Sabbatical 101

Your sabbatical is a rare opportunity to step away from the day-to-day demands of academe and focus on your priorities. Once you've determined what you want to prioritize for your sabbatical, the last thing you want is constant interruptions that take away from your focus on those goals.

Setting and communicating boundaries in advance is like creating guardrails for your sabbatical. Instead of putting up an email away message and hoping for the best, you can head into sabbatical confident that you're protecting your time.

You may be nodding along but also wondering, How do I do that? Fortunately, I have answers. In this episode, I walk you through a 3-step process for setting boundaries to protect your time during sabbatical.

You can read more about boundaries in this blog post.

If you haven't gotten enough on the boundary front, you can listen to this podcast episode on setting boundaries.

If you're thinking, "Boundaries for what? I don't even have a plan!" then this episode titled "What should I do during my sabbatical?" is a good place to start.

Need more support determining your sabbatical boundaries? I'd love to work with you! Schedule a free 30-minute consultationto learn how we can work together.

I don't know about you, but I struggle to disconnect from my work email. Disconnecting from email during sabbatical is one way you can make sabbatical feel different from a regular semester. You may agree with this, in theory, but wonder how to put that idea into practice.

In this episode, I discuss the three approaches to email during sabbatical and give you tips for managing email during your sabbatical. One key takeaway? An email away message is not the same as creating a boundary around email.

So you decided you're going to go away for sabbatical, but you're unsure how to fund it. In this episode I discuss strategies for making a sabbatical away affordable, from trying to hold some of your expenses constant if you don't have external support to applying for external fellowships to fund your sabbatical.

Here are links to the resources I mention in the episode:

Read this blog post about How to fund an international sabbatical for more information about fellowships available and how to apply.

Listen to this podcast episode to learn more about the Fulbright Scholar Program and get tips for applying.

Check out these blog posts to learn more aboutchoosing a destination for your sabbatical and planning a sabbatical away with kids.

There are many episodes of Sabbatical 101 focused on taking a sabbatical away, which feature stories from faculty, sabbatical spouses, and kids on sabbatical. You can find those episodes here.

You may be thinking ahead to an upcoming sabbatical and wondering whether it's better to go away or stay home. Or, you may have always envisioned going away for sabbatical, but you're realizing, now that it's here, going away won't be as straightforward as you imagine.

Determining whether to go away or stay home for sabbatical isn't just a logistical puzzle or a simple question of what would be best for you professionally. It's a question of what's best for you and those in your ecosystem, in your current season.

In this episode, I walk you through the questions you should be asking and give my perspective on when you should keep pushing and when you should revise your expectations. I don't have the answer to whether you should stay or go, but I will give you a set of questions you can ask yourself as you consider what makes the most sense for your sabbatical.

If you choose to stay home, here are some ideas for making your time feel different than a regular semester.

If you're thinking about going away, here's my take on how to choose the right location.

And if you're planning a sabbatical with kids, here are some tips to get you started.

Ah, sabbatical goals. It's easy to create an ambitious sabbatical plan that looks great on paper. It's much harder to create a set of sabbatical goals that you can actually accomplish in the time you have, while also making time for rest and personal pursuits.

In this slightly longer episode, I discuss the importance of setting realistic goals and walk you through a process for determining whether your goals are realistic. It's hard work, but worth it.

If you're struggling with sabbatical goals, maybe you need to step back and let go of all the "shoulds." Read this blog post to learn how to do that.

This blog post is about planning summer like a mini-sabbatical, but it's relevant - In it, I describe why we so often fall into the trap of thinking we can accomplish more than what we have time for, and how to plan differently.

If you're so burned out that you can't even imagine working during your sabbatical, this episode is for you. I'll tell you why you should lean in to your instinct to rest, and give you some tips for how to do it.

Here are some additional resources about the importance of rest during sabbatical:

How to Rest During Sabbatical blog post

Sabbatical As Rest article by Amanda Grieme Bradley

If you've been wondering what you should do during your sabbatical, you're in the right place. In this episode, I talk about the importance of creating a sabbatical plan that prioritizes your personal needs and goals, and I give you ideas for professional projects that go beyond traditional research outputs.

Here's a link to the Bruce Macfarlane article about the changing purpose of the academic sabbatical that I mention in the episode.

If you need help figuring out your sabbatical purpose and priorities, download my free Sabbatical Clarity Toolkit.

Prefer to read about what you should do during sabbatical? Check out this blog post.

If you're looking ahead to an upcoming sabbatical, you may be wondering whether you should try to take a full year or a semester-long sabbatical. In this episode, I discuss the financial implications to sabbatical length, and I provide you with ideas for how you can make a full year sabbatical at reduced pay work financially.

Here are a few related blog posts and podcast episodes that will be helpful as you think through this question:

How to fund an international sabbatical

When should I take my sabbatical and how do I apply for one?

Wondering when you'll be eligible for sabbatical and how to navigate the application process? This episode provides insight and guidance into sabbatical eligibility and things to consider as you prepare to apply for sabbatical.

