#131 The Art of Sabbaticals - Cécile and Michelle on finding "forgotten hobbies", writing online, improving their relationship with money, abundance mindset and rediscovering joy

[00:59] Paul: Welcome to The Pathless Path. I'm Paul Millerd, and in this podcast, we examine the invisible scripts that run our lives and dare to imagine new stories for work and life. Today we are talking about sabbaticals. I am really excited about this episode. I am talking with two internet friends, Michelle and Cecile. Michelle, I met through my wife who was taking Rite of Passage and said, you gotta read some of this writing.

It's so good. Michelle had left her job at the end of 2020 and decided to turn that into a planned sabbatical, taking a longer break and is pursuing a creator path right now. She has some amazing writing and essays about this. I am going to link all that up in the show notes. We are Also talking to Cecile, who after 10, 11 years of working in strategy and consulting, definitely resonate with wanting to leave that, took a year break. As she said, she wanted to rest and then make space for her own curiosity and interest to emerge and see what would come out of it.

Welcome both to this podcast sabbatical. Party, as we're going to call it. I think personally more people should consider sabbaticals. I, many of the mini work breaks I took after leaving my job totally transformed who I was and how I saw the world. I am excited to talk about this today. We're also going to see how this 3-person format goes.

Welcome to this podcast. Very excited to be here.

[02:43] Michelle: Thank you very much. Very excited to be here too. Thank you so much.

[02:49] Paul: Yeah, so I will do my best to call out the names to sort of signal who to talk next. I also would love you guys to ask me questions, ask each other questions. I might start with Michelle. So you've written a bit about taking leave from your job. You left that job and you sort of realized, okay, I want to turn this into something more intentional. Maybe give a little background to how long you had been working and what was kind of bubbling under the surface before you took that break.

Yeah, so I had been working for about 7 years, 6 years in tech sales, and in my last year of work, I had joined a new company and Essentially, I was let go in the end. And for the last 6 months of my job, the writing was on the wall. People were getting let go left and right, and I had decided to just work really hard. And I started to feel that anxiety that comes up, all of those things that you would expect when you sort of feel something is potentially going to end. I was very attached to my job, very attached to the job title, and I did not want to leave. So I was really putting my all into it.

And so by the time that time came, I was let go. The company was really, really sweet about it, but I realized that like mentally I was like, I need a break. I really can't handle the same thing I've just been doing for the last 6 months. I'm not naturally a very anxious person, but I was while I was working. And so I was like, I think I was thinking about taking a break. I was living in Austin at the time.

My lease was ending and my parents were in my ear, like great Indian parents. They were like, why don't you come live with us for a little bit? You can save some money. You can take a little bit of extra time off. And I took them up on that, which was such a blessing. And because I was starting to consider moving back home, selling my furniture, getting rid of all my stuff, I was really thinking like, hey, if I'm going to do this, if I turn around in 2 or 3 months, it almost felt like a waste of money to be like moving back and forth and doing different things like that.

So I consciously decided I'm going to take a year off. I'm not going to interview. I'm not going to take up any requests on LinkedIn. I'm just going to take a little bit of time to one, relax, and also start to really think about my career and what direction I want to go. Amazing. So I have so many questions and want to get Cecile's intro out of the way before we dive in.

[05:43] Michelle: Yeah, so very similar. There are some things that are so similar to what you've described, Michelle, and some things that are different. So, I— so as Paul mentioned, I'd been working for roughly 11 years in consulting. I started off with 3 years in consulting and then spent a lot of time doing commercial work and a lot of strategy and transformation work for big businesses. And in the last 5 years, 6 years almost of my career, I'd been working for the same big business in the UK, in London, and had been doing some really cool, um, strategy and transformation work for them to— basically, it's a company that is taking a leadership role in driving the energy transition. So it felt like my job had a really big impact.

It was really meaningful to me. But as, as it is with anything that feels meaningful, or certainly for, for me, I, I gave it my all like you did, Michelle. And it just— it, it, it was so meaningful that I spent way too much time on it. At some points, I was spending probably 90% of my valid energy in a day on my job, and it's just— it just wasn't possible for me anymore. There was like some kind of voice inside of me that started speaking out and saying, hey, you can't keep doing this, you know, there's other stuff that you can do with your life. There's— and I was kind of drowning it with all of the meaningful work.

And at some point that voice became a bit too loud for me to ignore it, and I'm grateful. So I decided to take a 12-month sabbatical. So that's a like formal sabbatical from work, which is leaving in February 2022 and for 12 months and then coming back technically at the end of January 2023. And we're now mid-January, so I'm like 10— I am literally 16 days away from the formal end of my sabbatical.

[07:36] Paul: And your company supported this. Is that common in London?

[07:41] Michelle: I don't think so. I only have one other example of someone who's been on a sabbatical like this. They didn't go back after the 12 months. And the only other sabbaticals I've heard of are for professors in universities, but when they leave, they don't go and do the kind of sabbatical that I went on, which was, yeah, to rest first and then figure out what else I would want to do. They actually go to other universities to teach still. So it's a very different kind of sabbatical.

[08:07] Paul: Amazing. So I imagine, and similar for me, when I left my job and then I decided, oh, I'm just gonna not work I didn't tell anyone I was doing this because I felt a certain amount of shame. How did you both sort of think about how you communicated this to people? I'm also interested, Michelle, it sounds like your parents were somewhat supportive, maybe a little more if you moved back home. I understand that being married to a Taiwanese woman who, like, her parents would love for her to move back home. Um, which is not the norm in America.

Um, my parents are like, get another job. Um, yeah, maybe Michelle first. How, how much support, um, did you have? Did you decide to stay small and not really tell too many people? How did that go? Yeah, so definitely I wasn't telling a lot of people.

I sort of vaguely hinted that I was going to take a little bit of a break. I knew it was going to be a year, but I wasn't sharing that with everybody. Actually, my SVP, like our, one of our head of sales, was a bit of a mentor to me while I was there. And it's a big hustle culture environment. And so when I, when he, he called me after like my last day and we chatted and he was like, you know, take a day, relax, enjoy. And then tomorrow, get back at it.

And I was just like, I'm not doing that. But I did it one time. It's so funny that they, they, and I've heard this many times from people, people are so deep in the work mindset that they can't, you must be crazy, right? To imagine that you'd take a break. Yeah, 100%. And so, and I, I knew I wanted to do it and I knew I was doing something a little bit unconventional.

So I didn't share it too much outside of my friends, my close friends and my family. And it was convenient that I was like leaving town. So I could just, just peace out and move back to like the Bay Area with my parents. But they were very, very supportive, a little bit nervous. The idea of like not working and like a sabbatical is obviously new to them. My only experience with my parents not working when I was growing up was when like in Michigan, the recession hit, Michigan got like knocked over.

And so my dad lost his job. Tons of people, like everybody I knew had one parent that wasn't working. So I think the mindset was not working is negative and scary. And so I had to explain to them like, hey, I know I am like financially secure. Living at home is going to help me a lot. I feel comfortable if I have to go back into the workforce.

Which I'm grateful that I have all of those things. And I think that once they got used to that idea, they were just thrilled to have me home and so, so, so, so supportive. Yeah. How about you, Cecile? I know, uh, your partner Michael, uh, has been a multi-time guest of this podcast. Actually, we did a series about a year before leaving his job, then 6 months before, and then after leaving his job.

We need to do an update cuz he's had more reflections, but, um, I know you had a lot of support from him, but what about other people, your family?

[11:39] Michelle: Definitely a lot of support from, from Michael. This was part of, uh, the sabbatical and going on nomadic travels, because this is what one of the things that we did together on, on those 12 months. This was part of a common plan. So yeah, definitely a lot of support from, from Michael. And then you were talking about shame earlier and whether this was something that felt, um, well, that, that you had felt this when you first decided to not work for a certain amount of time. I was wondering how much shame I would feel.

