- There’s a new career trend on the rise among millennials: mini-retirement.
- A mini-retirement can provide a much-needed break from the 9-to-5 and help reorient your career.
- Three mini-retirees shared their experiences with putting a pause on their careers.
Florence Poirel spent over a decade climbing the corporate ladder at Google, working her way up to the position of senior program manager.
“I was promoted every two years,” Poirel said.
Despite her corporate achievements, however, the 37-year-old Poirel didn’t feel satisfied.
“I was seeing signs of work-related stress and just questioning what I was doing with my job and my life in general,” she told Business Insider.
So instead of continuing to climb, Poirel decided to take a year-and-a-half mini-retirement last year.
Poirel’s non-traditional career path is one that some millennials are opting to take. The goal for some is no longer to front-load their work in life and only relax in old age. Nor is it to speedrun their careers to achieve retirement as early as possible, as do participants in the FIRE movement — short for “financial independence, retire early.” Poirel and other like-minded people are pressing “pause” on their careers with the goal of returning to work with a better sense of purpose and enjoyment.
Not your conventional retirement
What exactly is a mini-retirement? Jillian Johnsrud, a career coach who specializes in helping people achieve financial freedom, defines it as “any time someone takes a month or longer away from the 9-to-5 to focus on something that’s important to them.”
The definition of a mini-retirement is flexible and depends on individual preferences. But at the end of the day, it’s meant to be a temporary departure from the path of working a 9-to-5 nonstop until official retirement.
Johnsrud is 41 and has taken 12 mini-retirements in her life so far. Most recently, she took a monthlong break last year to learn how to tango dance.
Since leaving Google, Poirel has prioritized resting, reconnecting with friends, and spending time with family. She’s also still involved with professional pursuits in mini-retirement. With more free time, Poirel is providing career coaching services and helping a friend’s startup.
Brian Li spent almost two decades building a successful career at various startups before mini-retiring at 42. Li is planning to return to work next month after a yearlong career break, but that doesn’t mean he spent his time idling. He went into his mini-retirement with a plan to read books and take courses but soon decided to actively pursue more unconventional opportunities on top of that — such as working on an election campaign, learning cooking skills in Japan, and working on independent consulting projects.
The mini-retirement gave Li the flexibility to explore creative skills and learn in ways he couldn’t at a traditional job.
“I made a concerted effort to go meet people and say, ‘Hey, here are the things I want to learn, here’s where I want to develop myself. Do you need help?'” Li said. “I was an apprentice, and so there were no boundaries for me to show up at work and say, ‘I got to do the things that I’m getting paid to do.'”
An opportunity to reorient your career
People seek out mini-retirement for many reasons. Millennials are entering their second or third decade in the workforce. No longer new to the job market, perhaps they’re evaluating what direction to take their career next. Or maybe they’re trying to balance their career with young children. These big life changes make a mini-retirement especially appealing to Johnsrud’s clients.
It doesn’t have to be as serious as burnout, although Johnsrud certainly sees many cases of that. A mini-retirement can help people redefine their professional lives and shape their work into something more fulfilling.
At Google, Poirel was experiencing decreased motivation and energy and an increase in work-related stress. Poirel sees her mini-retirement as a way to steer her career away from corporate goalposts.
“Obviously there are ups and downs to that,” Poirel said of workplace stress. But after finding herself experiencing heightened levels of dissatisfaction for many months, Poirel took it as a sign to take a break.
When her mini-retirement ends in September, Poirel plans to look for a job at a company focused on sustainability, a topic that aligns with her own values.
“I am not interested at all in climbing the ladder anymore. Higher job titles mean more responsibilities, more stress, more working hours, and that’s really not something I want to do,” she said.
For Li, his career priorities have changed over time. While Li has gotten a lot experience working in the startup space, but he’s looking to expand his skill set for the next chapter of his career and work in a different environment.
“The boxes that I’m checking now are fundamentally different than the boxes that I was checking before my career break,” Li said.
Some things can’t wait until 65
Mini-retirees don’t agree with the idea of waiting until your sixties to enjoy life.
This was especially true for Poirel, whose partner is 17 years older than her. “When I’m 60, he’s going to be 77. That doesn’t sound fun for me,” she said.
Poirel also spent a month with her family earlier in her mini-retirement — something she hasn’t done since she was a student.
Having young children can also be a catalyst for a mini-retirement. It definitely was for Johnsrud, who once took a 10-week mini-retirement to go on a road trip with her children.
“I was like, if we didn’t do this now, I can’t do this trip in 20 years,” Johnsrud said. “There’s no way 20 and 30-year-olds are going take 10 weeks out of their life to do 10 national parks in a pop-up camper with me.”
For Li, a mini-retirement offered him time to focus on his newborn daughter and prioritize his family in a way that he couldn’t have working a rigorous job at a startup.
“There are certain seasons in our life that if we don’t do the thing now, it’ll pass us by. It won’t hold on the shelf until we’re 65,” Johnsrud said.
Do you have a mini-retirement story you want to share? You can reach Christine at cji@businessinsider.com
