Episode 59: Quit your life temporarily, featuring Colleen Newvine, MBA ‘05 Listen in, Michigan

For many professionals, the shift to hybrid work amid the COVID pandemic opened the door to a strange new working world. Gone was the commute, the coffee break, the water-cooler chat. Gone was the actual office! How was this going to work?

Colleen Newvine, MBA ’05, had answered that question years earlier. Well before lockdown, this Brooklyn-based journalist, marketing consultant, and life coach crafted her own concept of remote work in the form of “mini sabbaticals.” Rather than cursing gridlock en route to the high rise, Newvine might be found diving into her laptop after rising with the sun in Costa Rica.

But it wasn’t always that way. For much of her career, Newvine had followed a linear trajectory, ultimately landing a dream job at the Associated Press (AP) in New York. Like most gigs, it was great until it wasn’t. When a new boss arrived, she sensed it was time for a change, so she decided to put her MBA toward launching a marketing firm. But she got pink-slipped before she could pitch herself as a part-timer. Undaunted, she responded by creating a job description for a part-time, remote position; the AP’s CEO approved. Using the argument that remote was remote, Newvine negotiated two months working from New Orleans.

“This is what one of my retired AP bosses, Tom Slaughter, called my double-bank shot: Flipping a pink slip into a part-time job with geographic flexibility,” writes Newvine in her inspiring how-to guide, Your Mini Sabbatical: Quit Your Life Temporarily.

The new release chronicles Newvine’s subsequent adventures in hopes others may embrace this version of temporary wanderlust. After that initial stint in New Orleans, she and her husband, John Tebeau, BS ’86, have maintained their home in Brooklyn while working from San Francisco, the Catskills, Ann Arbor, and more. They’ve experienced life in small towns and surf towns. They’ve lived above a coffee shop, in a converted garage, and at the corner of Haight and Ashbury. They’ve encountered setbacks, intestinal distress, and a broken air-conditioner in a third-floor walkup with sealed windows. Throughout, Newvine remained creative, productive, and employed, all while embracing new cultures, adventure, and resilience.

“Our brain wants to put as many things on autopilot as possible,” she says. “And when we go on a mini sabbatical, every single thing becomes conscious again: Which grocery store do we go to and where do they put the bread? When I'm turning on the light switch in the bathroom of our rental, is it inside the door or outside the door -- and do you have to jiggle the toilet? It's all a thought process again, which gets you paying much more attention to what's happening in your life.”

The secret to making it work? Keeping the “mini” firmly in your mini sabbatical. Newvine’s sweet spot is five weeks. That’s enough time to immerse in a new routine, make a friend or two, and endure a few unexpected hassles while knowing your home base awaits. The logistics may seem overwhelming to the uninitiated, but Newvine presents a detailed plan that can apply to multiple scenarios, locations, and budgets. She has lists and tips and hacks to share, from which kitchen essentials to pack to how to convince your boss that your mini sabbatical will benefit others in the organization.

“At first, I thought of it like our ‘cookbook’ for how John and I do it,” she says. “But as a journalist that was so boring, even to me. I wanted to find other people with other flavors of mini sabbaticals so readers could feel like, ‘That sounds like a trip I could do.’”

Newvine spoke to parents and parenting experts, life coaches, and researchers. She interviewed artists, business owners, and people between jobs who took their own mini sabbaticals. Some travelers had savings or disposable income, others were working within a strict budget. Some enjoyed flexible working environments, others had limited time off. A few worked