Ep. 81 - How to Plan a Sabbatical That Revitalizes Your Life and Career (with Dr. Bethany Wilinski)

Feeling burned out before your sabbatical even begins? Dr. Bethany Wilinski shares how to design a sabbatical that actually heals, restores, and reignites your passion for work. From mindset shifts to practical planning, learn how to make your time off truly transformative.

You’ll learn:

• Why burnout changes what your sabbatical should look like
• How to shift from a productivity mindset to a purpose-driven plan
• Practical ways to balance recovery and research goals
• What to do if you’re halfway through sabbatical and feel totally off track

Whether you're planning your dream sabbatical or wondering how to salvage one that’s not going as planned, Bethany’s insights offer both relief and a roadmap.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Bethany’s coaching programs and “Sabbatical Rescue” offer
• Her podcast: Sabbatical 101
• Learn more at bethanywilinski.com

Check out Leslie's website at www.YourWordsUnleashed.com!

The three ways Leslie can help you in 2025:

#1: Six-month Your Words Unleashed signature book writing coaching program. Through 8 hour-long sessions tailored to your own needs and goals, we will pinpoint what’s keeping you stuck. We’ll figure out personalized solutions and strategies so you can create direction and lasting momentum with your book writing. I’ll also provide detailed feedback on your writing throughout

#2: Four-month Career Reset Program for Overwhelmed Academics who want to reconnect with purpose. Over the course of 6 hour-long sessions, we’ll clarify your personal career vision, create space for what matters, overcome internal obstacles to change, and define what success means on your own terms so you can work less and live more.

#3: Group Zoom Workshops that balance personal well-being with writing productivity. Topics include transforming your dissertation into a book; connecting to the deeper purpose of your work; as well as boundary setting.

Check everything out on my website and if you are interested in any of these, please shoot me an email at ...

Transcript

EP 81 with Bethany: Wilinski

Leslie:

Today, I'm very happy to welcome Dr. Bethany: Wilinski onto your Words Unleashed podcast. Bethany: is a tenured associate professor at Michigan State University in the Department of Teacher Education. After taking a life-changing sabbatical, she's on a mission to help others plan and carry out the sabbatical of their dreams. She's dedicated to helping academics plan a sabbatical, whether at home or away, that leaves them rested and ready for what's next in their career. With summer just around the corner, I really wanted to have Bethany: on to talk about the art of planning a sabbatical. I've never heard of a sabbatical coach before, and I think it's a super cool area to focus on.

And I'm having her on as much for myself as for you, because I have lots of clients who come to me when they're on sabbatical and are having a tough time making progress on their work. I also have a hard time using my own sabbatical as a guide because it was completely different than I expected. My original plan was to take a semester of parental leave followed by a year of sabbatical. And I know pretty much no one ever gets that much time off at once. But then I had my son in February 2020, and the world completely shut down due to COVID three weeks later and stayed shut for pretty much my entire sabbatical.

So I ended up using that time to care for my child and plan my exit from the academy. Most people are not in that situation, I know. So I wanted to ask Bethany: her thoughts on how to have the most enjoyable, restful, and productive sabbatical. So welcome to the show. 

Bethany:

Thanks so much, Leslie:. I'm so happy to be here.

Leslie:

I'm happy you're here as well. So can you talk about your path through academia and your research and teaching interests before we talk about sabbatical stuff?

Bethany:

Sure. So, my current position, like you said, I'm in the Department of Teacher Education. My PhD is in Education Policy Studies and Curriculum and Instruction. So my interests really lie in the intersection of what's happening in classrooms and how what's happening in classrooms is shaped by larger policy agendas. My research looks at how early childhood teachers in the US and Tanzania experience new education policies and how that shapes their daily classroom lives and their well-being. And I came to that, I guess, my pathway there. I'm a teacher by training. And so I always thought I would be an elementary school teacher.

