If you had a 1 year sabbatical, what would you do?

Nothing! I'm super-serious, and I plan on doing exactly that for the following 6 months (quit my job, taking a break to address burnout and reorient): nothing.

By that, I mean I'll allow myself to get as much sleep as I humanly can, try to feed myself healthier food (and more regularly), develop my hobbies (mini painting, playing the bass, sketching, writing), re-establish a semblance of a social life by exploring the city and its options, spending more time with friends... Pretty much just living life. No goals, no quotas, no deadlines, no performance metrics, no side-hustle, no Work™.

I plan on doing exactly that for the following 6 months (quit my job, taking a break to address burnout and reorient): nothing.

I wouldn't call adressing a burnout a Sabbatical but a sick leave, a Sabbatical is choosing to take time off work for a project, not needing to take time off work for your mental health

Sorry that you're there (And use the health issue as an explanation for the hole in your CV if they ask)
- Agreed, expressed it incorrectly, the burnout is nowhere near the main reason for my taking time off. I needed to take a break from Adult Stuff. I mean, last time I did anything even remotely resembling a vacation/holiday was in 2014, now I'm taking my time.
  
  Also, thank you so much for your kind words! Honestly, burnouts are just part of the routine at this point, I'll be back on my feet in two-three months tops!
...get as much sleep as I humanly can, try to feed myself healthier food (and more regularly), develop my hobbies (mini painting, playing the bass, sketching, writing), re-establish a semblance of a social life by exploring the city and its options, spending more time with friends... Pretty much just living life.

That's not nothing!
- Thoroughly agreed, that's what I call everything not viewed as immediately societally productive. More of a sarcastic reversal of the main complaint I've received throughout my life while just living it.
I did the same, except 'nothing' was 'play with my kid' and several years later it still registers as a very happy time, even though I should have been worrying about work, or lack thereof.

(I was going to the trampoline park 2-3 times a week with a toddler, great times.)
- This is what life should be like in a sane world. Work should never take up as much of our cognitive bandwidth as it does now.
This is essentially what I did when I was laid off August last year. And it did take about that long to really be free of all the stress I'd racked up over the years in retail and other public customer-facing roles.
- It really does take a while... Had a 9-month breakdown during the Pandemic, that one was exclusively for mental health care. I literally locked myself in my apartment and did nothing but eat, sleep, play vidya, get high, and have weekly therapy sessions for the entire duration.
  
  It took 8 months to stop being anxious about not being stressed out. Used to wake up every morning with that sharp fear that I'd missed my daily meetings, then it would slowly turn into an "oh, shit, I'm not being Productive" jumble of self-loathing and panic.
I did that when i got laid off in January. Can recommend. Mental reset helps. Having no job helps with refocusing on whats really important, like own mental wellbeing, family and friends. Good times, tho i got pretty stressed out because searching for new job took a while, despite everyone else in IT got one in 15mins it seemed at the moment
That sounds beautiful.
thats not nothing

Hey, I actually did this! It was the best time of my life.

My aim was to migrate to south america, specialize in my career and get in/stay in shape.

I spent my days going to the gym, learning spanish, doing impromptu streams on twitch (I found a little community in my preperations to quit my job) , and I did travel to the country I wanted to migrate to and to NY to see a band that rarely plays live, visit my family in a different country and to visit my bud that lived in scandinavia.

I spent a month with my family preparing a portfolio.

I saved money during my career, about $16k over several years,and figured, if time is money, money is time.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

What country was it? Are you still there?
- Uruguay, still there.
Did you have a job there or a clue ? Or you went to search for it ?
- No job, no clue. At the start the perspective of some others and me were that it felt like I just fell out of the sky and tried to integrate into society.
  
  I figured I'd either do immersion learning for spanish, or succeed and set up my life here.
  
  The job came fairly easily, one of the companies from my first wave of applications accepted me.

