A spreadsheet can tell you whether a portfolio might survive. It cannot tell you whether you will like a Tuesday with nowhere required to be. A one-year sabbatical tests the life, not merely the math.
What the year measures
Track actual spending after the work costs disappear and the free-time costs arrive. Observe sleep, health, alcohol, exercise, and attention. Notice whether your relationship improves when stress falls or strains when both people lose private structure.
Most important, watch what replaces work. If you rebuild deadlines within six weeks, the identity problem remains. If you drift for twelve months and feel excellent, the productivity problem may have been fictional.
Make it reversible
Preserve credentials, professional relationships, and a return route without letting them dominate the year. Decide in advance how much the experiment may cost and which portfolio assets fund it. Treat the number as tuition for information.
Do not turn the sabbatical into a travel marathon. Spend enough months at home to encounter ordinary post-work life. Retirement is mostly groceries, weather, friends, and afternoons—not airports.
Keep a monthly record
Write one page each month: spending, mood, health, relationships, meaningful hours, and what you missed about work. At month ten, decide among returning, redesigning work, or making the exit permanent.
Pair the experiment with an honest life audit and the site’s exit timeline. A sabbatical is expensive compared with a vacation and cheap compared with retiring into the wrong life.
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