Artist Stefan Sagmeister is famous for taking a year-long sabbatical every seven years (what is he, an academic or something?). In this brief interview, he talks about that practice, as well as the idea that you have to know rules in order to break them (a concept that a professor who was educated by Jesuits first suggested to me):

For those too impatient to watch it, here’s the transcript:

It doesn’t really matter if you do a year every seven years as I do… or day a week, or half an hour every day. I do think, though, that it’s very important that these times are scheduled. If I have somewhere in the back of my mind, “Oh, I would like to experiment,” then it’s not going to happen. And I think it’s not going to happen because it actually is difficult. It’s much easier to return emails than to actually think about something new. Much easier.

So if I don’t really have that completely scheduled, I’ll always return emails. Or I’ll pour coffee, or I’ll have to go to the loo, I’ll use every excuse to not have to think. It’s a strange tension I find in myself… that on one hand I’m complaining that I don’t have enough time to think and explore… but on the other side, when I do have the time, I squander it and just do nothing with it. So the scheduled part is really important.