David Bach took a full year off in 2013 after burning out from overwork. He says a six-week sabbatical can deliver about 80% of the benefits, and describes a corporate program that gives employees six weeks off every seven years with mandatory disconnection from email and phones.
Chapters
For some of you, coming here for two days on a Monday and a Tuesday was a tough decision. A few of you came for the week to relax and rest. Yet most of you will charge home and get back to work. There is another way, and David Bach has found it. Known as an author of nine bestsellers, the Automatic Millionaire being the most popular, and has gotten David on Oprah six times and the Today show over 100 times. And now a chance to talk to you about not just taking one or two weeks off from your business, but the six week sabbatical. Please welcome my very dear friend, David Bach. Thank you, brother.
Thank you. Good to be. What do you want for your birthday? Do you remember that question when you were a kid? What do you want for your birthday? You always had an answer, right? Remember? Let me show you a picture of my kid. See that little one in the front, James? He can tell you from the day after his birthday what he wants. A year out. But what happens as we get older? What do you want for your birthday? What do we say? Not sex. What do we say? I don't know. I don't know. Typically we say nothing, right? So something very faithful happened to me in 2012. I was unable to sleep, which was very common in 2012. I had come off a tour, having done my 12th book in 10 years. I was completely exhausted and my wife said, honey, what do you want for your birthday? If you're not going to sleep, let's talk about your birthday plans. Now, the particularly annoying thing about this question was that my birthday was in November, and the question was asked in bed in March. I said, do you really want to know what I want? She said, yes. Now, my wife has pads of paper, so she likes to take notes. She says, please tell me, what do you want? I still tell you what I want. I want a year off. She said, what are you talking about? She said, you mean you don't want to write another book? I said, no. You mean you don't want to do another speech? No. What about television? You're still going to still do tv, right? No. What about your office? What about your employees? I said, honey, I don't know. You asked me what I want for my birthday and you know what I want. I want a year off. She said, okay, fine, then take it. Happy birthday, honey. I said, it's not that easy. Do you know how busy I am? How many of you are busy? Yeah, busy, busy, busy, busy, right? I start giving her the long list of things I'm busy with. I'm like, there's no possible way I could take a year off. She's like, what about next year? I said, well, next year I'm booked through the middle of the year. Fine. Then after that, she said, let me ask you a question. Can we afford for you to take a year off? Now, that's a good question. I started going, well, you know, if we cut our expenses. She said, wait, hold on a second. I married you for better or stay the same. You want a birthday present? I didn't say anything about cutting back. I asked you, can we afford for you to take a year off? So I started going through the expenses and I started thinking about how much money we have. And I go, you know what? Yes, we could. She goes, how long can we afford for you to not work? I add it all up, I'm in bed. I go, okay, about 20 years. She goes, we can afford for you to not work for 20 years and you just want to take a year off? This is the dumbest conversation I've ever had in my entire life. She said, I'm going to sleep. You can stay up and stare at the wall until 3 o' clock in the morning, stressed out for whatever reason it is. I don't know. And in the morning, let me know what you want for your birthday. So in the morning, I did that. I stayed up until three in the morning, stressed out in the morning. She said, are you going to take a year off? And that started my journey to planning in 2012 how I would take the entire year off in 2013. And on January 1st of 2013, I took the gondola up to Ajax with her and I planned an entire free year. Would you like to know what that's like? It's fantastic. So here's the thing I want you to know. In 2013, I was 46 years old, and I felt like I was 46 years old. In fact, I felt closer to 50. And I was tired, and I would go to the doctor and I had my blood work done. I'm like, I don't know what's wrong with me. He's like, well, you're getting older. That was the wrong answer. There was a book that Joe promoted here by a friend of mine named Arianna Huffington. How many of you read the book? Thrive? One of the things Arianna said in that book is she talked about how our batteries get depleted and we need to recharge our batteries. 2013, taking a sabbatical. What it did was replace my battery. But here's the interesting thing about Taking a year off. People go, what was the real purpose of year off? You know what? It was just to be a dad. In fact, my wife said, what are you going to do with your year off? I said, well, I want to do what you do. She said, what do you mean? I go, well, I'll take the kids to school and they'll go have coffee and then I'll go to the gym and then I'll run a couple errands and I'll pick them up. I'm like, that looks like fun. She's like, you know, that's not as easy as it looks. That was true, by the way. But what I wanted to do in 2013 was step into my life and stop time, because I have those two young kids that you saw. And I made the decision that I wanted to live in the present moment with my kids for a year. One of the earlier speakers said, we'll say that we will die for our kids, but will we live for our kids? And in my year, what I got to do was not just spend time with my children, but I also got to go spend time with my parents. I spent almost a month with my parents. I visited friends who I hadn't seen since college. And yes, I took amazing trips all over the country and all over the world. But the most important thing was I got back my energy. And I wanted to share this message with you, this room in particular, because I have a lot of friends in this room. And here's what I can tell you. I didn't know how tired I was in 2012 until I wasn't tired anymore. I have one of these interesting radar things now where I can look at you and some of you in this room. I can look into your soul and I can see how exhausted you are. And what I'm here to tell you is that there's a magic pill, literally, that I wanted. I wish someone had told me this sooner because I would have taken it sooner. And that magic pill is a sabbatical. And it doesn't need to be a year to get 80% of what I got. It needs to be six weeks. Because in six weeks, the miracle of taking that break, I felt younger, five to 10 years younger. I had more energy, I had more presence, my happiness level. How many of you, the book 10% happier. Have you guys ever, any of you read that book? This is like 100% happier. A six week sabbatical is a miracle. And most of you in this room haven't ever had one. People go, what is it, it's where you don't work for six weeks. Somebody asked me at lunch, well, does that mean I don't do email? You don't work. None of those things that you do that are called work. You don't do any of them. Now here's the interesting thing. After I came back out of the sabbatical, I became a vice chairman of one of the largest financial planning companies in the country. And the most amazing thing when I sat down with the founder is I said, I was telling him about my sabbatical and he said, you know, we have a sabbatical program. And they did. They have a culture where every seven years you get a six week sabbatical. And you know what they do? They not only do they give you the six week sabbatical, they unplug you from your email, from your phone, and they don't allow you to call in. Wow. So I go there for the first day to get met. There's 500 employees and they basically do a book signing in the open area of the corporate headquarters. And everybody's coming up to me because I got to meet, but I don't know everybody's names yet, obviously. And so I'm meeting them and I ask really quick, quick questions. How long have you been here? Someone says, 10 years. I go, where'd you go on your sabbatical? And they have an unbelievable story. And as I walk around the office, people have pictures just like their kids. They're all on the wall. Their pictures are sabbatical. And if someone's been there 15 years, they've been on two sabbaticals. If someone's a year away from their sabbatical, they're talking about it. Three years away, they're talking about it. Amazing. The only person in the company who hadn't taken a sabbatical over seven years, the founder, he had been there 28 years, he never had a sabbatical. Interesting, right? Because often the entrepreneur is the last one to take care of themselves. Sabbaticals can change your life. Life. The next time someone says to you, what do you want for your birthday? If the sabbatical sounds good, take it. Take it because you earned it already. God bless you. Thank you very. It.
