Let's take a break from work, a loonnngg one

Isabella Kwai, To Escape the Grind, Young People Turn to ‘Mini-Retirements’, NYTimes, April 10, 2025.

Marina Kausar wasn’t sure what to call the three-month break she took after quitting her job.

After working in a series of jobs in finance and technology, Ms. Kausar, 30, was feeling stressed and overworked. In December 2023, with a bit of savings built up, she quit without another position lined up to focus on things that had fallen to the wayside while she was focused on work.

“I had more time to work out. I was eating better, sleeping better. It was just like a full reset,” said Ms. Kausar, who lives in Houston. “For the first time in my adult life, I didn’t have this looming cloud of ‘work.’”

Eventually, she came across a term for her hiatus that resonated with her: “micro-retirement.”

For most people in the United States, being able to save enough money to not have to work is a faraway ideal. That anxiety, especially for people closer to retirement, has only risen as stock markets have grown more volatile in response to President Trump’s global tariffs.

Discontented employees who do not have the means to leave the work force have turned to “quiet-quitting,” “acting your wage” or simply using their vacation days. [...]

Of course, many people cannot afford to take time out of the work force, and Dr. Schabram said that those who do take these breaks tend to be much more financially stable.

But for the workers who can manage it, she believes the “micro-retirement” is on the rise.

We need time off, time to play (Homo Ludens). It's good, perhaps essential, for our mental health.

If such breaks from work are growing more popular, it may be a reaction to a culture in the United States that researchers say often prioritizes work over other areas of life.

“The joke is: Europeans have a ‘micro-retirement’ every year — they call it summer vacation,” said Christopher Myers, an associate professor of management at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School.

But especially in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, younger Americans have shifted their attitude toward work, too. Many young workers feel less incentive to stay with one employer, he said, and people are generally more aware of the trade-off between work and well-being.

Let me repeat that: "the trade-off between work and well-being." Thus:

And the micro-retirees who Dr. Schabram interviewed said they had reaped benefits from their breaks, including increased confidence, clarity and better work boundaries. She said her research had attracted interest from nonprofits and public-sector employers who were exploring sabbatical policies to better attract job candidates.

There's more at the link. And you should check out a post from August of 2022, We don’t know how to have fun, not really [long-term behavioral flexibility].