Actually, it's interesting. When I started telling people about the fact that I had decided to go on sabbatical, I could probably categorize roughly people in two categories. There were like the people, probably a third, maybe 40% of people who were like, "Oh, yay, this is so cool. I wish I could do this," or "I've always wanted to do this." go for it, and just, oh, nomadic travels, this is amazing, blah blah. So category of people who's super excited and really supportive. And then another category of people who are more like, um, really?

Um, so I would never do this. This is— this feels very, you know, uncomfortable. I like my home and I like my routines, and like, oh, I don't know, I don't want to do that. Or people like my parents who were very supportive but also were like the, the script that I have in my family is very much career, and you work your entire career. And a lot of people in my extended family have worked for the same company for a very long time as well. So for them, the concept of stepping away from work for a certain amount of time is alien, for one, and then two, puts your career at risk.

So the comments that I would get from my parents in particular were like supportive, yet are you sure? Are you not worried about the impact that it's going to have on your career afterwards? And yeah, so yeah, I'd say I was worried, and, and I kind of oscillated between the two, which is why it was so difficult for me to make— actually make the decision to go on sabbatical and say, yep, I'm choosing this. Because I was worried that, you know, I was a senior leader in a big corporate doing very important work, and, and suddenly, like, and from one day to the next, I am Who am I? Just no one? Because I identified so much with my job and my meaningful job that if from one day to the next I suddenly didn't have that anymore, then I had no idea who I would be.

Like, oh, am I going to feel shame around not having that as a status or not making money? And interestingly, the first day after I left, there was zero shame. I knew I had made the right decision. I was like, yep, let's go for it.

[14:26] Paul: It's—

[14:27] Michelle: it was absolutely the right call. At no point, maybe a couple of points later on during my sabbatical, I started asking myself a few questions, but at no point in the first 6 months do I think I feel bad, I should have stayed for, you know, the status, or— yeah, no feelings of shame at all.

[14:47] Paul: That's interesting. I, I had a lot of insecurity, I think. Um, do you think being with Michael was a big part of that? Because once I met Angie, I felt a lot better on my path. Um, and I know, Michelle, you have your sister who's very close, um, to you. Yeah.

Do you think that was a big part of it?

[15:09] Michelle: I think there's two things that helped a lot. One is Michael's on the path— well, on the path, on The Pathless Path, on his own pathless path. So kind of exploring his own, um, creative world as well, and was inviting me to do the same, and in my own way. So rather telling me this is how the creator world works, you know. He was just kind of gently nudging me in directions that might feel good for me. So that was really encouraging and really helpful.

The other thing that I found, uh, very secure, that felt— made me feel very secure, was that I was, I was on sabbatical from my employer. So technically I was still employed. I was still a senior leader in a corporate. I had chosen power move to step away from the senior leadership position to go on sabbatical. But I still was employed, and I could say— I, I still identified while on sabbatical as— if someone would say to me, what do you do? I would say, I am on sabbatical from the corporate world, rather than I am a creator who has no idea what they're doing, who's all just a wannabe creator who's trying to explore the new world that they have no idea how it functions.

So it helped.

[16:19] Paul: Yeah, so that, that's an interesting transition to Michelle, who you sort of shifted from, I'm on sabbatical to saying, I'm, I'm going to do this creator thing. Talk to me about your evolution of stories you were telling yourself and other people. Yeah, I relate to a lot of that. It's funny because I, first off, I think sabbatical is like the rebrand of the century because when I left my job, I was just like, I'm unemployed. I'm not working. And I, especially once I was like, I knew I wasn't working and I started to get a sense that I wasn't going to go back.

I think I heard someone use the term sabbatical and then I was like, oh, I'm on an unpaid sabbatical. And I was like, why do I have to tell people that? And then I was like, oh, I'm on a sabbatical. And it sounds so nice in comparison. But I, there's still a lot of people would ask me like, oh, what do you do with your day then? Like, what are you spending your time on?

And I think that's where it really hit the things that I was really insecure about because One, I felt the same way as Cecile. I didn't realize how attached I was to my job title. Like I work in sales. I thought it was a good job, but I never, you know, it's the shortest conversation in a bar. Like I never thought it was that interesting, but to have nothing and then to also not be able to really point to a specific project or justify how I spent 40 hours a week felt very, very discouraging to me. Um, I was like, a lot of introspection had to happen for me to like really realize that I had to deprogram from the corporate world and realize, okay, just because you're not working 40 hours a week doesn't mean you're not useful.

Just because you're not making money doesn't mean you don't have value. But that took time. And I completely relate to this idea that you— I think if you can just like quit your job and feel great about yourself, that's amazing. But I definitely had to do a lot of soul searching. And a lot of looking at my ego and understanding that I had a lot of scripts in my head that I didn't even realize. Yeah.

You wrote, um, you wrote, there was this nagging feeling inside of me that I wasn't a productive member of society if I was working profitable, if I wasn't working profitable hours. Man, that's, that is like in the soup of our culture, especially in the US, definitely in England too. Like, what the hell is this? This is not the point of life, right? Yeah, exactly. And it's funny looking back and even talking to people now who are more in like the creator space, everyone's like, well, weren't you working on your podcast?

And I was like, yeah, I was, but that was on weekends with my sister and I, you know, spent a day editing it, but it doesn't count, right? Yes. It wasn't making money. I wasn't spending all week on it. I'm spending a lot of time just enjoying myself and enjoying my time and spending time with my parents and watching Wheel of Fortune. Like, it wasn't crazy exotic, but I was like very happy.

And so it's, it's, it was interesting to feel that tension of feeling like I didn't have an identity, but also feeling very comfortable and satisfied and happy with my life. Yeah. Cecile has an amazing quote, which I'm just gonna keep quoting, uh, both of you. Your, your writing is so good. People should read all the stuff I'm going to link up. But Cecile writes, turn Turns out that taking a break from your job and uprooting yourself from your home to go figure out what to do next will not magically tell you what your next step should be.

How surprising. Um, and then the second part of that, to fill the void, I found it tempting to schedule a bunch of day trips, hikes, sites, markets, et cetera. This is really interesting because this is something that Angie and I struggled with, I think, um, when we went nomadic and she left her job the second time. I had already been experimenting a couple years ahead of her. She just started wanting to like play tourist every day. And I'm like, we need to rest.

Like we need to take it slow and like ease into the journey. Maybe talk a little bit about both those things, Cecile.

[20:35] Michelle: So I'm both happy and sorry that you've had to go through the same thing, that you and Angie have had to go through the same experience. Certainly, certainly for me, it, it comes from just a character, part of my character as well. I'm— I think I'm just a doer. I, I do a lot of stuff, and in work, particularly if it's meaningful work, then I get to do a lot of meaningful things. It's brilliant. So I do one after the next, and whenever— and the thing is, because I wasn't in like pure creative kind of jobs, strategy and transformation, you have to be creative in some moments, but it's like 10% high creativity and 90% make things happen, collaborate with people, etc.

So there's a lot of doing one after the next, and you just don't stop. Also, they are jobs that technically, it's like gas that you put into a room. It'll fill up the entire room. It'll take every single space. So that kind of work is the same thing. You pour it into someone and the for me, certainly, it took up every single minute that I was agreeing to give to it, in a way.

And it made it really— it put all the responsibility onto me to put boundaries between myself and my job, which I clearly became very bad at because, because I was spending too much time on my work. But there's that doer energy, and I don't know if Angie— if you, um, first, Paul, was— you could feel that as well you know, when you first started and you moved into your sabbatical. And I'm curious about whether that's the kind of energy that Angie had before she went into the creative space as well. But that's the energy that I, I've— I had had inside of me for such a long time— school, university, work. I just couldn't just drop it from one day to the next. It didn't happen.

