Working conditions and living circumstances are undergoing profound upheavals. New challenges are particularly being posed to professionals, for whom it is becoming increasingly difficult to balance their professional daily lives and life biographies between work and personal life. At the same time, expectations regarding individual control over one's own life span have increased. In the search for new arrangements, the possibility of a temporary exit from employment during certain life phases has become a desirable option for many employees. The focus of the study is on the motives and experiences of users of corporate sabbatical offers. As the results show, the possibilities for utilizing sabbaticals exist in a tension between gaining individual freedoms of design and constraints in response to institutional restrictions.