CAREERS: IT'S A novel attitude to the unpaid leave being offered in some companies looking to cut costs, but the key to working better is not to work – or at least to take regular sabbaticals.
That is according to graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister who is taking one year off every seven years, and has shut down his New York studio, gone to Bali and left a message saying the staff are “conducting a full year of experiments”.
Mr Sagmeister said that the breaks have been good not just for his creativity but also for his income. Companies such as Google are recognising the benefits of letting staff do work on personal projects as part of their work hours, he said.
Mr Sagmeister was taking a break from his current sabbatical in Asia so that he could address TEDGlobal, a conference taking place in Oxford this week.
An extension of an annual event held in California, TEDGlobal will see speakers from a variety of fields discussing big ideas based around a theme of the Substance of Things Not Seen. It makes for an unpredictable event, and yesterday’s sessions included appearances by broadcaster and star of social networking site Twitter Stephen Fry, a stuntman, an avant-garde euphonium player and a surprise talk from British prime minister Gordon Brown.
The topic of work occupied the early speakers, with Mr Sagmeister telling the audience that a lengthy break helps recharge his creativity and interest in his job while interrupting the common pattern of 25 years of learning, 40 years of work and 15 of retirement.
“I thought it might be interesting to take five of those retirement years and intersperse them through the work years,” he said. “Work flows back into the company and society at large rather than just benefiting a grandchild or two.”
Google, he said, allows software engineers to use 20 per cent of their time on personal projects, and 3M gives engineers 15 per cent of time for such projects.
Philosopher Alain de Botton talked about the anxiety of work, most curiously in the developed world where the idea that we are free to be as successful as we want to be is ironically leading to greater anxiety, lower self-esteem and higher suicide rates.
He explained that the idea of a meritocracy has the flip-side of suggesting that those who end up at the bottom of society deserve to be there. De Botton, author of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, identified envy as a particular modern affliction, but usually concentrated between those who are close to us in age, employment and status. “It’s the reason you should never go to a school reunion,” he warned.
