TED Talk Tuesday: The Power of Time Off

The value of time off is often overlooked, but it can yield some truly remarkable results.

SPONSOREDUpdated 4:16PM • 02/23/16

Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a year-long sabbatical. That sounds unheard of, right?

These days, we often feel pressured to work harder and work longer. Chances are, if an adult were to go to their boss or advisor and ask for a year-long break, they’d probably be heavily criticized.

But according to Sagmeister, time off is exactly what most of us need. We spend the first 25 years of our life learning. We spend the next 40 years working. Tacked at the end of all of that, we have about 15 years of retirement. What if we take five years out of that retirement and intersperse them in between the working years? In doing so, you’re taking back 12.5 percent of your life—time that’s completely free to do whatever you want. What could we accomplish? How would it change us?

Sagmeister uses his year off to pursue creative experiments and other things that are difficult to accomplish during a regular working year. He also uses this time to refresh his creative outlook. In a way, a sabbatical is Sagmeister’s way of hitting the reset button—and it pays off in a very big way.

“Basically everything we’ve done in the seven years following the first sabbatical came out of thinking of that one single year,” Sagmestier said in his TED Talk.

Time off has worked for a lot of other people, too. Chef Ferran Adria, who runs El Bulli in Barcelona, opens his restaurant seven months a year. He closes it down for five months to experiment with a full kitchen staff. Despite losing nearly half a year of business, his numbers are incredibly impressive—he can seat, throughout the year, 8,000 people. And he has 2.2 million requests for reservations.

Since the 1930s, 3M has given all of their engineers nearly 15 percent time off throughout their entire career to pursue whatever they want. Scotch tape came out of this program. Art Fry developed sticky notes during his personal time for 3M. Google also gives their software engineers 20 percent time off to focus on personal projects.

“Allowing yourself the time off is a lovely and very energetic time. But probably even more important is that the work that comes out of these years flows back into the company and into society at large,” Sagmeister said.

Click here to watch the full video.