So I could feel it kind of emerge. And yes, like, do a day trip here or go visit that thing over there, but even Coming back to your point, Michelle, of am I valuable if I don't produce something that's— well, you use the word profitable, but you know, if I, if I don't do anything that's of worth to others, am I valuable? Is, is my day worth something? Um, and my script was certainly I need to do, I need to make, um, for something that's useful for others such that my such that I'm— so that I'm worthy. And that's the thing that I had to undo in the beginning of the sabbatical. So I kept myself busy for a few weeks doing a bunch of stuff, and slowly I started interrogating each of the desires I had to do things to try and figure out, am I doing this just because I want to be busy and to demonstrate that I'm doing stuff, or is this something that I genuinely want to do?

Deep inside. And that was the whole first phase, transformational phase, I would say, of my sabbatical, which was to reconnect much more closely with my own wants and desires. And I had mostly forgotten how to do that. I, I knew how to identify the big ones, but I had completely lost the connection with the small ones that pop up here and there. And this having space throughout the sabbatical has helped me figure out where those ones were in a way. And I'm, I've trained myself to find them and listen to them more carefully.

So that's a long-winded answer.

[24:07] Paul: Yeah.

[24:07] Michelle: Sorry. Back to you, Michelle.

[24:08] Paul: Well, I was gonna say, I'm curious, do you remember if there was like an inflection point or something that happened that made you sort of make this shift, or was it gradual over time? What sort of led to that mindset shift for you?

[24:24] Michelle: I think it was— so it was gradual, but there were inflection points where I realized, oh, that thing I've been doing for the past week, I was wrong. This was not— this was something that clearly I was doing to keep me busy, and I was lying to myself throughout the entire week that this was something I deeply wanted to do. It's like, right, this is useful information. Very sharp feedback loop at that point. Um, and then it made me a lot more capable of identifying those possible lies that I was telling to myself in the future. So I can think back to like one of the kind of projects that I'd made up for myself, which was to make, um, yeah, well, I'm curious about the projects that you guys made up for yourselves when you first started too.

But, but that was one of my doing projects, like, oh, I've always been interested in neuroscience, I love visuals, I love design, I love kind of summarizing a bunch of stuff. So I decided to listen to a bunch of podcasts from Huberman, which are brilliant neuroscience podcasts, but they're very, very long. And I am technically very bad at learning through audio, so I have to do something with the words that come through my ears if I want to remember them. So I went through Huberman's podcasts and basically took notes, summarized them into visual summaries, and I was like, yay, this is awesome! So I made one I was so pumped with it. It was like, yes, I'm going to make several of those.

I'm going to learn neuroscience, help others who can't listen to 2 hours of podcasts at the same time, and it'll be awesome. And then I committed to doing 6 of those in a couple of weeks. One was— well, doing one was probably 5 or 6 hours. And after doing 4, I was like, I'm not enjoying this anymore, but I committed to 6.

[26:04] Paul: You created a job for yourself.

[26:06] Michelle: Yes, absolutely. But I only realized this retrospectively.

[26:13] Paul: That's interesting.

[26:14] Michelle: And that was one of the inflection points. And then later on, whenever some new ideas like that, project ideas popped up, I was like, is this a human thing? Just testing. Testing.

[26:28] Paul: Yeah. My experience with this is sort of unusual in that I've always just had this default objection to working in a job. Yeah, I always just wanted to escape it and I dealt with it by changing jobs often and trying to maximize my vacation days, minimize my hours, which I did really well compared to my peers. And then when I left my job, I didn't have any work to do. Uh, but I hadn't discovered this slower sort of contemplative state of non-doing and like basically the phrase I use now and like me, I sort of say to Angie when we're getting overwhelmed, it's like, there's nothing to do. Sort of this like deep, it's sort of like a deep universal truth.

There's nothing to do. Right. And I learned that through basically taking a break and blocking out my work. Um, and in that space, I experienced this state that was so connected. And I sort of forgot who I was. And I think as Cecile was saying, these forgotten hobbies is a phrase I use to describe sabbaticals always seem to emerge, right?

It's like, oh, I used to like this and like that and like enjoy these things. Um, what forgotten hobbies emerged or forgotten thoughts or forgotten reflections on who you were emerged? As you leaned into that more contemplative mode? It's funny because on one hand, I really relate to you, Paul, where I almost see myself as a Type B personality. I'm so surrounded by Type A people that I'm always like, is it me that I'm not a doer? And I wrote about this, like this was, I think also a chip I had on my shoulder, which I've reevaluated, but I felt very comfortable not necessarily doing anything or just like enjoying consuming information.

I totally understand that you listen to 3 podcasts and, or 3-hour podcasts and now we're like, what should I do with this? But at the same time, I found I was initially very attracted to anything that seemed like it could make money, even though that wasn't my goal. But I would see an ad on YouTube to, you know, they'd be like, oh, I made $1,000 doing this. And I was like, well, I could probably do that. Or I would try to like look at little ways to make money. And I had this moment where I was like, if I wanna make money, the best thing I can do is go back to the job that I was just working.

Like if that's the goal and the whole point of taking a sabbatical, not working, living off my savings is to detach myself from that. So I think I had all these like weird things that I was doing first, like, you know, $10 doing like a survey or just filling my time with really useless, not meaningful things. And I ended up shifting that to essentially being like, I'm not taking money for anything and just help, like helping my friends if they had sales questions for me. Or helping people with negotiating their contracts. Like those were things that excited me. Like I enjoyed having those conversations with people, but I knew I didn't want to monetize that or make that a job.

What was the switch for you, Michelle, in which you decided, okay, I'm going to extend this and sort of commit to this uncertain journey? For me, I, I, one thing about taking a sabbatical not working is that for me, like I had been a saver for just like I'm a natural saver. And so I, on one hand, was able to take the sabbatical because I had money I could live off of. And then on the other hand, I had a lot of great opportunities like living with my parents that helped me extend my runway. And so about a year after living at home, I had spent less money than I expected, which I think actually happens a lot of times. Oh yeah.

Very And I was like, oh, actually I could still, like, I don't have a reason to go back to work. And I was starting to think about my next steps and where I want to live. And I wanted to move to another city and, you know, I'm adding it all up in my head. And around the same time, my sister actually got a job offer in essentially the middle of nowhere. And she asked me if I would come with her. And I was like, no, I would never do that.

But then when I was running the numbers, I was like, oh, I can extend I'm doing twice as long if I have a lower cost of living. And so that was, I think, a big shift for me. I could have done it if I had moved to a city, but obviously if you're paying $2,000, $3,000 in rent and utilities, that's going to burn up a lot faster than if you're in some random town. Yeah. I, and I'd love to hear more if you guys are willing to share specific numbers. So And you don't have to share like what you have in terms of assets and stuff.

So the way I was thinking about it when I left my job is, okay, I have money saved for retirement. I don't ever want to touch that. I have savings. I had about $50,000 in savings and I was living in New York City and I was too dumb to realize that I should probably lower my cost of living before I quit my job. But as soon as I quit my job, I dramatically lowered my cost of living by about 50%, moved to Boston, moved in with a bunch of young 20-year-olds. With one bathroom in Boston, sublet my place in New York, like got the hell outta New York, way too expensive of a city.

And then within a year I moved to Asia and lowered my cost of living from the start about 80%, which basically was freedom, right? And it extended my runway because quickly on my path I realized I want to keep this going indefinitely. So I'd love to hear like how much your cost of living decreased, like maybe what your runway is. Did you consider your investments as money you're willing to spend down? Like, how do you think about that? I don't know if you want to go.

You're, you were sort of doing a 1-year thing, Cecile, but how you were thinking about that as well. I know you went to Bali and it's a bit cheaper than London.

