Go on a yearly hiatus

With amazing opportunities knocking on your door, it’s incredibly hard to dedicate time to ensure that you stay connected and aligned with who you are.

I regularly enjoy two types of breaks:

  • Family time: This is for deepening relationships with those who matter. These breaks are sacred, occurring at least once a year.
  • Scholarly retreat: A sabbatical for myself—an opportunity to “fork the repository of life.” It’s a time to experiment, deliberate, evaluate, and reconnect.

I’ll focus on the second type because I believe you can gain immense value from it.

Do a scholarly getaway

When I impose a break into my life, it catalyzes the transition from one chapter of business to another chapter of life. It provides the space to reassess and recalibrate my objectives. From experience, reconnecting with your core beliefs and principles amplifies your impact. History seems to agree:

When COVID hit, Wolfram revisited a decades-old passion project to explore the foundations of physics. Muhammad retreated to the cave of Hira to deliberate on his future. Steve Jobs discovered UX as the bridge between humans and experience after immersing in Zen Buddhism in the East. Marx pondered world-changing ideas on Engels’ dime. Jesus spent 18 years in contemplation. Newton wrote Principia Mathematica during the Black Plague lockdown. Sam Altman took a year off after his startup exit. Virginia Woolf retreated from London life to produce some of her finest work. The list goes on.

Now that you’re hopefully convinced of the value of a personal retreat, let’s explore what it takes:

Travel alone

If your life is normally filled with activity, take a long break by yourself. Choose a destination where you are compelled to re-engage with life every day—a place where distractions are minimal because your surroundings are more captivating than any screen.

I first did this at 18, going to Thailand with not enough money for a return ticket, forcing myself to start a business. Traveling alone brought self-discovery through challenge and introduced me to remarkable people. In contrast, trips with friends, while enjoyable, didn’t deliver the same degree of personal growth.

Preparing for the hiatus

Dedicate yourself fully to the break. Prepare in advance: gather books, identify areas for self-improvement, and decide how you’ll evaluate the past year. Goodreads’ recommendations can be a great starting point.

Stay in touch with your network, maintain accountability, and make the hiatus memorable—take photos, share progress with friends, discuss your experiences. Remember, living a fulfilling life hinges on having a clear philosophy. Use this time to refine, nurture, and execute your mission.

What to do during a hiatus?

You may wonder how to spend your time during this break. Focus on three categories: challenge, reflection, and deliberation.

Challenge is about disconnecting from your daily routine and forking your life.

  • Deliberately disconnect from digital life: Don’t respond to emails and set up an autoresponder so people know you are away.
  • Reset your mindset: Remove any daily worries and dare to think about your twenty-year plans and your mission.
  • Start and finish a new project: For me, this is my website at the moment, but it could just as well be game development or learning a new piano piece.
  • Chat with strangers: As you travel, it would be a waste not to get to know the unique perspectives harbored by strangers.
  • Meditate: Use sports psychology to reaffirm your connection to yourself, others, and the world.
  • Travel: See new sights, get inspired, and refine your tastes.

Reflection is about assessing what went wrong and celebrating what went right during the last year.

  • Evaluate: Write about everything—create the handbook of your life. Conduct personal reviews and assessments, and implement new habits related to health, diet, sleep, etc.
  • Emotional calibration: Reflect on your stress levels and emotional well-being.
  • Reconnect: Catch up with old friends and discuss the evolution of your perspectives.
  • Goodreads: Using Goodreads’ book recommendations feature to find new books is surprisingly valuable. See e.g. one I made for this October.
  • Do a blood test: Use your time to get a blood test and check if there’s any health concerns you should be aware of.
  • Particular events: Do a deep-dive on particular highlights from the year, either negative or positive, to see how you can double down on positive developments and strategically change negative ones.
  • Spirit: Investigate your life’s core drives and develop a plan to use these drives to make your life even more impactful and productive for the future of our shared world.

Deliberation involves challenging your viewpoints and refining your philosophy.

  • Write a personal report: Deliberate about your core beliefs and perspectives, where you want to go, and who you are to yourself and others.
    • The report I wrote when I was 18 was to decide my career path for impact, neglectedness, and interest (pre-EA) with a focus on which type of education would be most effective (university, startups, or self-taught) and the most important technologies of our future (with the implicit assumption that I would work with technology).
    • Think about the questions that irk you the most about your long-term future and develop conclusions that you are happy to stick with for the coming years.
  • Challenge your viewpoints: Meet people from completely different backgrounds and listen to their experiences. Investigate why the right wing exists, understand the papers that someone references as they deny AI risk, and consider the perspectives of other ethnicities or genders.
  • Curate a list of books or podcasts to dive into, especially on philosophy (Philosophize This podcast), history (The Fall of Civilizations podcast), and technology (textbooks and papers)
  • Focus on skill development: Pick a specific area like leadership skills, and use the time to incorporate these learnings into your mindset; something that’s not always possible when you read books in everyday life.

My experience

Whenever I’ve taken three months off, I’ve fundamentally shifted my life trajectory. Whether it was every summer during school, my trip to Thailand where I researched 14 impactful technologies and decided to go for a career in brain-computer interfacing (since AI was too dangerous and OpenAI would solve it), or unplanned time in the Bay Area, these breaks always produced growth.

A few meta-tips for what works for me to make a hiatus successful and undistracted:

  • Get outside and sit with your notebook or computer in a public place; move often.
  • Intersperse your day with intentional study and deliberation
  • Smile to the people you meet on the street
  • Sit at your computer for hours at a time without a mission, preferably just browsing the internet (not social media or movies) or simply thinking - keep notes for these unstructured times
  • Listen to audiobooks while traveling or eating
  • Keep in touch with others over calls every couple of days

Go take that hiatus

Today marks the beginning of my 2024 hiatus. I’m setting out to solidify my goals, lay out plans for the next 20 years, and explore Borneo!

If you haven’t had a real break in over a year, feel even slightly burned out, or constantly need to reassure yourself that you’re on the right path, carve out one to three months for a scholarly getaway. If you lack the funds, retreat to your parents’ place and explore your hometown with new eyes. If you can’t find the time, try to unplug completely for three days in a similar fashion.

Invest that time in yourself. I’ll see you on the other side!