What would you do with your time if you didn’t need to work? This is really an interesting question. Because that’s the situation I’m in at the moment.
 

It’s no secret that I have a lot of free time. Last year I saved enough money to take an extended vacation (a Mini-retirement) of at least six months. Six months, if I were extremely reckless with my money, that is. So here I am with a huge amount of time on my hands.
 

One thing that I’ve learned from traveling in the past is that having too much time and nothing to do can actually be bad for you. A quick glance at the long-term traveler scene and you’ll see the same people at the same bars 6 of 7 nights a week. In some backpacker areas, it’s not uncommon to see people drinking beer on the street or in front of their bungalow at 8am, 10am, 3pm. Which is fine if all you’ve got is a week or two. But a good number of the people I’ve met have been traveling and partying hard for a full six months to a year. One guy I met in Vang Vieng, Laos was 320 consecutive days into a river tubing bender, going for a full 365 days (I’m not sure that Guiness will share his enthusiasm about his “record”). They party for two reasons: because it’s fun; and because they’ve got nothing better to do.
 

Sure, not all backpackers party. Some fend off their boredom by traveling frantically from place to place, visiting all the museums and seeing all the sights. Because when you finally get away from that busy job for a few months, you’re left with an abundance of time that you haven’t had since summer holidays in grade school.  I’m not claiming any moral high ground here. I’m not against partying or museum tours (although I don’t think I’ve ever voluntarily gone to a museum), I just think that there’s another way to spend that gap year than getting trashed every other night interspersed with frantic sightseeing.
 

The other option: The Learning Sabbatical.
 

What would you want to learn if you could learn anything — if you had a few months off work and had nothing but time and ambition? Vietnamese cooking? Spanish? Classical piano?
 

Wouldn’t it be more effective to study Vietnamese cuisine one-on-one with a private teacher in Hoi An? Or learning Spanish while staying with a local family in Guatemala? Or classical Piano from a Chinese master in Bejing? It would not only be more effective, it would also be cheaper.
 

Read the rest of this entry »