[33:09] Michelle: Yeah, yes it is. I mean, just as a point of comparison, actually, um, just before we left London, we, we had finished our rental contract, so we needed 2 nights in a hotel, which were, um, 200— it's going to be $250 a night. So that was like $500 for those 2 nights. Um, Bali rent for a month was $750. So just as a point of comparison, London versus Bali, there you go. Um, so So, so I was— yeah, I suppose I was— having a 12-month timeline means that it's closed in time, which helps when you're looking at designing a budget and thinking about money.

Um, I'm like you, Michelle, I'm a natural saver. I like the expression actually, so I'm going to use it in the future. So I'm a natural— I'm a natural saver as well. Um, and I had enough money aside, uh, to, to pay for this and not not need to dive into my retirement money, like you were saying, Paul. Um, and I had decided that probably I would need £30K, um, for 12 months.

[34:21] Paul: £30K pounds or US dollars?

[34:23] Michelle: Pounds, pounds, which is probably— I don't know what it is now. Is it 35? Um, yeah, I need a bit, bit more, bit more USD, but it wouldn't go 40. Um, it's like low, low 30s in USD.

[34:34] Paul: That's in— that's about what I landed on after a year, even in the US. I was like, okay, I can make I could make this work on $3,540 US.

[34:44] Michelle: Uh, okay.

[34:46] Paul: And it surprised me.

[34:47] Michelle: Including, including Asia, your timing in Asia, right?

[34:50] Paul: No, no, no. So Asia, I was making it work on like $20,000. Yeah. Um, yeah. And it, it sort of surprised me how many things fell outta my life. One, because I wasn't busy and I like, I could walk places instead of taking a Lyft and take a 45-minute walk or like, take a bus because I didn't care.

I wasn't in a rush to take a train or something. Um, did any things fall out of your life pretty quickly, even while you were still in London before going to Bali?

[35:21] Michelle: So yes, I mean, any outings in, um, any outings in London— restaurants, drinks, exhibitions, theater, whatever— all of this is super expensive. So, um, all of this would fall out. The thing is, I replaced that with something else. So I actually have— so I actually have a— I don't have it in front of if I had, uh, if I had thought ahead a little bit more, I would have, um, pulled my spreadsheet out. I actually have a spreadsheet that looks at the 12 months and, and kind of buckets, puts everything into big buckets of how I spent it. Um, I ended up spending more than 30K, by the way, for one year.

Um, so, and, and I kind of split it in between the costs of living, like the basic essentials, rent and food and, uh, well, accommodation, not rent really, um, and local transport port. Then I had a bucket with the costs linked to nomadic travel, so anything relating to visas, flights, trains, vaccinations, and all of that. So that was quite a, quite a big bucket as well. And then I had two other buckets which are effectively the replacements for the drinks and theater outings in London, which were a bucket like extras that were local. So stuff like in Bali, it would have been a one-week retreat somewhere, or a weekend doing, yeah, one week silent retreat or leadership retreat, or 2 days, or some breathwork sessions and 10 of those. And so that was like local experiences that I couldn't have done elsewhere.

And then the final bucket was online experiences, which ended up being online learning. And this is stuff like attending a writing course, attending a design course, and the writing course Michelle, Rite of Passage, which we actually met on. Um, so we both did that. And that bucket, those two last buckets, local experiences and online experiences, were actually— had pretty hefty price tags. But if you don't do that and you stick to the first two buckets of nomadic travels and basic cost of living, then I can't remember what the number was, but that was lower than 30. Yes.

[37:28] Paul: Amazing. And I wonder, Cecile, like, how many of the things that you were doing, that you did in this past year did you, like, regret or felt like you had to do? It's kind of a leading question.

[37:43] Michelle: I actually don't think I regret anything because, um, the thing is, I didn't— I like to say that when I started my sabbatical, I made sure that I didn't have a plan because I was worried that my past full-time work self would create a plan that my sabbatical self would not want to follow. So I made sure that my plan was expressly to have no plan apart from make sure, because I'm still a bit anxious about those things, I still had accommodation for the first 3 months and flights and visas. All of that was sorted out. But after that, yeah, no accommodation. We could go wherever we wanted and wherever we— yeah, it was one of those practices of listening to our inner wants, and both mine and my partner's, Michael's, because— and then communicating about those and figuring out what we wanted to do next.

So technically, yeah, it just— because we connected each of us and with each other, um, on, on our internal ones, I don't think I'm regretting anything. Or even if I— even if it didn't feel quite good to do— and I don't even have an example right now— to do something— oh yeah, stay 4 days in Singapore that costs a month in Bali, same thing. Why did we do that? But then again, I would've—

[39:00] Paul: If you ate at the hawker centers, if you ate at the hawker centers, totally worth it.

[39:05] Michelle: Absolutely. So we had a guide over there, Singaporean guy, lovely, lovely person. And he took us to some of the hawker centers and I had that experience. Unfortunately, just one of the 8 meals that we had over there. So the others had to balance that out.

[39:21] Paul: And I asked that question on purpose because I think what people don't realize is, 'cause my budget was about the same as yours. Both of you. And I still did everything that I wanted to do. I took a trip to Hawaii with my sister and our friend. I traveled like a little bit. I gave up the things that I didn't value.

Like the way I viewed money, like I never felt like it was a scarcity. I just, it put things in perspective where I was like, yeah, I don't really want to spend $40 on this dinner or I don't want to go to this event. Like it forced me to really just like ask myself what I actually valued. Which I actually think is such a beautiful part of like that experience. And I realize that there are sometimes things that I spend money on that I don't, I'm kind of just doing because I'm like going with the flow or something happened unexpectedly. But I think it's surprising how you can actually enjoy your time and not have to do it on this crazy budget because you're, at least for me, I was leaning more into the things that I wanted to do.

Yeah, it's, we, We sort of have these scripts of, oh, I need to make money. I want to be like financially free so I can just do what I want and not have to think about money. But when you make less, a couple things happen for me. One is I quickly flashed back to my college self, sort of broke, and how happy I was. It was like, oh, money isn't linked to happiness. Um, to a point, right?

Uh, you don't want to be suffering and not being able to afford medical care. Um, but I thought, I sort of thought I needed to eat at restaurants and turns out I don't. And like, no, no effect on my happiness. Um, cause I had other things that mattered to me more, which are exploring myself, getting to know myself, having time and space to create. Um, before we go forward, like, I'd love to hear Michelle's take on the original question, which is like, did you, like, how did you conceptually think about your money? Like, is it just savings you're willing to spend down?

Like, what was worst-case scenario? Is it like having to go into retirement or investments? Yeah, that's a great question because it definitely started with just savings. Actually, I had, I had too much money in my savings is what I realized. I didn't have a great, While I was a natural saver, I didn't know that much about personal finance, which I've learned a lot in the last couple of years. And so while I had a retirement account, I was either spending or saving everything else.

So I shaved off the top and I moved it into an index fund. Awesome. And then I left about $20,000 to $30,000 for my savings. And my rationale was I can live off that. I have a concept of when I would be into like a 3-month month zone of spending that money down, which is what I sort of anticipated how long it would take me to find a new job. And that was my mindset going in.

I'm still living off my savings, so I haven't— it's crazy, I think, looking back, like how much money I was able to save or like continue to not spend, but also my perspective has changed because I really enjoy not working and I really enjoy also pursuing things that don't immediately bring in financial gain. Like I'm not saying, you know, I manifest abundance for myself, but my focus has just shifted and now I'm starting to look at different tiers where I would ideally never touch my retirement account. That's, I don't think I would do that, but this, the money that I moved to investments, like I'd be willing to pull money out of there. I have some money actually that I got from stocks when I left my last company that I just still have. And I was like, oh, perfect. I could liquidate those and live off of that money.

