Every couple of years, take a sabbatical.

Unplug from absolutely everyone and everything in your life, leave your place, and go someplace completely different.

Don’t go someplace you already know. And for fuck’s sake don’t go to a five-star on a beach in the Maldives or some shit like that.

Go someplace you have no business going to.

It doesn’t matter if the place you go to and the people you meet there turn out to be shitty and annoying and whatever other negative you can think of. A sabbatical is not a vacation: It’s a refresh of your life. It’s a cache dump of your head.

How long should a sabbatical be? My rule-of-thumb is minimum 5% of the time you’ve been between sabbaticals. If it’s been two years since your last one, go for five weeks.

How long between sabbaticals? No less than every two years, and frankly four years is better.

To repeat, a sabbatical isn’t a vacation. It’s a chance to clean out the gunk you’ve accumulated in your life, refresh and reënergize yourself—and most important of all, reflect on whether the life you have put on hold for the sake of your sabbatical is the life you want to return to and continue to live.

If after the end of your sabbatical, you are dispirited about returning to your old life, then it’s time for a permanent change.

From SavageSense