100 Things to Do on Your Business Sabbatical
- Circuit Iceland by car
- Shadow 25 successful men and women for 48 hours each
- Work backstage for the Blue Man Group
- Experience a slave immersion at a living history farm
- Tackle Kili (Kilimanjaro)
- Research cutting-edge business ethics issues in your industry
- Work at one of Colorado’s top ski resorts for a season
- Visit all of the Revolutionary War battlefields
- Enroll in a creative writing course
- Spend time with US citizens imprisoned in other countries
- Kayak the Pacific Ocean
- Travel to Asia and interview top business gurus
- Work for a political campaign
- Travel without an itinerary
- Volunteer to help a starving artist
- Design a road trip with a theme (interview small town mayors, visit your company’s top clients, spend a day with the oldest person in various towns)
- Attend the top art shows in Miami and New York
- Participate in an executive exchange program
- Research your family genealogy in the country of your origin
- Take a painting and drawing class in Florence, Italy
- Do a Spanish immersion at ESADE in Barcelona
- Renovate a school in Honduras
- Volunteer for a reforestation project in Ecuador
- Attend a residence program in Turkey Creek, a neighborhood in Gulfport, MS, settled by African-American slaves and still recovering from Hurricane Katrina
- Volunteer in a program with spiritual leaders and naturalists on Plains Indian reservations in Montana
- Build a teen center in a Athabaskan Indian village in Alaska
- Attend art school
- Ski the 300-mile Nordic Trail in Vermont
- Fly an aerobics mission in a Russian MIG in Moscow
- Sail around the world
- Attend 8-week concentrations in clay, drawing/painting, or glass at Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina
- Work at an orphanage for children of a displaced ethnic minority in a hill tribe village in northern Thailand, near the border of Myanmar (aka Burma)
- Crew for the twice-annual delivery of Swan yachts
- Work at an animal sanctuary in a rain forest in Hawaii
- Attend a university in England
- Live with your family in New York City for a summer
- Raft the Zambezi
- Build a nurses’ station in Fiji
- Explore and photograph the Mayan Ruins
- Learn to fly, then break the sound barrier
- Collect data on glacier recession and marine mammals in Antarctica
- Attend The International Culinary School at the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago
- Utilize your talents as a “skilled volunteer” for start-up organizations in the US or another country
- Help maintain part of the 2,160 miles of the Appalachian Trail
- Volunteer with your family for the Arcosanti Project – an experimental town of arcology (archaeology-environmental) in the high desert of Arizona
- Trap and track puma in Argentina’s pampas grass
- Take up kiteboarding – the fastest growing watersport for the over-50 set
- Have an art colony experience off the coast of Panama
- Track down WWII Aces and interview them
- Take your mother or father back to their native country
- Write a book proposal and get a literary agent
- Earn a certification to advance your career
- Attend a triathlon training camp
- Enroll in a leading global business school
- Trek through Nepal, delivering books to newly built libraries in villages
- Volunteer at a rape crisis center
- Travel the Pan-American Highway in an RV with your family
- Join up for Bike Across America
- Interview all your living relatives and make a video
- Help with the preservation of monkeys, sea otters and birds in the Amazon
- Take up photography
- Help with a street children’s home in Latin America
- Teach English to children in rural China
- Volunteer to help a local farmer for a season
- Design a musical volunteer program for local Hospice locations
- Work as a gofer for an independent film director
- Develop a new software game for retirees
- Learn how to play pool and compete in a local tournament
- Trout fish in the world’s best rivers
- Train then trek to Mt. Everest’s base camp
- Work behind the scenes in the business center of a homeless shelter
- Become a staff member at a camp for seriously ill children
- Design and implement a program for prisoners
- Climb the highest peaks in all 50 states and join the Highpointers club
- Travel cross-country in an 18-wheeler
- Join a local band
- Lend a hand at offices of environmental groups
- Start a vegetarian advocacy club
- Design a marketing campaign for an indigenous craft community
- Organize a yoga retreat or chess tournament for the elderly
- Paint murals on local buildings or organize a mural program in your community
- Fix swings and slides at community parks across America
- Live and work on a coffee farm in rural Guatemala
- Organize and deliver school supplies to villages in Peru
- Visit independent bookstores and rate the experience
- Design recycling bins for the fashion conscious
- Do a summer stock production
- Visit all the National Scenic Parks
- Enter a competitive eating contest (it’s actually considered a sport)
- Learn to write a musical score
- Attend origami school in Tokyo
- Overcome your fears and learn to firewalk
- Start a goat farm
- Invent and patent a new product
- Take classes at an international film studies institute
- Volunteer for an astronomy research program and study nighttime air-glow images
- Learn to make cheese
- Start your own business
- Buy, renovate, and sell a single-family home
- Create and implement a recycling program for your company.