So my perspective has changed. I'm more willing to dip into some of those things, though I do think I am risk averse and I do like to have a long runway, but it's, it's just been my savings so far. That's amazing. Yeah. I'd love to hear your take on this. I talk to a lot of people, actually it's only ever dudes who say this.

It's like big tech employees and they're like, you know, I could never leave. I need to save like at least $1 million. Yeah. It's always men. I don't know. I don't know why.

What is the message you would tell these people? Like, you— it's just so surprising to me people think they need so much. Yeah. And that's, I think, the audience that we're speaking to, right? Like, You're in different seasons of your life. Like when I first started my job and I remember overdrafting before I got my first paycheck, I could not have been in— like I was not in this situation to not work or be on a sabbatical then.

But now as I've built up some financial security, I have these conversations with my peers. And it was funny, my friend was joking the other day and she's like, yeah, me and my husband were, we're like, is Michelle like a crypto billionaire? Like, how is she still not working? And I was like, no, you don't need billions of dollars. For me, you know, she's a $30,000 heir. Yeah.

I'm like, it's a lot less than you think. And I, I am really grateful. Like, I did work in tech. I joined a good company at a good time and was saving a lot of that money. So I accidentally set myself up for success and I got lucky along the way. But at the same time, I know there's people out there who are better about their money and their investments and savings than me, but feel afraid to take the leap.

And I get it. Like, I, you know, it's the golden handcuffs syndrome. And I think especially for me, like my parents were immigrants, like they never had this luxury. So to be like, oh, I'm just going to decide not to work. And see what happens is uncomfortable. Like I wasn't raised to have that mentality, but at the same time, now 2 years in, I actually see how being able to take time off work and shift my focus into something that I really enjoy is opening up opportunities for me that I wasn't expecting and like abundance for me that I wasn't expecting.

So I, to those people, I say, do the math. Like legitimately, this is what I do to my friends. I'm like, yeah, people don't do the math. Yeah. I'm like, what, how much money did you spend last month? How much money do you have in these different vehicles?

Divide it by 12. Like this is, this is just look at the numbers and then you can tell me like if you can or cannot, you know, last off of that or if it, if it lines up with your risk aversion. But I think a lot of people actually go off of feelings, which I did too for a while. And that's where you're going to be stressed out. Yeah, it's turning a vague anxiety into compelling stories that we can tell.

[46:33] Michelle: Yeah.

[46:34] Paul: Why we can't do stuff. Do you know what your burn is now per month? It's very low. I think I spent $12,000 last year. So— Wow. Yeah.

That's so impressive. This is— you're doing it in the US. That's amazing. But I live in like a small town. I'm with my sister. Like it's, I've, it is like I, my burn rate is very low, but it's very possible.

Like, yeah, I, I think this is the thing. People have so many stories that like, how could you possibly live on less than a hundred grand? And you see this on like Twitter and stuff and I'm like, hmm, you don't have to live in San Francisco. To take time off. But yeah, and I, I get that. Like, I, I did live in San Francisco.

I was eating out every single meal. I was going to every event with my friends. I was drinking a lot. Like, my lifestyle looked very different maybe 5 or 6 years ago. And I enjoyed that time and I traveled a lot. And it was just for me, I, the reason I wanted to stay out of work was to try to think about something different and see if there's a different way to create my life.

And so that's why I've chosen, you know, I'm not saying everyone should move to the middle of nowhere, but there's different ways to do it. What have you gained or what has surprised you that you didn't expect? Maybe Cecile, I know you started just getting a lot more in touch with your body. And exercise and becoming a lot more intuitive about those things. I think this is something, uh, I'm not sure if you quit drinking, Cecile, but it's something surprising that I've seen emerge. I stopped drinking, um, when I basically, when I decided to take an intentional non-work break after quitting my job for a year, um, drinking sort of fell outta my life.

I've become a lot more intuitive and connected to my body. I'd love to hear— I think that happened for you as well, Michelle, but I'd love to hear maybe Cecile first, then we'll jump to Michelle.

[48:50] Michelle: Well, yeah, that was, that was one of the big phases that happened to me. And I kind of touched upon it a while ago when we were talking about reconnecting with our, with our wants. And I think I started doing this I didn't really easily recognize my wants to start with. I easily recognized what I didn't want. And that's the kind of the Huberman project that I described earlier. That's a perfect example of like, oh, this actually feels wrong, right?

I learn and then I move forward and see if I can avoid that kind of situation in the next phase. But ultimately, I think for the first 6 months, I was trying to connect more with my, say, intellectual wants rather than— and it did mean feeling into wherever in my body. Is it my heart that feels like it's pumping up because I'm thinking about doing this thing? Or is it my brain that's starting to feel activated? I could start feeling different things like this that were happening, and that was interesting already. But then when we got to Bali, Things changed and increased one notch again because Bali, for those of you who have been— Paul, I know you've spent some time there.

Michelle, I'm not sure if you have been. Uh, no. Um, well, it's a, it's a place where it's— I'm going to compare it to London. Bali is full of nature. It's like jungle. It's just alive everywhere.

So there'll be just green everywhere, particularly in the space that we were, we were living in. Um, animals everywhere. You just can't live without animals in your rooms. We had lizards, we obviously mosquitoes, spiders, um, other things just always there. And you have to live with, with nature. And yeah, I mean, I'm saying you have to— it's a, it's a great chance because you get to kind of, you connect with nature a lot more easily just because you're, you're truly within it.

And in comparison to London, you live in the fourth floor of a big building and you've got a series of layers of concrete or, or bricks that are between you and the ground, and you never really have your feet that touch the Earth. It just doesn't really happen. So you can't— going to use the word co-regulate that Johnny Miller would use in those situations, um, in when he talks about the nervous system, um, but you can't co-regulate with nature just as well as you can in Bali. And when we arrived in Bali, we had a small terrace, not a massive terrace, but just enough such that we could step out onto the terrace in the morning, look at what they called it a garden, but it was jungle with monkeys in it. So, look out onto the garden and you had enough space, just enough space to exercise, and the sun would come in. You feel that on your skin.

You feel the activity of the animals that are in the jungle around you. And you start, and it suddenly, suddenly it feels very different to start exercising and stretching in those circumstances when you compare that to going into a London gym between 1 and 2 when you finally figured out that you could have a break on at this point during your day, and you run onto the treadmill, you lift a few things, and you're running back in front of your laptop and you keep working. That is a very different form of exercise than the intuitive exercise and stretching that the kind that you can do when you're genuinely connected to your body and to nature around you. So that was for me hugely transformational. Yeah, and interesting, Paul, that you mentioned alcohol as well. So I don't— I sometimes drink alcohol.

I'm not a teetotaler, but very rarely, and I don't enjoy it that much. Um, I drink a glass sometimes to share when I'm sharing a meal with, with people. Um, so already I, I didn't have that as a lever to help me feel more connected, um, with, with my body. But I did have sugar, and, and stopping to eat— stopping, stopping sugar, or at least lowering significantly my intake meant that I, I kind of stopped being as wired as I was when I was eating sugar. And I realized at that point that I was kind of using it as an energy boost. So I don't drink coffee either.

So people will use caffeine as an energy boost or drink a tea or something. I don't drink, I don't do that, but I do have sugar. So whatever, a bit of honey on some bread or something. And when I'm stressed out and suddenly kind of structures things, or it gives me a boost to go into that call and do something else. Um, and I realized that I was doing and sugar was my energy boost, but it did kind of push down other feelings of that my body would have tried to make known. So yeah, what about, what about you, um, Michelle?

Is there anything like this that, that got you to feel more in touch with, with your body or with your wants?

[53:47] Paul: Yeah, it's— I relate to a lot of that, but probably in a less beautiful setting. It's funny, when I left work, I had, I actually quit drinking 6 months before I left my job. So in that sense, it's a little bit unrelated. Um, but I had been starting to be like a little bit more into it, to my body. And part of the reason I quit drinking actually was because I wanted to focus more on my work to some extent. Like, I knew, I knew it was having a negative impact, and then I also was so stressed and like thinking about work all the time that I was like, I cannot lose, you know, days to being tired and such.