I'd probably start designing and building a rolling ball clock/ sculpture, then hit some sort of obstacle and switch to making a self recirculating eddy current tube, get frustrated and try to design and build an electronically commutated counter rotating propeller driver, get frustrated and try to build a garage sized 3d printer, get frustrated and try to build a delayed action door closer get frustrated and try to build a co-planar compound cycloidal reducer, get frustrated and then forget my wife's anniversary until 4pm the day before.

My question to anyone able to answer this: how can you afford to take a sabbatical period??? I can’t even afford to take a weeks vacation. It would wreck me financially not receiving pay for a whole week. Let alone a year??? What’s going on in this thread?

There are some platforms like World Packers where you receive free food and a bed for helping out in places. But I guess that still doesn't cover travel, insurance, debt, and any other long term payments you might have to make
step 1 : have a career

step 2 : don't spend that much money, building up savings

step 3 : time is money, therefore, money is time.

step 4 : be very, very frugal during your time with no work. I ate a lot of protein powder, eggs and pasta
- What is a career in your definition?
I’ve been saving 30-40% of my salary each month for years, it helps not going outside because you don’t like people and watching movies and playing video games. And eating ramen
Read mrmoneymustache.com.

Go back to Japan.

Procrastinate for eleven months, panic at the last minute, ask for a do over, fail, then try to learn Rust in 3 days and program a roguelike.

are you me from other timeline?

Sleep, play with my cats, hang out with my wife, organize all my shit, prune my emails and pictures, finish my homelab and the other tech projects I have going on, go to Disney a bunch.

That but instead of Disney, I would take time to learn a new skill and horn the one I have learned before.

I'd hike the Appalachian Trail.

I'd do the Sentiero Italia (Grand Italian Trail)
- Wow that must be so cool to do ! Both projects are really nice !

Our dream (my SO and me) is to ride our motorcycles to Japan (from Central Europe). At this time the northern route is politically difficult. The southern route has always been difficult but would be the better option at this time, I think. We even discussed ideas of plans. She could take a half year off, for me it would be more difficult. But the funds would be the biggest issue. So plan B is to rent motorcycles for a week or two, next time we're in Japan.

I hope you'll be able to do it someday. It's a really nice project

Visit Japan, South Korea, and certain EU countries I’ve never been to yet. Also probably spend 2 weeks back in my home country to visit immediate family and some friends.

I would spend my year trying to turn my side business into my actual business then I couldn't quite my job and work for myself doing what I do now but for more money

Run a weekly in-person D&D campaign at my house, make dinner for the players.
Play around with Arduino and ESP32 - home automation, robots and whatever.
Do a lot of 3d design and printing - make little toys to give away with Halloween candy.
Build model castles.
Listen to classic old-time radio shows.
Help with stage productions at a local theater.
Write some Discord bots and npm modules.
Participate in NaNoWriMo

Do a total renovation of my flat

Spend time with my kids and play video games while they’re at school

Travel somewhere nice

Do you have any ideas where ?

Buy a minivan, remove back seats. Add a bed and a battery bank, a small travel fridge and a hob for cooking then start camping at the nearest national parks. Refine my load out and start venturing farther and farther out.

Bike trip on the Panericana from Punta Arenas to whatever is the northern most city in Alaska. Or if I have less time but cash to burn, do it in an ultra-light (A bit like Blyth Cape-town Cape North expedition in the 90's http://www.trike-expeditions.com/CapeToCape/capetocape.html )

21,000 km, that's a trip ! Very cool ! I didn't know this trail ! Thanks

Technically not a sabbatical, but I saved up a bunch of money, quit my job, and have been studying abroad in Japan.

I can recommend a big stupid project where it's not a big deal if you fail.

Until recently, for me that would've meant "run Windows programs on Android," mashing together Wine and e.g. Unicorn Engine... but now there's like six different "userland emulators" vying for preference. FEX-emu, Box86, others with even sillier names.

I did manage a bespoke 8-bit FPS. That only took about two months. And then I've been idly tweaking it over the last two years. Splitscreen multiplayer, as a joke, was maybe not the best idea.