And then after graduating from college, I spent two years teaching in Tanzania. And that really got me excited about learning about education systems in Africa. And so I was able to continue doing research and development work and working with teachers in Tanzania, and I carry that through my PhD program and into my current position where I teach future teachers but I also work with doctoral students who have interests in global and comparative education.

Leslie:

Awesome. A little bit different from sabbatical coaching. So I'm so curious, how and when did you decide to become a coach who focuses on helping people create dream sabbaticals?

Bethany:

Yeah, that's a great question. And you said in the intro that sabbatical coaching isn't even a thing. And I think until May 2024, maybe it wasn't at least not sabbatical coaching specifically for academics. So my interest in sabbaticals, I guess ever since I got a tenure-track position, I started thinking about my sabbatical, right? I saw it as this beacon, something that I knew I was really looking forward to and is one of the biggest perks and privileges of being an academic.

And I think I always assumed that I would go abroad for my sabbatical just because I have kind of permanent wanderlust. I'm always planning the next trip. I'm kind of like if I weren't an academic, I would probably be a travel agent. So when it came time for my sabbatical, I immediately thought, Okay, what does it look like for my kids to live in Tanzania for a year? What are the school options? Can my husband work remotely for that amount of time? And I got very focused on those logistics and just kind of putting together the strongest application I possibly could.

And then at one point I realized, well I do know the exact point, I was in a faculty meeting and we have every fall people who come back from sabbatical give a sabbatical report and they talk about what they did. And one of my colleagues gave his sabbatical report and he had gone to Florence, Italy for the year, and I thought his experience sounded magical. I was like, can you imagine just walking through the streets of Florence and going to your vegetable stand and buying cheese? And I thought, I think I want David's sabbatical. Why would I want my sabbatical?

And I started to think about why that was the case because I love going to Tanzania and my husband and I actually met in Tanzania so it's a very special place for us and I would be excited to share it with my kids. But what I realized was that the sabbatical I thought I should take was not actually the sabbatical that I needed. And that's really what, in the end, inspired me to start my sabbatical coaching business because I realized there was this fork in the road where I had been doing everything right, like I might have gotten the Fulbright. I think I had a strong and compelling application and my institution was very supportive of that sabbatical. But the reason it wasn't the sabbatical I needed was because I was incredibly burned out by the time I got tenure

You mentioned COVID. So I got tenure in May 2022. So we had been through COVID with two young kids. My kids were in kindergarten and just under two when COVID started.

So we had months of no school and no daycare (mm-hmm) and then the following year, my mom got diagnosed with terminal cancer and she passed away 11 months later and then unexpectedly my mother-in-law passed away right around the same time as my mom and so I was exhausted.
 
 

I had no bandwidth. And all that is to say, not that I want it to be like a big sob story, but just that what I needed from my sabbatical was actually not to go to Tanzania and start a huge new project and be involved in all this new new big stuff.

What I really needed was to rest and recover and to grieve and figure out how to not be burned out and overwhelmed and how to start liking my job again. So that is a much longer answer than you're probably looking for. But going through that process made me realize that I think there's a different way to think about sabbatical planning than how most people approach it. So I think most people approach planning a sabbatical with a sabbatical application. You know, you have to write something for your institution where you say, here's what I'm going to accomplish.

The sabbatical application isn't really about you and what you need. So I work with my clients to help them think about what is the purpose of your sabbatical going to be and how do you create a sabbatical, how do you put all the pieces in place to get what you need out of your sabbatical, not just what your institution wants from your sabbatical.

Leslie:

100%. And I definitely want to dive into the specifics of how you work with people to make these plans. But what did your sabbatical end up being?

Bethany:

So instead of going to Tanzania, that afternoon, I think I came home and told my husband, who was just overwhelmed by this whole sabbatical planning thing, honestly, because it kept changing. I said, you know, I just don't think we should go to Tanzania. I would have to be there for a year. You can't really leave your job for a year. I really want to go to Europe and have that kind of an adventure. And so I started exploring different ideas. I started asking myself, what if my sabbatical was about rest and recovery? What if my sabbatical was about having a fun adventure as a family?

