Inside micro-retirement boom and what you need to do to afford it

George, a 28-year-old engineer from Bristol, had been working in an apprenticeship scheme for seven years, and had grown bored. “It seemed like I was into it, but in fact, I just never had the headspace to think about whether I liked it or not,” he tells me. Noticing his discontent starting to seep into his personal life, George took a bold decision. He threw caution to the wind, handed in his notice, and booked a one-way flight to Argentina. He used his savings to afford IO weeks of cycling through rural Patagonia with his brother and a friend, who'd also quit their jobs. George is one of many young workers taking a “micro-retirement” — a burgeoning lifestyle movement that's gone viral on social media platforms and is growing in popularity among Gen Z and millennials.

- Helen Saltera, The Independent

Unlike a sabbatical - which is a period off work granted by your employer - a micro-retirement is an indefinite career break taken to recover from burnout or to discover what you really want to do. “It's so easy to start adult life down the wrong path,” says Alice Stapleton, a career-change coach. “Micro-retirements create an opportunity to reset and to re-evaluate what you enjoy and where you want to go next.”

While George's foreign break is now over, his plan doesn't involve splurging his hard-earned savings in one fell swoop. “It’s not a break from working as a whole but a break from the job that consumes more of your life than it should,” he says. “I still intend to work, just not in a job that I have to care about.” Multiple friends of mine — my partner included — are in the midst of a career break, and when I ask them if they know of anyone in a similar boat, they can think of several other people, too. So what's triggered this mass dissatisfaction with work? In the grip of a current malaise across the country, more and more young adults are refusing to accept that the next four to five decades should be consumed by a single job. The solution? Take the plunge and quit.