any to recommend, shout them out in the comments!

3 Books About Work-Life Balance for Professional Women

Out of Office: Unlocking the Power and Potential of Hybrid Work

by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen, 2023 (Amazon/Bookshop)

You may be familiar with Anne Helen Petersen’s work, but if not, she’s a writer and journalist who publishes the Substack newsletter Culture Study (recommend!) and wrote the book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, which was inspired by the popularity of her BuzzFeed News piece about millennial burnout. Petersen’s partner, journalist Charlie Warzel, writes the column Galaxy Brain for The Atlantic. This book has a personal angle for the couple, as they left New York City several years ago to work remotely from Montana.

This book, which came out about three years after the start of the pandemic, explores the elements of — and future of — hybrid work. Although we’ve all seen the countless articles and think pieces about remote and hybrid work over the last few years, this is the first book I’ve come across that specifically addresses the world of post-pandemic work.

Out of Office focuses on trust, fairness, flexibility, inclusive workplaces, equity, and work-life balance.

Praise for Out of Office:

• “Never sacrificing meaningful analysis for easy answers, this is a remarkable examination of the rapidly-changing workplace,” Publishers Weekly
• “[Out of Office]”reads like a necessary, of-the moment dispatch from our overworked brains, still processing the past couple of years, struggling to make sense of an office away from the office, wondering if you’re the only one who feels nuts,” Chicago Tribune
• Notable mentions from Fortune, Inc.com, LitHub, TechCrunch, TechRepublic, and other publications

{related: how to ask your job interviewer about work-life balance}

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle

by Emily Nagoski, PhD, and Amelia Nagoski, DMA, 2019 (Amazon/Bookshop)

If you’d rather read about work-life balance in a more general context — and in a book centered on women’s lives — this title may be for you. Emily Nagoski is primarily known for her popular book about women and sex, Come As You Are — and as she told Brené Brown on Brown’s podcast, she came up with the idea for Burnout after hearing readers praise the chapter in Come As You Are about stress and emotions. She brought her twin, Amelia Nagoski (a conductor and professor) on board to write Burnout.

As the Burnout website shares, “Burnout is for women (or anyone) who has felt overwhelmed and exhausted by everything they have to do, yet still worried they weren’t doing ‘enough.'” Sound familiar to any readers out there? We’re thinking the answer is yes. This book explains how to manage stress, frustration, negative body image, negative self-talk, and more, while emphasizing the importance of rest and connecting with others.

Burnout has an companion book called The Burnout Workbook: Advice and Exercises to Help You Unlock the Stress Cycle (Amazon/Bookshop) that features questions for reflection, skill exercises, stories, quotes, and more.

Praise for Burnout:

• Included in Book Riot’s “The Best Books of 2019“: “This book is phenomenal in ways I never anticipated a book on this subject could be and I wholly recommend it.”
• “I loved it. I read it early to prep for the podcast interview, and I highlighted SO MUCH text. I’m thinking I should order it in bulk to give to every person I know who is struggling with stress,” Smart Bitches, Trashy Books
• “[The authors] have a gift for making the self-help genre not make you want to poke your eyes out,” Cup of Jo

{related: how have you kept work-life boundaries when you work from home?}

Work, Parent, Thrive: 12 Science-Backed Strategies to Ditch Guilt, Manage Overwhelm, and Grow Connection

by Yael Schonbrun, PhD, 2022 (Amazon/Bookshop)

“Ditch guilt, manage overwhelm, and grow connection” sounds like a tall order, but Schonbrun is a clinical psychologist who specializes in relationships, an assistant professor at Brown, and a mom of three, so the advice comes from a promising source — plus, it’s is backed up by research. (And, just as with Burnout, above, you don’t have to worry about coming across any rah-rah “Yes, you CAN have it all!” messages.)

Schonbrun gives parents 12 strategies based on the mindful psychotherapy technique called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). They encompass practicing mindfulness at home and at work, reframing how you look at both aspects of your life, exploring your personal values, and more. The objective is to experience more joy and less guilt — and to realize how “Work can make parenthood better, and parenthood can make work better.”

Praise for Work, Parent, Thrive:

• 2023 National Parenting Product Award Winner
• 2023 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist
• “This will be a balm for overwhelmed working parents” (Publishers Weekly)

{related: advice on work-life balance from working moms to their pre-mom selves (CorporetteMoms)}

Readers, do tell: What books or other resources have you found that provide strategies about work-life balance? Are you familiar with any of the titles above?

The post 3 Great Books About Work-Life Balance for Professional Women appeared first on Corporette.com.

How often do you update your resume — and what, if anything, has given you pause? Have you wondered about including newer volunteer experience vs. older work experience? Which hobbies to include? How (or whether) to describe your previous jobs in a way that fits the company’s ad?