What if my sabbatical was about going somewhere that made sense for my husband's career? Mm-hmm. And after asking those questions and, you know, spending a lot of time doing research and going back and forth, we ended up spending a semester in Bordeaux, France. Ah. Which was lovely. Highly recommend for so many reasons. 

And Bordeaux has nothing to do with my research. I ended up telling my institution that the reason I was going to Bordeaux was because what I needed to do was finish projects. I needed to analyze data, I needed to be writing, and it would be helpful to be somewhere where I could have focused writing time instead of being in Tanzania where I would be pulled into new projects and I wouldn't be able to actually finish the projects I was already working on. So I had a year-long sabbatical. We spent the fall in Bordeaux, and then I spent the second half back in Michigan at home.

But it was amazing, I mean, it was life-changing. It was transformative. It completely shifted the way I approached my career. We had made amazing memories as a family. and it allowed me to recover in a way that I was able to feel excited about doing my research again and going back to work in a way that I never thought would be possible before my sabbatical started.

Leslie:

That's incredible. And let me just say this is a small thing, but kudos to your department for having people share their sabbatical stories because that never happened a single time in my old department. And in fact, I think we often didn't even know people were on sabbatical until they just didn't show up for faculty meetings in the fall. You're like, oh, that person's on sabbatical. I have no idea where they are, what they're doing, and then they just come back. (Yeah.) So just even that kind of transmission of information, I think, is really important.

Bethany:

Yeah, that's true. And it's so inspiring as a junior faculty member, right? You show up and you're like, what does it mean to be a faculty member? You're kind of figuring things out. And then to hear what people did on their sabbaticals– and people do a great job. They have slideshows and so you're seeing pictures. Yeah, and so yeah, you're right. It is really inspiring. So maybe we need to encourage more departments just at a baseline to let people share their sabbatical stories.

Leslie:

Oh my gosh, I totally think that would also just give you a window into your colleagues as human beings. (Yeah.) And not just as workers. So you mentioned having to overcome burnout. And I think that that's a major theme for pretty much every single person I work with. Especially if they only have a one-semester sabbatical, they don't have as much time to recuperate. They might not even recognize how burnt out they are. So how do you help people figure out how to balance their need to recharge their energy and focus on their well-being with doing work?

Bethany:

Yeah, well, I mean, I think it's important to remember that we're not going to be able to do the work unless we're rested and not burned out. So in my sabbatical, again, I was really privileged to take a year, but I actually did no work for the first four or five months. I was just, you know, eating croissants and making friends and enjoying my family. And I worried that if I kind of took my foot off the gas, I wouldn't be able to get that momentum again. But by the time January rolled around, I was kind of wanting to get back into my work.

So I think one thing I work with clients on is figuring out how to allow themselves to trust themselves, that if they take a break and if they rest, they will be able to get back into it. And that looks different for different people. Some of my clients will have a dedicated rest period at the very beginning of their sabbatical. So if it's a one-semester sabbatical, often that looks like maybe two or three weeks with nothing planned. Other clients will decide that they're only going to work certain days of the week and maybe take one day a week off completely or only work in the morning and take the afternoons off.

It's all guided by their priorities. So when we start working together, we actually don't start with, OK, here's the to-do list for sabbatical. Here are all the things I want to do. We take a step back and I have my clients figure out the purpose of their sabbatical and the guiding principles for their sabbatical. And the way we do that is by saying, OK, how do I want to feel while I'm on sabbatical? How do I want to feel at the end of my sabbatical? And the one that's very telling is I have my clients tell me, I'll know my sabbatical is a success because.

And often the answer to that question is not actually work-related. What I find is that most people have personal goals related to their well-being that rise to the top as the most important for their sabbatical.

