My Seven Year Itch or so…

I’m currently on a sabbatical from the corporate world. It’s been 7 days of a spreadsheet-sans-and-meeting-sans-world, especially relevant since I’ve been working for the last 7 years after passing out of b-school. I served my one month notice with Dell and during the entire time, several friends and colleagues have come over and tried to probe the reason for my sabbatical. While my reasons have undergone significant change through each version I narrated to someone, the spectrum extended from sheer whimsical to outrightly outrageous. I sure must have come across looney to several folks but who cares! On a more serious note, this is my attempt to remember the method behind this madness.

I’ve 2 theories to support this decision – one the more overt, in your face logic and the other, something that came to me in retrospect, after having decided to quit work. So for the first theory – the last seven years have been non-stop work, almost akin to being on a non-stop long distance flight. Ofcourse, there’s been the annual 10-day holidays and occasional weekend breaks and not so frequent national holidays but nothing really to break the monotony. Over the years, there has been a progressive decrease in the joy of working – sounds clichéd but the original thrill of taking on daunting and new tasks, the heady feeling of achievement and the justification of the sheer toil for the goal itself without any anticipation of reward have almost disappeared. I’ve changed companies, industries and roles, all in a bid to inject something into the experience – learning and excitement. Without much luck!

The former has happened in leaps and bounds and I’ve been blessed to have a good learning curve. But the latter is lately elusive. Through the years, I’ve clung to some advice that an old fresher friend gave me when I was experiencing the first signs of job dissatisfaction – “ there is no perfect job, the best job is one with the least dissatisfaction” – this motto of always looking on the bright side of life held me in good stead as long as I knew that the learning was happening. However, even that lerning, in the last year, had all but vanished inspite of a new role [yet again!]. It wasn’t that I was going through a burn-out but everyday more and more, I was beginning to feel like not going to work. I kept yearning to do all the things I could do, if I were not at work. Getting there was an ordeal and the looming 10-11 hours of work was a thought that instantly bored me [like instant noodles, the result was immediate in screwing my mood].

And then it struck me…I was displaying symptoms of the 7-year itch, albeit in a corporate scenario, one where the reasons that one originally set out with had long changed, if not completely disappeared…it was time to do what one does with a 7-year itch …take time off, revisit the reasons and find out what I really needed and wanted to do. I did some rough math, my finances could sustain me taking off for 3-4 months, did some quick objection handling to protests that family and friends would raise and did some deep thinking about my career stage and life cycle stage – and hey, it wasn’t like I was a pioneer in doing so, in going where no person has gone before. I’d always heard of folks abroad taking such breaks to travel and join NGO’s and study. I was beginning to hear of it amongst my IIM fraternity and others too. All in all, I realized I could afford such a break - in my life stage, career, finances and my structured life. I beat this decision to death with my family and friends that I’m sure they thought I really wouldn’t do it. And finally, I did it, I quit work. So there, the first theory explaining my sabbatical was the 7-year itch that I succumbed to, and I must add, delightfully.

Being the usual fence sitter that I am, I kept thinking about my decision, trying to see all sides, trying to again justify it to avoid any nuances of cognitive dissonance that I might later face. Keeping my analyst hat firmly on, I stumbled onto the second theory behind my sabbatical. My work in the last 7 years has been in the areas of strategy, product management and marketing, consumer behaviour, revenue, sales and recently operations. Basically, except for the operations stint, it has been in the consumer arena of understanding consumer needs and matching products to meet them - largely associated with creative work. My operations role in the last year was in the area of technical support, where the only avenues of being associated with creative work were designing and running contests / incentive plans, organizing events and being responsible for fun activities at work – all of which I was a part of. The scale was much smaller since it wasn’t an intrinsic part of my core Ops role as compared to that of my previous assignments.

My second theory revolves around balancing the left and right sides of the brain. My Ops role was focused on analysis, evaluating processes and implementing new programmes, apart from people management – largely left brain oriented. My sabbatical is a means to divert energies to the right side which has been hitherto rusty – a focus on activities using several senses would help balance me as an individual and avoid any effects of being lopsided. I see this time off being enriched spending time with family, travelling, learning a craft or a skill, doing yoga, de-stressing, introspecting and in many ways, rediscovering myself much like the chrysalis trying to move to the next level.

Using my 2 theory reasoning, my sabbatical is a 7-year itch as well as a chrysalis experience. Any more questions, people, I might find a third theory?