So that was, you know, a positive thing that came out of a negative thing. But then I moved home and I was eating a lot of Indian food, a lot of rice, more— I usually don't eat a lot of sugar, eating a ton of sugar. Like my diet my first year was insanely bad. Like, my parents are Indian. I grew up in the Midwest. So like, we— like, their baseline for what's healthy is not— that's a dangerous combo, Indian plus Midwest, right?

Like, I— I like— that's, that's my background. Like, it's not— like, when you're in California, people eat like salads and don't eat ranch, and it's like a very different experience. But yeah, so my diet was very poor actually, and because of that I was tired a lot and I found this kind of shoddy Excel sheet that this guy had made and I started tracking my energy. So I would like every hour rank how I felt and it made me very aware that eating these big meals was making me really tired, which also then made it difficult for me to want to do anything. Like I would take naps and I think that's why I felt very lazy during that time as well. And in the time that I've moved out of my house, my diet is a lot better.

I cook a lot more for myself. It helps that I don't have a lot of options, but I do enjoy cooking and I'm just a lot more aware of like if I have a heavy lunch, that's going to affect how I feel in the afternoon. So I've definitely made some tweaks along the way. Amazing. So Michelle wrote something Is it? No, it's Shacile.

You wrote, I've been, I've slowly, you both of you write very similarly. You guys should read each other's stuff. But, um, well, I don't know if you have. Shacile left me feedback when I was doing my, when I was writing my sabbatical essay and I was so excited about it because when we had met, she had mentioned like in the group that we were in, like someone was like, oh yeah, like if, if you know you're not working, like how are we gonna think about making money and all of those things? And Cecile was like, yeah, I'm just trying to enjoy my sabbatical. And I like made a note of that 'cause I was like, yes, I relate to exactly how you're thinking.

And she left the most thoughtful comments on my sabbatical essay that not only helped me write a better essay, but also Some of the things you said, like you were the one who implied that I was no longer on a sabbatical because I was like, yeah, I'm like, you know, it's crazy. I'm not working anymore. And you're like, you're doing a lot of projects and stuff. It seems like you're shifting into a new part of your life. And I was like, oh my gosh, you're right. And it's just like a little comment on my Google Doc.

So I do really enjoy Cecile's writing, videos, et cetera. And she's given me such thoughtful feedback as well. That's amazing. Yeah. Cecile wrote, I've slowly been shifting from a scarcity mindset to an abundance mindset. And I feel like that is such a powerful thing.

It really occurred to me too, and my life did start coming filled with all these projects, but I was enjoying like every moment of every day and I was like, I'll fight for this. And that's why I was willing to live on less and keep going, um, on that, that path. Um, yeah, I'd love to hear. from both of you, like what sort of energy, where was your energy going? What were the things you were called to, to do once you figured out it wasn't about just doing things for the sake of doing, um, but were, what were the things you were called to do for the sake of themselves and the joy you got out of that? Maybe Cecile first.

[58:18] Michelle: I'll, I'll absolutely answer your question. There's something I would like to say about the abundance mindset, which is something that I, that past me would've of when I was thinking about going on sabbatical, I, I was worried about a few things that turned out to not be true once I was on sabbatical. And they're very linked to that shift between scarcity mindset, abundance mindset. But very quickly, maybe two examples. One was, um, one, money. Um, and so I know we've cut— we've cut— we've touched on that topic already, but I had to go through a very specific shift in mindsets so that I would allow myself to go on sabbatical.

I had been saving for such a long time, but not because I was saving for something in particular. I was kind of like saving into a black hole of saving that could not be full ever. I just needed more, and it was like for future house or for future whatever. And I had loads of examples of things that I wanted to use it for, but it was basically such that future Cecile will be safe. Whatever happens, she'll be fine. And the more money I pour into this, the more I'm certain that at any point in time in my life, future Cecile will be safe.

And the shift that needed to happen there was that initially I was looking at that pot and it wasn't, you know, like certainly not a million, far from that. But I was looking at that pot and thinking, even if it is, say, $30K for a sabbatical, which is a hugely privileged thing to be able to do, take having 30K to use on a sabbatical. Even so, looking at that, thinking, right, if I take 30K out of this, I'm effectively taking 30K out of future Cecile's safety. Yeah. And I was— I just did not want to do that. I was really reluctant.

And, and the only— there's a few things that allowed me to make that switch. One was, well, I'd rather— I'd rather— I think there was an element of, I'd rather spend one year now when I'm 35 at that point with loads of energy and loads of, you know, creativity. And I want— rather than wait until I retire and then, and then do all of this stuff, I'd rather do that now. So like, okay, this, this feels like the right time. But also the shift for money that had to happen was that I wanted to use— I, I realized that it was time to use that money to invest in myself now, and that, and that this money was not just to protect myself such that I could pay rent and whatever in the future. It was also such that if I invested in myself now to develop skills or something, then those would also have compounding interest that then would serve me for the rest of my life.

And it wasn't just about having money that would compound. There were other things that could compound, and the earlier I did them at 35 rather than at 65 when I retire, or 60 if I retire in France. Yay for France! So I'm French, so I'll just mention that. Um, but yeah, the earlier I do that, the more it does— it does compound. So that shift was a hugely, hugely important shift, and it did mean that suddenly I shifted from a mindset where I technically didn't trust future Cecile to sort herself out, so present Cecile had to do it.

I shifted towards towards trusting that future Cecile will be able to sort herself out. And that's where the abundance mindset kicks in. It's that I was investing in skills today to build myself up such that in the future, I could actually tackle anything that was thrown my way, and not just with money.

[01:02:05] Paul: Yeah. It's a shift of seeing life as a financial problem to be solved as something that's much more holistic, right?

[01:02:13] Michelle: Yeah.

[01:02:14] Paul: Yeah. And I, I totally relate to that, Cecile. I had the exact same conversation with myself in terms of shifting my mindset to saying, okay, I'm investing in myself and this will also pay dividends in the future. And I don't know what that means, but I have the opportunity to do this now. And so I'm going to take it. It and see where it leads.

And I think that's so, so, so, so key because I do think we are investments. Like, you're with your body the whole— your whole entire life. And so not just your health, but also your, you know, yeah, pursuing the things that you want to do. But as soon as you can do that, that's just the, the unlock, I think, to life.

[01:03:04] Michelle: Yeah.

[01:03:04] Paul: You both are future self now, right? So we, we— you're one year past Cecile, you're a couple years in. Michelle, what would you say to your former selves?

[01:03:17] Michelle: Um, that's a tough question. Um, so I've been writing for my past self and for other people who are worried about their future selves. So that's kind of what I've been, I've been doing. So I've kind of been telling my past self about all the good stuff that was coming up so that I would Yeah, in a way it's kind of reassuring, reassuring myself that yes, this was awesome and this was worthwhile. And when I look at everything that I have done and I've written about, and I look at— I've stored a lot of it in my website, but not all of it. Some of it is just internal shifts that have happened that I can't even describe easily.

And sometimes I just kind of look at my new website, and I would never have imagined a year ago having a website. This is just completely brand new. I, I had zero online presence apart from a LinkedIn account with 3 posts on it, um, a Facebook account that had been closed off 3 years ago, um, zero online writing, zero podcast, zero newsletter, nothing. And from zero to where I am now, which is website, 1,200 followers on Twitter— I, I'm not posting right now because life is a bit hectic as we're moving back into London, but just But just things— I wrote 50 articles in total, 50 plus, um, 5 newsletters. 5 newsletters I'm at now. I'm just trying out videos.