So we start with that and say, OK, if this is the priority, if you being more present with your family or feeling like you're able to take care of your own well-being, if that's the priority. And then you also have these projects that you want to get done. How do we make that all fit together? And so each client is different and they come up with a plan that really allows them to have that balance. And sometimes we do the hard work of saying maybe some of those projects need to go away for sabbatical, or maybe you won't get as many things done as you wanted to.

And so we do take a hard look at their sabbatical goals and say, given the range of things you're wanting to do on sabbatical, is it realistic that you'll get all these things done?

And I think often it's our own expectations. Often it's not actually anyone else who's telling us you must get all of these things done, right? And so it can be hard to let go of some of those things or put projects on pause. But I think that as soon as we do pare things down a little bit, I see my clients feeling.

Leslie:

For sure. I mean, I think just in general when you can focus your goals down to one or two or three things and then you treat everything else you accomplish as bonus, and English But what I think about a lot is like sometimes when people have a break time, they want to rest and they also feel this immense pressure to work. And that's almost like having your foot on the gas and on the brake at the same time. And it literally just churns up energy. There's all this energy that goes into just that tension. So how do you help scholars alleviate guilt? Like actually rest, actually take that rest that they want without the guilt that burns up other kinds of energy?

Bethany:

Yeah, I'm just thinking of one of my most recent clients. We talked about this so much because she said, you know, I really want to rest, but then if I'm resting, I feel so guilty that I'm not getting anything done. And also the other challenge she had is she knew once she started working, it was hard to stop working. So if she said, okay, I need to stop at this point and rest, she probably wouldn't do it. She'd just keep working all day. So a couple of things that we work on is trying to find pockets of time to kind of experiment with rest.

So saying, could you maybe in the first week or so of your sabbatical schedule in a couple of blank hours? And it's actual rest, it's not productive rest. You know, you're not practicing piano, you're not exercising, you're not, right? Because this is the other thing I find is I tell my clients all the time, I am not here to help you have a more productive sabbatical. If you're someone who's earned an academic sabbatical, it means you are highly successful, highly motivated, highly capable, and I think you know how to be productive. I'm here to help you have the sabbatical that you really need.

And part of that might be being productive, but also I think my role is more to help people feel okay about taking their foot off the gas. So we do things like saying, okay, what if you try to experiment with these small pockets of blank space in your calendar and actually make yourself take that time and just, I don't know, pick up a book or watch TV or just sit on the couch and have a cup of coffee. The other thing we do is towards the middle end of the program I do have clients map out their calendar for their sabbatical and so we look at all the months that they're on sabbatical and we look at kind of their existing commitments and then after we take out those existing commitments we map their projects onto the calendar.

And so I find that having a visual where you can see, OK, I made a plan. I have that journal revision. I have a plan to get that done in, I don't know, October, let's say, if you have a fall sabbatical. So when it's September and I have some rest time, I don't need to worry that I won't get the revision done because I've already made a plan for that.

So I think part of it is just trying to be really mindful about planning. And we know that obviously we can't control everything and things will happen. The kids get sick or something unexpected comes up that you have to deal with. But I think my clients feel more confident taking rest if they know that they've made a plan to get the work done. And so then they can build rest. And like I said, most people will build it into their schedule regularly on a weekly basis. The other thing that I think a lot of people have done is find fun things that they want to do that they don't usually have time to do in their normal work life.

So one of my clients decided to join a rock chorus. She's always wanted to do it, but she never has. Another client was going to take voice lessons. People sign up for pottery classes. So again, it might be sort of a more productive type of rest, but I think when we work together, people will explore different opportunities and make a plan to do something fun that's not work related, which I think counts as rest.

