Five Reason Why Taking a Career Break Might Be Right For You

A couple of years ago I quit my job.

I did more than just move from one employer to another, however.

I quit without another job to go to, packed up my belongings and rented a villa in France for the summer.

To some people, I’m mad to give up a well-paying job with an employer I liked and respected. However, there are a host of reasons why I felt that now was the perfect time for a career break.

Perhaps, when I explain the benefits of taking a career break, you’ll even be inspired to consider a similar course of action…

Course Reset

Dolly Parton said “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life”. We’re all so busy these days with work, with commuting, with chores at home and “responsibilities” that it’s all too easy to feel life passing us by.

We very rarely have the luxury to truly stop and consider the life we’ve built: is this what we really wanted, or have we come off the rails?

What steps can I take to improve my quality of life? Are my habits helping me reach my goals, or taking me further away?

Taking a career break is the perfect opportunity to reassess the progress that you’ve made, and to set a change of course that will lead to positive improvements in your daily life.

Continued Development

Just because I moved temporarily to France, don’t think that I sat around all day eating cheese and drinking red wine in the sunshine. Well, not every day at least.

Instead, having each day free of the obligations that come with being an adult, I put time into learning new skills.

I invested time every day into improving my French language skills. I learned how to code. I powered up all those software programs I wanted to know better – from Excel to Photoshop.

Such continued development surprisingly enjoyable when you’re not under the same time pressures of your normal life.

Even more importantly, however, the skills you develop make you more valuable and employable when you return to work in the future.    

Side Hustling

I’m a firm believer in maintaining multiple sources of income as a way of hedging against job loss. Taking a career break I suddenly found that I had the time available to explore many of the side hustle ideas that have been sat in a notebook for years.

Each day I investing time into growing my blogs. I started designing and selling t-shirts. I did some freelance writing.

Amusingly, and in contrast to what you might think, I actually made almost as much as I did from my full-time job.

Even better, in my opinion, many of these are reasonably passive sources of income that will continue to function for months or even years into the future. 

Relationship Fostering

Even though I lived within half an hour’s drive of numerous friends and family members before my career break, we very rarely saw each other. It’s hardly any surprise: we’re all so busy that our calendars rarely matched.

When you take a career break, however, you have complete time flexibility. So calendars can match with ease. 

What’s more, with two spare bedrooms in the villa, much of July and August saw us hosting a stream of our friends and family. What’s more, we’ve actually stuff to talk about that doesn’t involve work. Who ever thought that moving abroad could actually improve your personal relationships?

Memory Creation

Lastly, and possibly most importantly, I have noticed over the last few years that I’ve been so busy with work that whole months – even years – just fly by. Besides a two week summer vacation it’s difficult to remember anything “notable” that happened over the last few years.

Moving to France for the summer, however, was quite the opposite. Every day I was having experiences that I’ll remember for the rest of my life. Who knows what life will hold for any of us? While I admire the FIRE community for their budget living, what happens if you suffer an illness before you get to enjoy your early retirement?

Right now I’m living life to the full – and it feels good.