That leaves those of us who missed our chance to take a gap year sometimes jealous, or even indignant. The best time to plant a tree, they say, is 20 years ago. But the second best time is today. So it is with gap years.
Here’s why a gap year, at any age, should be in your concrete plans instead of your bucket list.
Second, extended breaks from work—ideally more than two months, with four to six months as the ideal—are necessary to undergo a deeper journey of self-exploration. In this process, we can examine who we’ve become and actively choose how we’d like to live going forward.
My research echoes these findings. Sabbatical takers return with more creativity and enhanced perspective on what matters. As we exit our teens and 20s, few obvious inflection points exist to catalyze taking stock, which usually means we stay on the same path, choosing inertia over evolution.
Of course, taking a mid-life gap year or sabbatical can be difficult to pull off. Here are some concrete steps to make it feasible:
Second, use a longer-term lens for planning and motivation. Almost no one can afford to take a sabbatical immediately, but make a plan for five to seven years from now and begin to budget and strategize to make the logistics work. Think about the next decade of your life from a “eulogy” lens—what would you regret not doing with your life—instead of letting the inevitable short term inconveniences and excuses win the day.
If completely abandoning your career path feels too intimidating, look for a socially-acceptable gap year hidden-in-plain-sight. One year mid-career graduate degrees offer a chance to open the aperture on what’s possible in your life, and many universities are beginning to offer people in their “twilight career” a chance to audit classes alongside a cadre of pre-retirement seekers, such as the Inspired Leadership Initiative at Notre Dame. Or sign up for an age-agnostic volunteering or research opportunity like the Peace Corps or the Fulbright program. If you require neither permission or external motivation, perhaps a self-directed learning project, like how to upskill with AI, is more your speed.
But later in life you have much more material to work with, and (hopefully) more resources to fund the expedition. Jungian psychologist and author James Hollis talks about the transition to mid-life as going from a “magical thinking” mindset where anything is possible to a more realistic perspective which takes into account your realized talents, interests, and constraints.
A gap year—at any age—gives you the chance to reflect, explore, and even wind back the clock to remind you that how you live your life is a choice. Stepping away from that life, even for a relatively small chunk in the grand scheme of things, isn’t an abdication of adulthood, but an investment in a life worth living.
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