I suspected that it’s going to be a great break that allows me to step back and think about what I do and for whom I do it. I learned in the first sabbatical that it’s maybe the best strategy… to make sure that what I do remains a calling and doesn’t deteriorate into a job or a career.

[…]

The way the time is dispersed from person to person and from job to job, and I don’t think it matters that much. What matters — what really, really matters — is that time is planned and is kept pretty holy, meaning is not interrupted by anything else. 

Celebrate the launch of the fantastic new Sagmeister & Walsh site with Debbie Millman’s equally fantastic Design Matters interview with Stefan Sagmeister, in which the celebrated designer discusses the value of sabbaticals, the danger of adaptation in happiness, and the difference between design and art.

Sagmeister is the author of the excellent Things I have learned in my life so far.

For more on preventing creative purpose from becoming “work,” see how to do what you love and how to avoid work.