What'd take both time and space is some extremely low-end VR. I am convinced that Quest-ish headsets could cost, like, fifty bucks. The big players keep iterating clever hacks from a decade ago. Solving those problem, instead of avoiding those problems. Light should be collimated by default, which means a point source, which is any single LED. Rendering has to be detached from software performance, which means projecting the nearby world to e.g. floating dots instead of directly making a flat image. Inside-out tracking is at least the right idea, but it doesn't have to be especially good in order to ground an inertial estimate.

I just quit yesterday with nothing else lined up. Gonna take a WHOLE MONTH for healing (isn't it ridiculous how ridiculous that feels?) and then figure out my next move. I wanna build an app or something.

Probably a bikini inspector at my favourite beach... Seriously though the Bibbulmun Track.

I did have a one year sabbatical. I hiked and volunteered on farms mostly. I worked at a animal refuge farm in India and a goat farm in Montana. I hiked in the Himalayas, Andes, Rockies, and Tetons. I hiked in Canyon, Texas and at Glacier too. I headed south for winter and explored the civic side of the civil war and the civil rights movement, hoping to learn something that would help me understand what was happening in our country. I toured Little Rock High, Fort Sumter, White Haven and Jackson's Barracks. I read Lincoln's speeches. I learned to cross country ski and visited my mom a lot. I went to Virginia with my family and took a detour to DC with my sister while we were there.

I'm back to working now. I moved to live near the mountains so I can hike and I volunteer on an animal refuge farm every week. My mom passed not too long after. I am forever grateful for that experience.

Two chicks at the same time, man...

I'll go nuts and get myself hospitalized in a psych ward

I'm assuming money is not an option?

Learn shit. Painting class, cooking class, poetry, random community college shit. Hire a language tutor if I could. And I'd hire a personal trainer and chef, since I'd have time to try and work on myself. Maybe a coding boot camp if I can keep up, so I can come back with a whole new career. I think I'd make that my goal. Dabble in as many things as I can to see what I like. And I also just like learning random shit.

When I have three months left, I'll take a trip to visit all the places I've been interested in moving to. I'd hope to come back healthier and smarter, in some way.

I would also leave myself two weeks to just be before I had to go back to real life.

depends. If i somehow had money id spend it in a walkable beachside town. If i had the same finances as now id sit at home and relax cuz thats free lol.

Book a private jet to go to California with my family. I've always really liked the idea of California and I also have a really good friend that lives there! 😃

Quality time with family then

Develop my current podcast further, as well as work on at least 1 or 2 other podcast ideas I have. So many great ideas, so little time.

Ooh looks interesting, subbed!

Sleep.

Then all the projects!!!!

A full year of multi month hikes across the world. I want to see it all and meet new people.

I would absolutely have a blast being a full time stay-at-home Dad. We would hit every Park, library, zoo, and aquarium within a days drive.

Then during the summer, I'd pass their kids to their grandparents house so my wife and I could find a place to SCUBA for 2 weeks straight.

Prioritize exercise. Try to gear towards being able to run a marathon and doing some strength training and yoga.

Cook more for myself. I don't think I'd go full vegetarian, but I'd probably have less meat dishes overall.

Try to learn Spanish or Portuguese using one of those quick learning methods.

Take at least two cross continent trips. One would be between the two inhabited North American coasts. The second would either be Europe from Portugal to Finland, Australia, or the Americas from North to South.

Maybe live in a low cost Spanish or Portuguese speaking city for a month.

I kind of did this once! Essentially I got laid of from a job but happened to have a good money buffer and life was quite inexpensive at the time, so I just thought "fuck it" and went as long as I could without working, I made it about a year.

It was awesome! My mental health has never been better, I wrote most of a book, got pretty decent at Blender, started working on learning to make games... and then I had to go back to work and it all went to shit lol, that was several years ago and I haven't touched any of it since.

Learn how to cook fancy food
Gym like hours a day
Start a dinner club (my husband loves the idea)
Pro bono tech support/advice for charitable organisations and non-profits

Do a food tour of Vietnam
Experience more of South East Asia
Volunteer my time at the City Mission
Get more sleep
Workout more
Spend more time with the girlfriend
Spend more time with Family
Work on some personal Web Projects

Not in any particular order.