Ever felt the urge to just stop? To hit pause on work, travel a bit, try something new—or just breathe?

In this episode, I answer a question I hear often: "If I take a sabbatical, will I ruin my career?"

If you’re in midlife and considering stepping off the treadmill—even briefly—you’re not alone. I share stories of people who’ve done it (including me), talk about why the old model of work is crumbling, and offer a perspective that might help you rethink what a meaningful, joyful work life can look like.

We explore:

• Why sabbaticals are no longer career suicide
• How midlife reinventions are reshaping what "career success" even means
• What actually makes a work life feel worth returning to

And I’ll introduce you to the kind of rethinking we do inside my Fierce Emporium programme—where the first thing we redesign is your idea of work itself.

🎯 Learn more about Fierce Emporium:

👉 https://www.midlifeunstuck.com/the-fierce-emporium

Mentioned in This Episode:

• 📘 X Change – Lucia's Book
• 🎧 Returning to Uni in Midlife

Hi, I'm Lucia Knight and this is the Joy At Work Podcast.

I'm thinking of taking a break from work, a sabbatical of

sorts to do some traveling and things I never seem to find the time for.

Will this kill my career prospects when I come back?

This question taps into something I've been noticing for years.

More and more mid-career people seem to be wrestling with the

idea of hitting pause on our very long work lives to well live more.

And one of the things that stops many of us from doing it is the fear that doing

it might permanently derail our career.

Here's what I think about that.

I believe the educate, work, retire model is dying, if not already dead.

What's emerging in its place is a much more dynamic, flexible, and frankly,

more human approach to our work lives.

When people used to live shorter lives and have shorter, healthy

lifespans, retiring in your fifth or sixth decade of life made sense, but

that's not how it is for many of us.

In our fifties and sixties as people who have more health, energy, brain

power, skills, and experience to offer the world, we need to do more.

I write about this in my book X Change: How to Torch Your Work Treadmill.

Previous generations were more accepting of a joyless work mode.

Head down, bum up, work hard until you can afford to stop.

Generation X and millennials are far less accepting of that philosophy.

For better or worse, we want more from our hopefully longer lives.

We want our work to be more enjoyable, fulfilling, meaningful, and satisfying.

And many of us invest lots of time and energy to design it to include

all of those lovely emotions.

But even when we experience joy at work, it's still work, isn't it?

And if we end up having work lives that last for six or seven decades, instead

of four or five decades, we've got time to play with our lives, haven't we?

We're no longer expected to climb one ladder in one industry until we

retire on a yacht, which of course, very few of us, or certainly in my

generation, are able to do anyway.

Instead, we can create opportunities for change and look, sometimes

we're forced into that change.

So whether it's a choice or it's forced upon us, we get moments to reinvent,

to re-skill, to study something new, to take travel breaks, to volunteer,

to spend more time with the kids or the grandkids over decades for the rest of

our active lives, we get to mix paid work with meaningful life experiences.

Here are some quick and dirty examples.

I know a young couple with young children who took a year off work and school

to explore the world in a camper van.

I know someone who did a 700 mile walk during a sabbatical.

My husband's uncle and auntie, both in their fifties, have

spent a year exploring the world.

After his uncle left the army, which he'd signed up to age 16

and retired as a captain, age 50.

I myself went back to university age 42 to do a Master's in psychology.

There's a whole episode about that idea.

A friend relocated his family to Panama and works almost entirely

remotely and walks through the forest to surf several mornings a

week before the work day starts.

Another friend took her teenagers for a long summer holiday around

Vietnam, Thailand, and Cambodia.

Potentially their last family holiday before the empty nest arrives.

Many parents take a career break to help their children grow up.

Many children take a career break to help their parents grow old.

Some of us start a business to see if we can make it work.

Some of us decide that working remotely brings joy at work and in life.

Some of us do an MBA.

Some of us just lump all our holiday together and take a long trip on fami

to a different part of the world.

So to answer our listener's question, will a sabbatical kill your career?

No.

Not if you design it well.

In fact, it may be the smartest career move you'll ever make.

Breaks, sabbaticals, even gap years in midlife are

becoming more normal, not less.

They're not just tolerated.

They're increasingly seen as a sign of courage, creativity, and adaptability.

Employers, colleagues, friends and family value, human beings who bring diverse

life experiences, resilience and a, a refreshed perspective to the table, to

the work table, and to the life table.

You don't have to look far to see people taking time off to

support a partner's business.

Explore creative passions, test drive new paths, whether it's

freelancing, consulting, or even volunteering in ways that enhance

their skills and networks and lives.

And when they return to the workplace, they often do so with renewed energy

and a clearer sense of purpose.

So rather than asking, will this hurt my career, maybe the better question

is, what kind of life do you want to build and how can work fit into that?

And that's exactly the kind of thinking we do in the first six weeks of my Fierce

Emporium program before we design the practical plan of action to get you there.

Because the future of work isn't just about staying relevant,

it's about staying fulfilled.

It's about connecting the dots between what is deeply important and

meaningful to you in your real life and making your work life support that.

Because most of us, when we are working, use 60% of our waking hours working.

We need to prioritize is the deliberate design of our work so that it becomes a

valuable investment of those waking hours.

Imagine doing work that when you take a break from it, you

are excited to get back to it.

Imagine designing work that feels so valuable to you and so valued to others

that you may not want to retire ever.

That sounds like joy at work to me.