Learn more about how to navigate sabbatical eligibility and the application process in this blog post.

Looking for sabbatical planning support? Learn more about my signature program, Reignite: Your Life-Changing Sabbatical, and get in touch!

In this last episode of Sabbatical 101 before I take a break for the summer, I review the most common questions I get about sabbatical planning and reflect on what I've learned over two years as a sabbatical coach.

I hope you have a restful summer. I know I'll be slowing down and scaling back. If that sounds appealing to you, but you're not sure how to do it, check out my Summer Reset Workbook. It's full of prompts and guidance to help you identify what's most important this summer and set realistic goals.

Read more about the Top 5 Sabbatical Questions I encounter and my tips for navigating them.

If you have a fall sabbatical coming up, now is the time to get in touch. I have just a few spots left in my sabbatical planning program for summer. Schedule a free 30-minute call to learn more!

In this episode, I talk to Rea Dvakos, an academic librarian at the University of Toronto, about how to intentionally craft a sabbatical that supports personal growth, research breakthroughs, and even retirement planning. Rea’s experience is firsthand evidence that a sabbatical can be more than just a break, but only if you plan it with intention. She shares how her sabbaticals were opportunities to reimagine routines, explore new behaviors, and make space for what truly matters.

Rea describes the strategies that have worked for her over three sabbaticals including how to set meaningful personal goals, craft daily routines that match your energy levels, and use sabbaticals as testing grounds for new behaviors or career directions. You'll learn how to reframe setbacks, stay flexible in your plans, and build habits that carry forward long after your time away.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed planning your time away or worried about losing momentum, this episode offers practical insights from someone who’s been there multiple times.

Feeling overwhelmed or stuck planning your own sabbatical? Learn more about my sabbatical planning program and schedule your free consultation.

Listen to these episodes for more about sabbatical planning:

When it comes to planning a sabbatical there are a lot of logistics to be aware of. This information is often not clearly laid out on institutional websites or faculty handbooks.

In this episode, I go over six things you should know about before you start to plan your sabbatical. I discuss: eligibility, sabbatical timing, the application process and deadlines, understanding how to fund your sabbatical, and when to start applying for fellowships.

I hope this episode will help you understand when you'll be eligible for sabbatical and will help you understand the requirements at your institution.

You can learn more about the Summer Reset Workbook here. And purchase your copy here.

Learn more about funding your sabbatical here.

In this episode, I talk with Dr. Kaitlin Clinnin, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We discuss Kaitlin's ambitious sabbatical goals, in the process, reframe her expectations for what productivity will look like during her yearlong sabbatical.

Listen in to learn how we approach structuring sabbatical time, balancing productivity with rest, and reframing sabbatical “success” from high-stakes output to foundational learning, fieldwork, and engagement with a new disciplinary area.

If you're wondering what counts as "productivity" during a sabbatical or worried that the work you plan to do to read and learn about a new research area or think deeply about your current projects will "count" as a sabbatical output, then I encourage you to listen. I think you'll find Kaitlin's reframing about what "counts" as work during sabbatical very insightful.

If you’re wondering how to figure out what to prioritize during your sabbatical, click here to download my free Sabbatical Clarity Toolkit!

To learn more about my signature coaching program, Reignite, check out my website: https://bethanywilinski.com/.

If you'd like to talk more about your sabbatical and learn about how I can help, you can schedule a Free Consultation here.

Does this sound familiar? It's the start of summer and you feel like you have nothing but time ahead of you, time to finally get all those things on your to-do list done. Fast forward to August and you feel overwhelmed by how much you still need to get done and vaguely guilty that you didn't get more accomplished.

This episode is your invitation to break that cycle. In it, I teach you how to approach the summer like a mini-sabbatical, and how to use the strategies I teach my sabbatical coaching clients and apply them to your summer.

Planning a summer with intention involves:

1. Identifying your priorities (and being honest with yourself about what really matters)

2. Having fewer goals (only 2-3, max!)

3. And mapping your projects to your calendar to see if your plan is realistic (and then getting rid of projects or making them smaller if not).

If you need this summer to be different, you need to listen to this episode.

At the end of the episode, I talk about the Summer Reset Workbook, a planning tool that walks you through the steps I describe in the podcast, and much more. It's only $20, and it's your guide to planning a summer with intention, so you can feel great in August.

Until April 11, 2026, you can save 25% on the Summer Reset Workbook using this link.

Learn more about the workbook here.

This episode is a live coaching session with Dr. Courtney Burns about planning a year-long sabbatical at home. Courtney is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Bucknell University and plans to use her sabbatical to submit journal articles, make progress on a book manuscript, and get back in touch with her hobbies.

We talk about how to intentionally design a sabbatical at home (instead of letting it “just happen”), balancing personal needs with professional pressure to produce, common challenges faculty face on sabbatical, including guilt, overcommitment, and unclear goals, and Courtney’s experiment with structuring her year as a series of focused writing sprints followed by true rest.

