The concept of a sabbatical may not be very popular for those people who confuse life with work, but the truth is that it is one more resource that can help us both to gain health and to evolve personally.

Unfortunately, sometimes the sabbatical is confused with simple inactivity and the inability to plan a viable work project (the latter being, by the way, something that does not depend entirely on will power or effort). No: being a few months without working in a paid way or receiving formal training does not have to be a waste of time.

Next we will see the main advantages that can be enjoyed by people who decide to take a sabbatical year before starting a university career or entering the labour market definitively.

The advantages of taking a sabbatical

Moving from a period of activity to a stage in which free time predominates can cause certain problems related to lack of planning and poor management of expectations.

But that, in many cases, is more than compensated for by the advantages of the sabbatical year.

1. Time for self-education

Most university degrees or regulated postgraduate training are oriented towards specializations that, in one way or another, limit the range of learning to which we can opt. This is positive in many respects, since becoming an expert in something requires the need to focus on a specific field of knowledge.

The sabbatical year allows us to get out of this dynamic and leave us time to learn on our own or with the help of face-to-face or online courses. The duration of a year allows us to go deep enough into a new subject to continue training in it in a more fluid way when we go on to combine it with work.

2. Travel, the great gift for the senses

To travel well, it is necessary to have time to discover all the secrets of what you are visiting. The sabbatical year gives us the opportunity to make several trips, either using money saved or by resorting to volunteer programs that offer free stay in exchange for several hours of work per week.

3. The possibility of learning languages

Another reason why the sabbatical year is not the same as spending the whole day doing nothing is that it leaves us plenty of scope for learning languages.

In fact, if we put enough time and effort into it, the results after 11 or 12 months of learning a language from complete ignorance are usually surprising, especially if we already master one that resembles it in grammar or vocabulary.

4. You can meet more people

Sometimes we forget one of the most important aspects of life that are reduced when we work or study intensively: social relations.

Whether it is to network from a professional perspective or to extend the circle of friends , the sabbatical year allows us to enjoy perfect moments and spaces to get in touch with people with similar interests to ours. Attending festivals, conferences, making appointments… there are many suitable contexts to socialize.

5. Drives us to take control of our lives

Strangely enough, getting out of the circuit of formal training and full-time work helps us to gain power over our actions and decisions. This is because for the first time we have almost total freedom to prioritise objectives and to make plans, something that does not happen in the other two scenarios.

6. It offers an oasis of family reconciliation

If communication within the family has been suffering for years due to the lack of time together, this is the ideal moment to reconcile or simply regain contact and strengthen the emotional bond that unites us with our fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters , etc.

Before you give yourself a break, remember…

Now that we have seen the advantages and benefits associated with the sabbatical year, it is good to review the aspects to be taken into account before deciding on this option.

Mainly, efforts must be made to prepare the sabbatical year in two ways: saving and planning .

Having a financial cushion is necessary even in those cases where we are not prepared to carry out projects that require large expenses, because in case of needing money for unforeseen events, we are more exposed to not having a full-time job.

On the other hand, planning with a reasonable amount of time is fundamental because if we do not do so, we will probably spend the year wasting many weeks and simply “embedding” some significant events in our calendar from time to time, without forming a cohesive whole. This last option is an incorrect way of imagining the sabbatical year, a period characterized not by free time or rest , but by the freedom to choose where we want to go.