Reading · The Midlife Sabbatical

I’ve started to notice a pattern.

When people talk about taking a sabbatical, they almost always start with a version of the same phrase: “I know I need this, but …I can’t right now. I don’t have [enough time, enough money, a plan for what’s coming next, etc.]

It sounds practical. Responsible. Realistic. (What all midlife professionals are supposed to be!)

But beneath those words is something deeper: scarcity. The voice that declares not yet, not enough, not now.

Scarcity isn’t just about money. It’s a state of mind that convinces us there will never be enough - enough time, enough certainty, enough energy, enough money - to step away. It’s what behavioral economists Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir call tunneling. It’s when the mind under scarcity fixates on what’s missing so intensely that it loses sight of the bigger picture. When that happens, every decision gets filtered through fear.

Scarcity doesn’t always mean you lack resources. Often, it means your perception has narrowed so much that you can’t see what’s available to you.

And that’s exactly why it gets in the way - both before you take a sabbatical and after you begin.

I’ve talked with dozens of highly successful women who know a sabbatical is the right next step but just can’t see how it could be possible. The reasons vary - money, family, commitments - but the tone is the same. Beneath the logistics is fear: a fear of losing relevance, of falling behind, of wasting what they’ve built.

This is the mind on scarcity. Mullainathan and Shafir refer to it as a “bandwidth tax,” where mental resources get consumed by the fear of not having enough, leaving little room for creativity or foresight. It’s why even when we know we need a break, we can’t imagine stepping away.

Scarcity convinces us that safety lies in control. So we plan harder. We save more. We push a sabbatical off another six months until everything is perfectly lined up. We say we’ll “take some time” after we line up our next job. We believe we’re being smart when really, we’re being scared.

The irony is that the conditions we’re waiting for - certainty, clarity, calm - don’t come before the sabbatical. They come through it.

Here’s the thing about scarcity: it doesn’t stay at your old job. It follows you home.

You can quit, pause, or even move to the mountains (as Emily Hickey literally did in her own reinvention story), but your scarcity stories travel with you. They’ll whisper, You’re wasting time. You should have a plan by now. Everyone else is moving ahead.

I know because I lived it myself. In the first weeks of my own sabbatical, I treated rest like a project plan. Goals, planner, daily schedules. I thought if I just optimized my downtime, I could shortcut the messy part.

Then life intervened - my mom landed in the ER - and suddenly all my planning fell apart. What I found in the stillness that followed was deep exhaustion. A shocking (but maybe not really) revelation that below all the doing, my tank was empty.

In The Midlife Sabbatical, I describe this first phase as Rest. It’s the hard stop where your body, mind and gut all get a much-needed reconnection. But scarcity fights this phase with everything it’s got. It tells you rest is lazy, that time without measurable progress is wasted time. That you only have x months to figure all this out.

You have to teach your nervous system what safety feels like again and recognizing when scarcity is trying to drive is a key part of that.

Not all sabbaticals begin the same way.

If yours was intentional - planned, saved for, and chosen - scarcity often shows up in the preparation. You might overthink every risk, over-structure the experience, or quietly compete with an imaginary version of yourself who “makes the most” of the time off.

If your sabbatical was unintentional - brought on by burnout, a job loss, or a health event - scarcity is already in the room. Especially in the case of a job loss - scarcity is likely on repeat about how you don’t have enough time to do any of this: you need to get to work finding your next job! But jumping straight to what’s next robs yourself of the time It’s to rebuild enough inner and outer safety and alignment to help you make better choices.

Frederic Hudson, in The Adult Years: Mastering the Art of Self-Renewal, describes this as moving from exit to cocooning - a period of withdrawal where you regain energy before beginning again. In those early stages, it’s less about dreaming big and more about remembering you exist outside your work.

Everywhere you turn, there’s talk about abundance. “Move from scarcity to abundance.” “Manifest abundance.” “Live abundantly.” Honestly, I’m kind of over it. I get the spirit of it all and that it’s the antidote to scarcity but I find it’s one of those things that is nice in theory but seems silly in practice.

For example, try it while paying a mortgage, managing aging parents, or wondering what your next career step is.

I think abundance talk can feel tone-deaf because it often ignores real constraints. Scarcity, in many cases, is rooted (at least in part) in reality. But abundance isn’t about pretending limits don’t exist. It’s about reclaiming agency within them.

It’s a practice that is real. It’s about framing your attention: noticing sufficiency instead of lack. It’s not positive thinking; it’s perceptual discipline. You learn to stop feeding the story that scarcity loves to conjure: you’re behind, broken, or late.

Abundance, properly understood, isn’t about more. It’s about enough.

And that, my friends, is where things shifted for me.

We build our lives in what feels an intentional manner but, somewhere along the way, the plot can get a little lost. We’re all just surviving - spending and doing what needs to be done. Often unconsciously building lives of more. Because - hey - isn’t that the scoreboard of adulthood? Isn’t that how we (and those in our lives) know we’ve made it?

It wasn’t until I started to really consider what is enough that things shifted. All I had known for so long was more. But what really mattered to me? Was it all “worth it?” We all come to this in our own time and way; there is no right answer here (although I always wish there was). It requires a mix of real data around your financial situation, your values, your identity and more.

But, if you can get a hold on what your true “enough” is, it can be the ultimate scarcity killer. When you find sufficiency in your life and in the choices you make, everything can shift.

So what does this look like in real life?

Name what’s real - list what is actually scarce (money, time, childcare) and what’s perceived (fear of judgment, comparison). Separating fact from story restores perspective. Scarcity LOVES a good story.
Redefine “enough” - decide in advance what enough looks like - for money, productivity, or progress. Otherwise scarcity will keep moving the goalposts.
Create slack - leave unfilled time. Space is where clarity forms. There isn’t a perfect “sufficiency questionnaire” to complete. You have to live with some of these questions for a bit.
Shift how you measure progress - depending on what enough looks like for you, perhaps replace “How much did I accomplish?” with “How present was I?”
Remember impermanence - scarcity feels urgent, but urgency rarely tells the truth. When we’re “in it” it feels like it will last forever. But if you examine your experience, you’ll find proof that just isn’t true.

The goal isn’t to live in endless abundance. It’s to practice sufficiency - to know what’s enough for this season and allow that to be okay.

Scarcity and the Sabbatical

Comments