I mean, you said you put an S at the end of videos for me, Michelle, when you talk about it. It's one video. It's one video for now on YouTube talking about sabbaticals, and hopefully I'll make more. Um, I think I would, I would, I would say to my past self, just trust, trust yourself. And I think that's, that's what, just what I needed to hear. Because when you're making the decision of whether you're going on sabbatical or not, for me it was quite hard.

You can weigh the pros and cons as much as you want, but at some point you're going to have to take a leap of faith. And, and you can't already know before you take the sabbatical if yes or no it's going to be worth it. So for me, it's Trust, make the space, make as much space as you need for your curiosity and your own wants to emerge, and then you can't be disappointed. Trust yourself that you do have wants, even if you can't feel them right now because they've even been overwhelmed by the grind. But trust that they will emerge and make enough space such that they do emerge. If I had gone on sabbatical for 2 months, 3 months, it wouldn't have been enough for me.

[01:05:55] Paul: I think trust yourself is exactly the same thing that I would say. The dots, as they say, connect when you're looking backwards. And I think I would tell my past self, it won't make sense until much later down the road than you're expecting. It's going to be a journey. It's not going to be all great. But at the same time, you know, it's funny, I think if I told myself 2 years ago, yeah, you're still not going to be working in 2 years, you're going to be living in a remote town with your sister, like 2 hours away from a single airport, I probably would have started updating my resume.

Like I had no idea my life was going to lead me here. And it's just—

[01:06:36] Michelle: You forgot that and you would love it. And you would love it.

[01:06:38] Paul: And actually you're happier than ever. It's funny, you don't know where you're going to end up. And I think that's also a part of like the shift in the abundance mindset, I think, that you mentioned, Cecile, is especially when you're starting out, especially when you're going through a lot of this introspection and internal battle and trying to figure out your value outside of your job, it's hard to imagine that whatever it is that you do choose to do with your time is going to compound the same way it's going to compound whether or not you stay in your job. And I, I just, I wish I had a little bit more faith. You know, it's hard now to talk to other people because I'm like, it'll be fine. I think you're gonna be okay.

And nobody really likes to hear that. Yeah, that's beautiful. Uh, and what role has writing played for you in this path? Um, maybe talk a little bit about writing and creating Michelle. Um, you can, we can shout out David Perell, who I think has just created like a great onboarding to making friends and sharing ideas online. Um, what role has that played and have you started to make some money from some of the things you're working on?

Yeah, so writing, it has been a game changer. Write of Passage has been completely transformative for my life. Like, I have no reason to say that except for the fact that I believe it. And I can point back to rite of passage for every single thing that's been going great right now in my life. Um, this podcast is one of them. Opportunities coming my way, connecting with really cool, intelligent creators that are out there in the world.

That has made the last few months a completely different experience in my sabbatical journey. And I think it happened when it needed to happen, but I was, even though I had started a podcast with my sister, my sister was the one that actually pushed us to publish. I still had that like perfectionism and nervousness about putting content out into the world. And I really, really wanted to write. I wanted to write for a long time. I thought that's what I was gonna do after college and hard left into sales instead.

Um, so I, I knew I wanted to do it. I just couldn't push myself to do it. And so that's why I signed up for Write of Passage. That's why I decided to make that investment. And, uh, you're exactly right. You go for the writing and I have been publishing consistently.

My work has been attracting such a wonderful community, great comments, great emails, a lot of positive feedback, a lot of people willing to share their stories. I wouldn't even known that not working was interesting to anybody had I not started to put my stuff out into the world. My sister was joking with my mom the other day. I'm your target market. I love reading your stuff. My sister was like, when I told her I was going on this podcast, but just with everything that's been happening in my life, she was like telling my mom, she's like, Michelle's getting famous for not working.

This is the podcast to get famous for not working. All are welcome. The stars do align, I'm telling you guys. But you started making a little money too, right? Yeah. Well, actually, I don't know if we're talking about the same thing, but I technically have a small job now.

I'm like a total fraud. I'm like working a little bit. But that's because I— No, but this is the thing, right? You sort of like, there is this whole world of like gigs, like you can do freelance work and it's actually very hard to find freelancers and independent workers who are available because most driven people have jobs. Right. So if you're available, people will start hire— trying to hire you.

Yeah. Honestly, I was surprised. Almost immediately after I left my job. And the economy was in a better place like a couple of years ago, but people kept offering me jobs even when I would lie and say I was working. And I was like, what is going on? Like, I don't want to work.

I had— that's why I had to make the decision to not interview for a year because it felt like I was in— I was literally interviewing for a job that I didn't want because my old, like, boss had helped connect me to that. And so I was like, okay, I'm not working. I need to, like, stay focused on that. And now instead, because I've been writing and like sharing my thoughts on things and my values, I was able to attract a really cool opportunity that I did want to do, which is I'm helping Daniel Bazzolo with his Small Bets course and I'm doing some admin work for him. And it's nice because I'm in the group anyway. I'm engaging with people anyway.

It's low lift. I could still work on my projects and now I can actually, instead of going into my savings, length, I can hit more of a, you know, net zero level. So yeah, that's great. It's, it's really exciting. So yeah, I, I am working. It's all a lie, but I just started like 2 weeks ago.

That's amazing. I mean, it's aligned with what fires you up and that's just going to unleash more interesting experiments in a direction that is like who you're supposed to be. Like, I think, and that, that is beautiful. Like that's the reason to, to remove yourself from the system for a bit. How about you, Cecile? What role has writing played in your journey and have people tried to hire you too?

[01:12:27] Michelle: So I won't repeat what you just said, Michelle. I think it's very true. So writing and putting yourself out there is a wonderful way to invite other people to connect with you. So instead of you having to do all of the work to reach out to others that you will connect well with, you make the effort of writing a good, you know, a good piece that, um, is compelling enough, you know, whatever it is that you want to write on and whatever format you want to use, put it out there and people will find it and they'll reach out to you. And it works. That piece of writing works when you're asleep, when you're doing something else.

It's brilliant. So, um, that I completely endorse and I love that. I've met a lot of people who've connected with me saying, oh, this piece that you wrote was really interesting, and then they gave me ideas and then it kind of builds up. And then it helps also you, um, or it helps certainly build up on my own ideas. But the thing that I liked particularly with writing in my sabbatical was that it helped me find a stronger voice for myself and figure out who I was even more than without the writing. And that's because— and I don't know if everyone's brains functions in the same way, but certainly my brain has a bunch of ideas that kind of float around in my head, but as long as I haven't processed them in a way, they kind of stay at that level.

They don't move forward, so I can't really build on them as much. If I start writing about them, then not only putting down the idea that's in my head on paper means that it frees up some headspace, I can then build on it, and then I can suddenly kind of have a discussion with it's kind of like having a discussion with my past self and my present self and kind of furthering the conversation. And suddenly I'm building a lot more and joining a lot more dots than I could if I was only relying on my brain space and my brain power. It's been really interesting. But also, so that's one bit about the writing process. But then when you publish, there's something about publishing that when you do it for the first time was for me traumatizing.

I published my first post on a blog, and, and I, I had— did not have my last name on that blog. It was very much, you know, a secret blog that I had given the address to, to a few persons, a few people. And then as I published my first post, I immediately password protected the blog because I didn't want people to find it. I was so scared. It took me a while before I lifted the password protection and I felt comfortable with people engaging with this. But then once you've written a few pieces which are effectively snapshots of you and your life at different points in time, when you come back to your blog or your website or whatever platform you put this on and you look at it, you can look at that in its entirety.

