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In 2016, DJ DiDonna was, by all accounts, riding high.
The fintech company he co-founded, EFL Global, was growing at a fast clip. He had given a speech at the United Nations about how to empower entrepreneurs through access to finance, and the startup had landed a feature in The New York Times.
Then came his father’s 70th birthday celebration that August at his parents’ home in Gilford, NH. As the family sat outdoors enjoying a backyard barbecue, DiDonna got a call summoning him to South Africa for work. He rushed away from the party and flew out that night.
“The company had gotten my time and attention, while my family got the short shrift,” DiDonna, now 43, writes in his new book, “Big Time Off: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One” (Simon Acumen). “My personal life was in shambles.”
Like many ambitious people, DiDonna had never given a sabbatical much thought, but having to go to South Africa forced him to reevaluate his life and his priorities. While on the plane home from Johannesburg, he came up with a plan for a five-month hiatus.
He talked it over with his co-founder, Bailey Klinger, who was on board with it, though DiDonna says he himself felt a “sense of guilt.”
Still he proceeded with the plan. From January to May 2017, he stopped working and traveled to New Zealand with friends, walked 900 miles across Japan on a Buddhist pilgrimage and cared for his mother as she recovered from a serious illness.
He also tackled more mundane tasks like remodeling his kitchen and learning how to cut tiles with his dad.
The whole experience was “transformational,” he said. The time off was key in helping him realize that he didn’t want to return to his former life. It also left him wanting to learn more about the phenomenon of sabbaticals.
DiDonna ended up heading to his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, to run a domestic policy research lab. In January 2019, he established The Sabbatical Project, a research initiative and online community advocating for sabbaticals. It now has a mailing listing of some 10,000 people and has collected stories from 100 successful sabbatical takers.
Currently a researcher and senior lecturer in business administration at Harvard Business School, DiDonna is passionate about the benefits — both personal and professional — of sabbaticals.
An extended break — ideally three to six months — is an opportunity to “explore hobbies, dormant passions, spend time with family and friends, get out into nature, or work on a project that you’ve always sworn you would get to,” he said. “While these activities might not seem directly related to productivity or our jobs, they are profoundly human outcomes that lead us to consider [if] we’ve lived a fulfilling life.”
With his Ivy League pedigree and financial security, DiDonna was privileged to have the economic means to embark on a sabbatical. He acknowledges that the ability to take an extended leave from work is “financially and logistically difficult,” but he also believes “a sabbatical doesn’t have to be an expensive, privileged, out-of-reach luxury.
“It can start with something relatively modest, like taking a summer off with your kids every five or 10 years,” he said. “My research uncovered that people from all walks of life, from teachers to nonprofit employees and leaders, made a sabbatical a decade-long priority … They saved, they aligned their lives and that of their family, and made it a priority to become part of their life story.”
He recommends planning ahead — up to two and three years in advance — talking with your employer and getting your finances in order. “You make a logistical plan around it the way you do around retirement,” he said.
Besides his life story, DiDonna points to two people he profiles in “Big Time Off” whose stories illustrate how taking a professional pause can lead to profound change in both career and in life.
NPR journalist Aarti Shahani took a work-sanctioned sabbatical to write a memoir about her father’s unjust detention and deportation after 9/11. The painful experience was the impetus for her to start a nonprofit helping immigrant families like hers. “It was extremely cathartic for her,” DiDonna said, and “changed the trajectory of her life.”
Another example is Renuka Sastri, a mother-of-two who had worked in digital strategy for more than two decades. After walking the Camino de Santiago with her daughter, and then getting unfairly passed over for a promotion, she began to rethink what she wanted from her career.
Sastri used her sabbatical to travel with her cousin, take pottery classes, and volunteer, which helped her tap into her interest of staying engaged in her community. “She applied for a job as a public servant in local government, where she still works today,” DiDonna noted.
He closes “Big Time Off” with a hopeful reminder, writing, “The time of your life awaits.”
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