If you’re a faculty member heading into a sabbatical—or dreaming of one—this episode will give you ideas for creating a sustainable, satisfying balance between your personal life and your writing goals.

To learn more about my signature coaching program, Reignite, check out my website: https://bethanywilinski.com/.

If you'd like to talk more about your sabbatical and learn about how I can help, you can schedule a Free Consultation here.

Do you want to spend your sabbatical living abroad? Figuring out all the logistics of moving away for sabbatical can be challenging. One of the biggest questions I get is how to find funding for a sabbatical abroad. If funding a sabbatical abroad is on your mind, then this episode will give you tons of information and insight into one option that might work for you.

This episode will help you think about and navigate the process of applying for a Fulbright Scholar award. My guest is Mark Lilleleht, Fulbright Coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Mark brings deep knowledge of the Fulbright program to this conversation, in which he shares information about the types of Fulbright awards available, his recommended strategies for navigating the Fulbright Scholar Award Catalog and building relationships with potential host institutions, and so much more.

If you're interested in Fulbright, you might also want to listen to these Sabbatical 101 episodes, which feature interviews with scholars who have gotten Fulbright awards:

Courtenay's Fulbright semester in Ireland (Courtenay took a semester leave for her Fulbright)

Planning a sabbatical away with Kristine Bowman (Kristine had a Fulbright in Australia for her sabbatical)

Running a lab during a research leave or sabbatical (Monika had a 3-month Fulbright in Uruguay)

You can also read this blog post I wrote about How to Fund an International Sabbatical for more ideas and funding opportunities.

Are you planning a family sabbatical away from home? My Family Sabbatical Program is a step-by-step guide that will take you through all the steps you need to plan and prepare for your time away!

If you'd like to talk more about your sabbatical and learn about how I can help, you can schedule a Free Consultation here.

Allison Bloom is an Associate Professor of Anthropology in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Moravian University. She is a medical and feminist anthropologist and her research centers around social services and gender-based violence, particularly for marginalized populations.

Allison has a yearlong sabbatical coming up, and in this episode, we discuss her plan to pursue a professional licensure program, finish a book, and determine her future research directions during her sabbatical.

If you’re wondering how you’ll make time for all your sabbatical goals while also making time for rest and self-care, you’ll want to listen to this conversation. We talk about how to prioritize sabbatical goals, how to create buffer in your daily schedule, and how create a plan that feels balanced and not just like you’re trying to cram everything into your sabbatical year.

To learn more about my signature coaching program, Reignite, check out my website: https://bethanywilinski.com/.

Setting boundaries is definitely not the most fun part of sabbatical planning, but it's incredibly important. Boundaries are the guardrails that help you preserve your time and energy on sabbatical, so you can accomplish the goals you set and not get bogged down in with meetings and other commitments.

In this episode I share why setting boundaries before your sabbatical starts is so important, and I give you strategies for determining your boundaries, communicating those boundaries, and holding your boundaries.

Setting and communicating boundaries is a critical part of planning a successful sabbatical and requires some time and thought. If you're on sabbatical and haven't set boundaries or if you're planning a sabbatical, I encourage you to listen and follow these steps for setting and communicating boundaries.

Need more support? I can help! Learn more about my sabbatical planning services here and schedule your free consultation today! If you'd prefer to read about boundary-setting, check outthis blog post.

In this live coaching session, I’m joined by Kathryn Temple, professor of law & humanities at Georgetown University, to explore the practical and emotional dimensions of sabbatical life.

Drawing from her extensive experience, Kathryn shares why it’s crucial not to romanticize sabbaticals as total escapes from life’s responsibilities.

We talk candidly about planning for disruptions, setting priorities, managing boundaries, and embracing the messiness of the process.

Kathryn also shares what’s on her plate for her upcoming sabbatical—including an academic book, a poetry collection, and a new writing coaching venture to support non-traditional students.

Whether you’re planning your first or fifth sabbatical, this conversation offers grounded insights for making the most of your time away.

If you’re wondering how to figure out what to prioritize during your sabbatical, click here to download my free Sabbatical Clarity Toolkit!

In this episode, I talk with historian and Denison University assistant professor Julie Mujic about her pre-tenure sabbatical—and how she designed it during a moment of deep burnout and family transition.

Julie shares how she balanced the pressure of moving her scholarship forward on a tight tenure timeline while staying present for her high-school–aged daughters. We discuss the boundaries she set, the opportunities she learned to say no to, and how she reconnected with her identity as a writer. Julie also reflects on what it looked like to recover from burnout while still making meaningful, decisive progress on her work.

This conversation is especially for scholars who are pre-tenure, caregiving, or simply exhausted by the grind of academic life—and looking for a more sustainable way forward.

Looking for sabbatical planning support? Whether you have a pre- or post-tenure sabbatical, I can help you figure out your sabbatical priorities and build a plan that combines restoration and productivity. Learn more and book a free consultation here: https://bethanywilinski.com/services/reignite/