You're effectively looking at a, a whole picture of yourself that you— I certainly never had had that kind of view view of myself, kind of reflected back at me before. And looking at my blog and scrolling through all the articles and seeing all of those snapshots of ideas and things I'd been building on, dots I'd been joining, felt suddenly like an intellectual and emotional reflection of myself that I had never seen before and that I could then build on. And that felt— that meant I could see literally on the screen what my voice sounded like, and that is something I hadn't felt before. So yeah, I highly recommend writing, but not only writing, but publishing. Not only for meeting others, but for yourself, such that you concentrate every— all of your ideas in one spot and have that living space of yours on the internet.

[01:16:26] Paul: It. That's beautiful. Um, any other topics either of you wanted to touch on that are alive in terms of the sabbatical? Uh, I, I'd also love to hear how you're thinking about returning to work, Cecile.

[01:16:43] Michelle: Ah, that is probably the one topic that I would have, I would have mentioned as a, oh, this is worth thinking about when you're going on sabbatical. Um, there are lots of phases in a sabbatical, and depending on what you choose choose to do. There'll be, you know, whatever. You can't predict what the phases are going to be, but there's certainly the phase before you go, like when you make the decision— am I going or am I not going? That's already one phase, and it's already part of the whole story. Then there's actually going on it, and then there's all the phases in between.

But then there's actually the phase that for me has been the most stressful over the past 12 months, has been the integration phase and the landing phase at the end of the 12 months. And that really— there have been moments in my sabbatical which have been intensely happy, intensely miserable. It's been intense a lot of times, and sometimes just boring for a while as well. All of it is true. But I don't think I had quite imagined just how intensely stressful and difficult that landing phase was going to be. And it was— so the context is we had just spent 6 months in Bali, we're returning to London and France for a few weeks, and I had to make decisions around whether I was going to go back to my job or not.

If so, where would we live? Um, if not, where would we live? And that would open up a bunch of perspectives that were a lot more varied than if out of that job, which is not remote. It's based in the outskirts of London, or outskirts far away from London. And then once, yeah, where would we live? And then how would we rent?

Would we buy? Would we— Basically, so many life-shaping decisions needed to be made in such a short period of time that it was honestly really stressful. And at the same time, we were moving back from Bali, which had a certain energy, vibe, back into the London grind and the London winter and the London buzz, some of which, you know, positive things, some of which are like quite hard and kind of reawaken your past, or my past grindy self, like the past me that was living in London and, you know, was like buzzing all the time and, and just wired. Um, I could feel that person coming back and I was Nope, I don't want to fall back into that. I've awakened parts of me that I want to keep, so how do I manage that integration?

That's actually— so doing that in parallel to figuring out the job, the flat, and whatever, all of this stuff is actually quite a hard thing to do and hard to convey just how, um, stressful it can be. Um, but the decision— the decisions kind of have all been made now, I think. Hopefully everything works out okay. Um, on Monday I decided to accept a job at my previous employer for interesting reasons. So, it's a job that will actually, that is really interesting, that will help make a difference in, again, in the industry and in the energy transition. And it's a 4-day-a-week job that will help me, so, for 2 reasons.

One, this means that I have 3 days a week that I can focus on my own stuff and it kind of shifts the balance from a 5-day a full-time working week to a, okay, this other stuff that I've discovered is important enough that I'm ready to give up on some salary to keep exploring it. So, 4 days a week was a non-negotiable aspect for me of returning back into work. And the other non-negotiable aspect was that the job needed to be something that would be complementary to what I want to develop on the side as my own business and as my own thing. So, the job that I'm moving back into is is a strategy job that I've just— I, I don't— I've never done before, and I don't think there are many opportunities to do in, um, in the world.

It's, it's a company that is effectively— just simplifying a bit— but shifting, transitioning outside of a bigger company and becoming its own company with its own strategy, its own culture, its own purpose, and, and and transitioning that into a, a culture that will attract the right people who want to genuinely make a difference through that, that company.

[01:21:23] Paul: I've actually seen a lot of people take sabbaticals and return to work, and I think a lot of people are surprised that, uh, they have a new sense of self and their degrees of freedom and their boundaries, um, which is a lot easier after taking a break once you're a little older rather than just going headfirst into working world. Um, so it'll be interesting to check back up and please keep writing about your experience because I think it will be valuable to people. Um, Michelle, anything else you wanted to share or bring up?

Yeah, I think as a closing thought, part of the reason I feel so excited and encouraging and want to have as many people reflect and see if they have an opportunity to go on a sabbatical or take time off of work is because I really saw the value in it, just the ability to detach yourself from your corporate identity, especially again in like American culture, like we really value work in a way that is so deeply tied to our identity that I think is unhealthy. And if you are unsatisfied with your job or you find you're unsatisfied with your life, like it's a really, really great opportunity to go back, reflect, and the point is not to just take a vacation necessarily.

I think the point is to actually realign yourself with your values and what's important to you and see if maybe there's a different opportunity for you or if there's a way you can go back to your, what you were doing before, but in a way that's more fulfilling to you. Yeah, I love that. A lot of people approach life with the assumption that you work for 40 years in adulthood, and that's 480 months. So I tell people, take 3— figure out how to fight for 3 months of that time. In those 3 months, the, the universe will give you signs about what to do next. And the upside is your whole life might open up and you'll find a path which you'll never regret for the rest of your life.

The downside is you miss out on 3 months of income. Maybe you have to wander around for a few more months to get a job, but somebody will hire you. People are always looking for people that want to work. Um, but yeah, it's such a beautiful thing. And over and over again, 99% of people— I talked to one person one time that said, I took a 3-month sabbatical and it was terrible. The thing is she was in Pennsylvania and her husband was working full-time the whole time and she didn't do anything or leave or try anything else.

99% of the time people love sabbaticals and highly recommend them, wish they took them earlier and so on. So I really appreciate both of you sharing your experiences. Where can people learn more and any closing, closing supportive thoughts you want to leave with people? Yeah, for me, you can find me on Twitter @mvarghose, M. V. as in Victor, A-R-G-H-O-O-S-E, M.

Barghose. And that's the same name that I write under as well, but everything is attached to my Twitter account. You can check out my podcast with my sister. We talk a lot about how to set yourself up financially so that you can pursue a life that you want on Status Post Adulting. And otherwise, if there is something that resonates or that you want to talk about, Feel free to reach out to me. Like, I love chatting with people about this type of stuff.

I think it is so personal to every single person. So I'm always happy to dig in and see what your options really look like for your specific situation.

[01:25:22] Michelle: And for me, I think I'm going to use the same, the same option as the one you went for, Michelle. But, um, my, my Twitter account is probably the place where you can find everything that I've got. So it's at @ceciele_mcm, and I'm linking there to my website, and you can easily find me on other platforms as well. But yeah, on my website you'll find my writing, you'll find the neuroscience summaries from Huberman as well if you're interested in them. They're pretty cool. And you'll find a bunch of other stuff also, a kind of learning platform kind of that I created on my website.

That summarizes all of the really cool learning opportunities that I went on during my sabbatical. So that's like online courses that were really good, and I kind of concentrate all of them onto, onto this place. And it's— there's some really neat stuff on there, so I highly recommend you, um, you have a look at that. And I highly recommend that you listen to more stories on Paul's, on Paul's podcast, because this is, this is the kind of stuff that, um, that, that gives you inspiration. I don't think I would have been able to consider going on a sabbatical if I hadn't had a partner who was ready to do that, who was already working the creator journey. So I had someone who was kind of pointing the finger somewhere saying, oh hey, how about we do something like that?

Or look, things could be different. And if you don't have those people around you, whether you know them or whether they're on podcasts like Paul's, then you might never have that idea. So So keep listening, see what resonates, and, um, yeah, I, I hope to hear some, some of your stories when, when you come on Paul's podcast in the future. Paul, thank you so much.

[01:27:08] Paul: Amazing. Thank you both. Please both keep writing. It's a, it's a gift to the world, and, uh, thank you for joining today. Thank you so much, Paul, for having us.

[01:27:18] Michelle: Thank you, Paul.