The New York Times Today has a less than cheerful article noting that, with economic pressures so intense, more and more of us are being asked to work harder for less. At the same time the business community can’t stop talking about innovation and how to inspire it, nurture it and profit from it. These two trends, one could argue, are mutually exclusive. As anyone who has ever tried to do anything creative can tell you, innovative, off the beaten track thinking comes from an inner well that is not inexhaustible. Make people work more and more with less time to refresh and their ideas will get grow exhausted along with them. What’s the solution? Perhaps more sabbaticals, argues successful design firm owner Stefan Sagmeister in this enjoyable and thought-provoking TED talk.
In it he recounts his idea to trim five years off his retirement and use the time as one-year sabbaticals spaced out every seven years in his career. Think this sounds like an unaffordable luxury (and for some it will be however you slice it)? Sagmeister says his career breaks were both a valuable period of innovation incubation and also financially successful due to the monetary value of all the good ideas they nurtured. Perhaps this idea isn’t actionable in this exact form for many of us, but the video may make hard-charging career types rethink their continuous, full steam ahead approach to work. Do you take enough time to recharge?
