Designing Your Intentional Sabbatical: Purpose, boundaries and career sustainability.
This is Part 2 of my conversation with Bethany Wilinski, an associate professor of teacher education at Michigan State University. Building from Part 1, where Bethany described her own sabbatical experience, here the the focus is on how to more intentionally design your sabbatical (also relevant for any leave) by starting with purpose, priorities, and desired feelings rather than a to-do list. Bethany outlines practical boundary management strategies to protect your time amid ongoing responsibilities while on sabbatical. These include clarifying expectations in advance, shifting cognitive load to students, and batching meetings into limited windows. She makes a great case for how we can use sabbaticals as a chance to test systems and carry changes forward: balancing structure versus unscheduled time, normalizing rest and reading as productive, and using sabbatical (and other types of leave) to reset habits around health, work rhythms, and scarcity-driven opportunity-taking. Bethany also also reflects more generally on academia’s lack of positive reinforcement, her sabbatical-planning coaching business, and the need for sustainable career choices and incremental culture change.
0:29 Introduction
03:55 Starting With Purpose and Priorities Before Tasks
07:34 Mapping Obligations And Boundaries, Setting Boundaries
12:31 Reducing Cognitive Load, Taking Control of Scheduling
14:51 Structure Rest And Reading
18:25 Mid Career Reset And Scarcity
22:01 Career Choices In Uncertain Times
24:12 Lessons From Parental Leave
26:22 The To Do List Never Ends
29:35 Validation And Sustainable Culture
35:58 Starting A Coaching Business
39:21 Changing Academia From Within
41:18 Outro
Related Links:
Bethany’s Michigan State Uni webpage
Bethany Wilinski Sabbatical Coaching
Bethany on LinkedIn
