Why job-obsessed workers should quit – and go on extended holidays
With longer lives, careers and retirements, the idea of a long, mid-career break among well-paid staff is catching on, and one financial firm is here to help
Millions of Americans obsess over their careers and fret about saving, terrified they will not have enough money to ever retire.
However, the advice now being offered by some experts may surprise these worried souls: take months or years off from work, travel the world, and enjoy yourself.
There is prudent logic behind a relaxing mid-career break. With longer lives come longer careers and longer retirements – the first so that you can afford the second.
Yet a 40-year career, ending at age 60 or 65, is a very different prospect from a 50-year career ending at 70 or 75.
“It’s just too gruelling: we have to take breaks,” says Lynda Gratton, a London Business School professor and co-author of The 100-Year Life: Living and Working in an Age of Longevity.
“Why wouldn’t you want to take some of the retirement at the end of your life and distribute it to the middle of your life?”
The sabbatical – a chance to recharge mid-career – is hardly a new idea and it is still common in academia.
But until recently most people would not dream of quitting their jobs just to have fun for a year or two. And, as Gratton acknowledged, doing so was still a financial impossibility for the vast majority of workers.
However, for well-paid workers in high-demand fields such as technology, the idea may be catching on.