Leslie:

Oh, totally. And it's so funny because I feel like so many of us want to do things like voice lessons or learning an instrument or whatever, but we don't and we wouldn't if we didn't have someone holding us accountable. So even though it's fun, it's still an effort, right? It still takes time and energy and a kind of commitment that you may not have to yourself, especially if you're burnt out and juggling a lot of things. And so I'm curious also, I'm sure you have folks come to you when they're already halfway through their sabbaticals, they're feeling like they haven't gotten anything done, they're probably feeling overwhelming pressure. I have folks come to me wanting to work with me and they're at the tail end of their sabbaticals and it's hard because I can't take them on immediately. But how do you work with folks who are already halfway or more through so they can end it feeling good about what they've done?

Bethany:

One of the reasons I started this business is because I really want to help people avoid sabbatical regret. I think that, like I said before, sabbatical is such a privilege and an opportunity. And I hear way too many stories, like you just said, with people getting to the end of their sabbatical and saying, oh, my gosh, I didn't get the things done that I wanted to do. Or like your sabbatical, the world changed beneath my feet and it just didn't end up being the thing that I thought it would be. So what I do with clients who come to me when they're already on sabbatical is I have, I actually have a program, it's called Sabbatical Rescue, and it's four intensive sessions where we, it's kind of like the program you would do with me if you came to me before your sabbatical started, but it's like very compressed so that we can turn things around quickly so you can make the most of what's left of your sabbatical. And the process we go through is to, again, take a step back first and say, okay, what is the purpose of the sabbatical? What are my priorities? Because I think sometimes priorities shift, right?

Sometimes you might find yourself stuck on sabbatical because the grant you applied for didn't come through or you didn't get the book contract and now you're like, I in all my programs, but I think can be particularly important for a sabbatical that's in progress and isn't going well, is setting boundaries.

So, figuring out the things that are getting in the way of you having the sabbatical that you really need? And so we put those boundaries in place. So within about two weeks, we can get a sabbatical back on track. And this is all really personalized. So we meet, we talk about each client's exact situation and come up with ideas that can help them course correct and get back on track.

Leslie:

And can I raise a specific example from a client that I've had before, because I'm curious how you might problem solve or coach this? So I was working with someone who had a full year off, was extremely burnt out at the beginning, but had a lot of plans for working on their book and had set aside the time. The time was in the schedule every day and was just completely avoiding doing that work, doing other kinds of work, but not doing the work that the sabbatical was for. It wasn't an issue of having the time.

Seven months had passed, no longer burnt out, but just not doing the things that they had committed to themselves to doing. Do you ever face this?

Bethany:

Hmm. I mean, personally, yes, I think I do. I have experience with that or avoiding the things that seem harder and crossing off the easy to do's or the things that we have some external accountability for. I think what I would work on with that client is to have a session and say like, OK, what's going on? Like what's showing? And when you sit down to work on this, what's coming up for you? What does it feel like? Is there some sort of imposter syndrome that's kind of lurking? Do we need to, I guess it sounds like it was kind of broken down, but maybe the tasks need to be broken down a little differently to feel like there's an easier way in.

I think I would ask this person if they had some sort of accountability for that work. I think sabbatical can be a little bit isolating, especially depending on how you set up your boundaries. Like I kind of fully disconnected from my department and didn't really, I wasn't in touch with colleagues. for most of my sabbatical, and I think that worked out well for me. But I could imagine if you had a task like writing a book, maybe it would be important to connect with an accountability group, whether that was colleagues from your department or not.

If most of the sabbatical had passed and they still really wanted to make some progress on the book, I might say, well, at this point, if you have, let's say, three months left, you're probably not going to write an entire book in three months. So that's where we might recalibrate what the new priority is going to be? What would be a reasonable goal for the rest of sabbatical? Because I think sometimes when we just have things hanging over our head and expectations that maybe at one point were reasonable but are no longer reasonable, we need to change those expectations to free ourselves up so that we can maybe have the energy to move forward.