Readers’ Advice for the Easiest Ways to Keep Your Resume Updated

It’s been years since we last discussed keeping your resume updated, but here are some great tips the readers offered:

Keep track of the numbers as you go. A few different readers mentioned this, with one noting:

“For me one of the hardest things to pin down is the concrete, hard numbers details recommended for a resume (project XYZ saved the company $A.B million dollars over C years!) since I’m not usually good at promoting myself that way, so I try to jot those down in my list as the projects happen or as I’m asked to make the cost saving projections.”

Another reader agreed that numbers were the way to go:

I try to use statistics and numbers as much as possible. Rather than “exceeded expectations” (which I see on a million resumes) I use specifics, like delivered the event 20% under budget with a 10% increase in attendance.

A third reader chimed in to add more figures to keep track of, like the “number of people you managed, and the size of your budget or the earnings of your business unit, etc.”

Keep a master resume just for yourself. One reader noted that she kept a master resume “that gets updated regularly whether it’s after starting a new job or completing a certain project that you think deserves its own entry. The Master resume is just mine, to keep a tally, so that when I am applying for a new position I can refer to it and pick only those things that are relevant to what I’m applying for.”

Don’t look at your resume as set in stone. One reader noted that she started her resume from scratch after every new job title. She went on to explain,

I consider the next job I would like to do and then assess the sections on my resume based on that. If a previous achievement, work experience, internship does not contribute towards getting closer to that next job, then I remove it. I can always bring it up during interviews.

Also, I browse through LinkedIn profiles for the job function I am targeting and get inspiration from the different descriptions.

For achievements, I have a folder called “bragbook” and I copy in it my significant achievements throughout the year.

Such great advice, as always!

Here’s my $.02, for what it’s worth…

How Often I Update My Resume

Back when I was a practicing lawyer, I kept a running list of my latest accomplishments to consider adding to my resume, and tried to assess where the weaknesses were. Did I wish I could say I’d done more depositions? OK, let’s try to get more experience there, then…

That said, I have barely updated my resume since I began creating content full time, to be honest — but if/when I do I think the resume will be highly customized to each job I’m interested in, highlighting the skills and experiences that would best serve me in the job. (Especially if I were submitting job applications online, I would definitely try to mirror the job application.)

Readers, over to you — how often do you update your resume?

Some of Our Previous Discussions on Resumes…

• How Long Should Your Resume Be?
• 6 New Resume Rules You Should Know About
• How to Get Your Resume Noticed

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / stockasso.

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Yesterday, The Washington Post published a guide to phone etiquette in 2023: “The new phone call etiquette: Text first and never leave a voice mail” (gift link). In the article, technology reporter Heather Kelly explained that she “spoke to an etiquette expert and people of all ages about their own phone pet peeves to come up with the following guidance to help everyone navigate phone calls in 2023.” (The Post also recently shared “Texting do’s and don’t’s for 2023.”)

The phone “rules” the Post presented, which were written for personal, not professional, communication, seem guaranteed to spark debate (and have already resulted in 5,000+ comments), so let’s discuss: What are your thoughts about phone call, text, and voice mail etiquette at the moment? What aspects of phone etiquette do you think are simply generation-specific? (Kelly does acknowledge that applying these rules varies by age, relationship, and context.)

The New Rules for Phone Etiquette

Some of The Post’s phone guidelines seem pretty straightforward, like “Don’t use speakerphone in public” (yes pleeaase); “Don’t stop talking on the phone,” because phone calls still have value; “Use video voice mails judiciously,” because yes, they’re a thing now; and “You don’t need to answer the phone” when it’s not a good time.

Others on the list are likely to be more controversial, like “Don’t leave a message”; “Text before calling,” especially for video calls; “Stay still for video calls”; and, possibly, “Emotions are for voice, facts are for text.”

My Personal Phone Etiquette Rules

I’m sure we’ve all developed our own little phone etiquette rules or habits… For example, I often unnecessarily give my phone number twice when leaving a voice mail for a business, because I grew up when caller ID wasn’t ubiquitous and robocalls weren’t such a big problem.

I almost never answer calls from unknown numbers unless a quick google turns up a recognizable business (which occasionally makes me miss important calls); and I try to avoid actually listening to voice mails, instead reading the transcription whenever possible.

Also, I will never in a million years send a voice note to a friend or family member.

Let’s hear it from you, readers: What do you think of The Post’s phone etiquette guidelines? What personal phone etiquette rules do you follow? (Mention your age if you think it’s relevant!)

Have you developed your own phone etiquette rules or habits?

Stock photo via Stencil.

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