My work offers a 6 week sabbatical every 5 years. I've had 3 sabbaticals. I've spent all of them working on projects around the house that my wife has dreamed up. I spend most of the sabbatical looking forward to going back to work where I can get some rest and relaxation.
6 weeks every 5 years? Is that on top of normal vacation or instead of vacation? In large parts of Europe 5-6 weeks is the normal annual vacation
On top of. We get 10 holidays + 1 floating holiday each year. We get a week off each summer. We get paid Fridays off during the summer. Plus we get a paid time off day each pay period (so, 26 days each year). The paid time off days can be saved up and roll over from year to year. Not including the Fridays off, I could take approximately 16 weeks (4 months) of vacation this year if I wanted to. And this year is not a sabbatical year. In a sabbatical year, I could potentially take off nearly 6 months (6 weeks of sabbatical + 11 holiday days (about 2.5 wees) + 1 week off in the summer + 12.5 weeks of paid time off = 22 weeks = 5.5 months. If I add in the Fridays off in the summer, it would be more than 6 months off.
I did a similar thing recently taking ~6wks to get a big renovation project underway. It wasn’t really ‘relaxing’ but it was a great way to get a lot of TODO monkeys off my back and gave me more of an appreciation for different types of labor.