Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career and Life by Taking a Break

I like the personal anecdotes that are incorporated throughout the book and the questions that I should ask myself at the end of each chapter. I was most curious about finding secrets of how to get money when you are on the Reboot break, but there are no magic solutions, just pragmatic advice. Great read and very helpful!

Reboot Your Life is a great book on how think about sabbaticals. The authors deal will all aspects very thoroughly, from goal setting to implementing, from thinking about what to do during your time off to how many months you will need to accomplish your sabbatical goals, from dealing with naysayers to managing reentry into the labor force. Moreover, the book addresses the many misconceptions you might have about sabbaticals. I especially liked the extensive appendix that gives readers a great timetable to follow when contemplating their own path. I believe that everybody in Corporate America should read this book, whether you are ready for a sabbatical today, need a bit more convincing, or are waiting for future opportunity to realize your sabbatical.Interestingly enough, Reboot Your Life, which largely deals with voluntary sabbaticals, was published in parallel to my book, The Gift of Job Loss - A Practical Guide to Realizing the Most Rewarding Time of Your Life. Maybe it is our tough economic times or the ever increasing demands at our jobs that make more and more people reevaluate their path and think hard about what makes them happy and successful now and in the long run. Quite similar to the authors of Reboot Your Life, I encourage those facing job loss to think strategically about their options, including taking some time off to relax, learn, travel, spend time with family, improve their health, and invest in themselves for a better future before rushing to the next job.Whether you negotiate a sabbatical with your company while being employed, or leverage your lay-off to invest in a more fulfilling personal life and rewarding career, it is really the "gift of time" that we all should seek and embrace. Time is the only commodity during our life that is really in short supply. Let's not waste it.

Bought this book as I am planning on embarking on a year of travel and rebooting next year. This book has some helpful tips, but there's a lot of repetition and it contains more anecdotes than practical information. Also, if you're freelance like I am rather than an employee at a stable company, much of the book won't apply to you as it deals with taking a break from a job to which you're planning to return.

This is a superb book to help you find the precious time, space, and help to 'reboot your life'. As the director of the Creativity Workshop, I come across so many people who yearn to weave the personal and the professional into a more energizing balance. Now that I have read this book, I am recommending it to all of them because it can really help people make the leap into more satisfying lives. One of the best things about the ideas and advice in Reboot Your Life is that they strike a really difficult balance between the pragmatic and inspirational--and they do it with such apparent ease. The other strength is that the authors know where of they speak--they have all done, in a variety of ways, the things they suggest their readers do. In addition to these merits, Reboot Your Life is a very entertaining and empowering read. You will feel as if the authors are speaking directly to you, second guessing fears and questions. This book has a quality that is most precious to me--a self help tome that doesn't sound like a how-to/cheerleading generic. It sounds like the voices of real people who have been through the nitty-gritty process of taking a sabbatical from their jobs in order to question and discover their needs, gifts, and aspirations. Reboot Your Life makes the magic question 'what if' into the realistic one of "why not?"Shelley Berc, Director of the Creativity Workshop, New York

This book just repeats the same thing over and over. So-and-so takes a sabbatical or quits their job, returns really motivated and happy. It seems like preaching to people who already want to get away from everything.

I wish I could get all of the frazzled, harried, too stressed to sleep girlfriends (and guy friends) I know on one big email or conference call and say, "Only you can decide to hit the pause button - read this, and you will know how to do it". I tend to shy away from those self-help type of books because they just seem to make you feel stupid -- "why haven't you already been doing these things?" seems implied. Reboot your Life is the best self help book in the truest sense -- it helps you to truly help yourself. There won't be shocking revelations -- just common sense that has you asking yourself, "Why did it take me so long to do something like this?". Highly recommended for anyone burned out, on the verge of burnout or wondering about their role in this world!

I read this because I’m considering a career break/sabbatical. Loaned it to my best friend who got laid off and my mom who recently retired- we all got a lot out of it. Very practical and specific advice. For example, don’t overschedule yourself in the beginning of time off- you’ll probably need more time to decompress than you anticipate and there’s no sense being in paradise if you’re just going to feel like flipping channels on the TV inside a hotel room. Save the epic adventures for a couple months in when you’re feeling more motivated and energetic.

This book is 90% about selling you on 'why' you should take a sabbatical (via endless repetitive anecdotes) and 10% about the practical information you actually need to make it happen. The latter being the reason why the majority (i'm assuming) would want to buy this book in the first place.

One should read this book with a pen and notebook and post its and highlighter. Exercises are good and lead one to think about the life and if it is going into right direction. My reboot break is one filled with childcare, after pregnancy and this book has given me focus to what all I can do during this time to improve some things about my soft and hard skills, so that I can get a satisfying and fulfilling career path. Also the suggestions about writing Morning pages and planning to travel, relax, reflect, plan...all create a good balance for a person overwhelmed with so many choices one has in the modern world. Examples seem to be very realistic. I am actually copying some pages, especially the exercises, so that's my take away...I would do the exercises from time to time again in future, so my path looks set. The book is worth reading once. Exercises are worth doing regularly, according to one's pace and tate. I prefer to do it after 3 months again. Some might do them every year, some at six months. Once again...a great book, not only for American citizens.

Great read. If you need a reboot, this is a good start point. Challenges you to think about where you are going and whats important. Easy read, not full of daft theories.

Fairy obvious advice with simplistic stories illustrating a point