And then I guess the last question I would ask, and I just asked this question to a client yesterday. We were talking about a book that she's been trying to find a home for, and I said, so let me ask you something. Do you want to write that book? Does that book align with your current professional goals and priorities? And it turned out that she might not want to write the book. So I think that's a hard question, right? But it's an open question. Is this still aligned with where you see yourself going?

Leslie:

Yeah. Yeah, and that speaks to needing some time for reflection on what alignment would look like and feel like. Where do I want to be going? How do I want to show up as a scholar and as a person in the next few years of my career? And I'm glad you also mentioned how sabbatical, for all of its amazing things, it's also a very isolating time. I think especially for folks who maybe they don't have partners, they don't have children, they're doing their own thing. I've noticed that my clients on sabbatical have a lot in common with my clients who are postdocs. This sense of just openness and lack of structure and things like that. So any other thoughts on how to still feel like you're a part of things while you're away?

Bethany:

Yeah, part of what I do with my clients is help them or ask them to think about and then we think about it together. What would an ideal daily and weekly routine look like on sabbatical? I mean, I'm a very routine oriented person. So I know I thrive when I have routines and feeling like you have all of this blank, empty space on your calendar can be very, it's exciting, but it can also be very intimidating.

And so I do encourage my clients, particularly folks who are not traveling for sabbatical. I think part of what I've realized through the process of having this business is that I thought that I was going to be helping people plan their sabbaticals and all of these exotic locations. And actually, the majority of my clients are staying home for their sabbaticals, right? So I think if you're going away, it's a little easier to have this sense of adventure and maybe not have routines in place because everything you're experiencing is new or you're building new collaborations and doing new things. But if you're staying home for your sabbatical, which I think is an excellent way to spend your sabbatical, and there are lots of reasons to do it, I think it's really important to think about what you want the structure of your day to be like. And it doesn't have to be strict, but often I ask clients to think about what time of day is the best for you for writing.

And so if you have writing goals, maybe Often my clients are like, okay, I want to spend three hours writing in the morning, and then I stop and break for lunch, and then I have the afternoon to do a little email after lunch, and then maybe I go to my pottery class or whatever in the afternoon. So we do try to think of a schedule and ways that they can build in either opportunities to connect more with friends and social circles they currently have. A lot of my clients also have goals of building stronger networks and relationships during their sabbaticals.

So that was something that I think it feels very vulnerable to be an adult and say, I want to make friends or I need to make friends. But yeah, for any of your listeners who might be feeling like they don't have a strong social network or they want more friends, I will say this comes up for a lot of my clients that one of their goals is really to make more friends or to get closer to their friends. So they'll build in things like having coffee with a friend or going out in the evening with a friend.

Leslie:

I think that that is going to be great to hear. I think all of us feel this sense of disconnection. Part of it was the pandemic, part of it just the age, the generation just caring for multiple different folks in our lives. So, yeah, I think that is such a great point. And also that the social aspect of sabbatical, I think, is a really important one to think about. It's about you as a whole person, right? And ending that time feeling like I've grown as a person. So thank you, Bethany:, so much for being here today. What is the best way for listeners to connect with you and find out about your coaching offers?

Bethany:

Yeah, well, they can head to my website, www.Bethany:wilinski.com. And there's information on there about all of my programs. And then they can also click the link to book a discovery call with me. So the way to start working together is to book that discovery call. I love talking about sabbaticals. So even if you just want to talk about your sabbatical ideas and you don't think you want to even work with a sabbatical coach, I would still love to hear from anyone about their sabbatical. I'm also lightly on Facebook and LinkedIn and I think I shared links with you that maybe you can leave in the show notes.

(Yeah.) And I also have my own podcast, Sabbatical 101. So I started that because I think there's just not a lot out there for people who are looking for ideas and inspiration for their sabbatical. So I would encourage anyone to check that out if you're just wanting to hear more about what people do on their sabbaticals.

Leslie:

Super exciting. I am so glad you're doing this work, Bethany:. Thanks for your time and your insights today.