(FORTUNE Magazine) – MOST CEOs only dream about it. Last year John Sculley, chairman of Apple Computer, did it. He hung up his necktie, abandoned the corner office, and spent nine weeks in the north woods. Since 1985 Apple has allowed any employee with five years' experience to take up to six weeks sabbatical with full pay; Sculley tacked on three weeks of vacation. ''I reached my five-year anniversary last spring,'' he says, ''so I decided I would take a sabbatical like everyone else.''

Sculley, 49, figures he earned the right to go away. Since he became Apple's CEO, revenues have quadrupled, to over $4 billion, and the return on shareholders' equity -- 37% in 1988 -- has been among the highest in the computer industry. Not every chief executive would feel comfortable being away from his post for so long. But Sculley thoroughly enjoyed it. Before a roaring fire at his horse ranch near Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, he told associate editor Brian O'Reilly how his sabbatical gave him an understanding of why some executives don't like using personal computers, and even supplied some lessons in humility. He is not at all dismayed that a reorganization he imposed after his return appears to have triggered the departure of several top Apple executives.

''The idea of sabbaticals is one we had been thinking about at Apple for a while, and three years ago we decided to put it into place. Sabbaticals make sense for our industry because things move at such a fast pace; you have to pour yourself into what you're doing. It's very useful to be able to pull back, catch your breath, and try to gain some perspective. I wanted to have an experience very different from what I had been doing for the previous five years. At one point I thought I would go through Africa on a safari, and at another point I thought I'd go to New Zealand and Australia. Eventually I settled on Maine, where I have a summer home. Maine is my anchor to reality, in contrast to the fantasyland atmosphere of Silicon Valley. I decided I would go to school to study a subject that had nothing to do with what I was doing -- something that was totally removed from computers. So I enrolled in a photography school that operated near my home in Maine.

ONE THING I didn't do was dwell on what was going to happen at Apple in the next two or three or four years. This was a time for activities that had no structure or objective. I worked on projects that, for the most part, were creative. Nothing was a bigger kick for me and Leezy, my wife, than to build our dream barn for the ranch in California. I designed a barn that will be the ultimate barn, with paneled horse stalls, a skylighted atrium, and an incredible copper dome. As the sabbatical wore on, I became increasingly obsessed with designing and building this cupola. I discovered after a few weeks of fun projects that running a company even as exciting as Apple didn't seem like such a big deal anymore. There is a significant difference between vacations and sabbaticals. When people go on vacation, they go for two or three weeks. The first week they collapse and rejuvenate. The last couple of weeks they begin counting the days, saying, 'When I get back, I've got to do this.' When you go on sabbatical, you know that you really are going away. You start to think about things very differently. I remember the first week at photography school. Everyone else's pictures were so much better than mine that I thought, 'Gee, I guess I just don't have enough talent for this.' But after a few days I realized that I had to learn to see the way the camera sees, not the way I had grown up seeing things through my own eyes. Interestingly, I started to understand why some pretty smart business people are baffled by personal computers. After nine weeks away, I was ready to ban business meetings. I spent about an hour a day on Apple business. I also returned to California for a board meeting and made a speech at the MacWorld Expo in Boston during my time off. But I think I got far more done in Maine with my link to Apple through electronic mail, facsimile, and Federal Express than I would have sitting in meetings back in Silicon Valley. And there was still plenty of time to play tennis, take my Boston Whaler for a spin, or putter around the village on my motor scooter. If we could ban meetings as a form of management, American productivity would probably go up. The first inclination of an East Coast CEO considering a sabbatical is likely to be guilt: 'Should I be off having fun when I'm supposed to be minding the store?' East Coast people are suspicious of anyone having fun; it suggests they're goofing off. But if I saw Jack Welch and he asked me about sabbaticals, I'd say, 'Get out your calendar and start planning.' Obviously I wouldn't advise the CEO who is having serious trouble to take time off. It is something you have to earn by getting your company ready. You have to pass final exams before you leave for summer vacation. But I think one of the best investments a corporation can make in its top executives is to keep their minds fresh and get them to broaden the bandwidth of their thinking. I also found my sabbatical a way of reacquainting myself with the fact that I'm a mere mortal. Too many people treat CEOs as some kind of exalted, omnipotent leader. The real danger is that you start believing that stuff. But after a while in Maine, people at the wharf treated me like any other summer resident who couldn't dock his motorboat correctly or couldn't keep an ice cream cone from melting all over himself. It's better to discover humility that way than by being humbled in the marketplace. For me, the most valuable part of being physically away was that I was able to look back on the company almost as though I were seeing someone else's enterprise. Things were going really well at Apple in 1988, but on sabbatical I realized that doubling the size of our corporation from $2 billion to $4 billion in two years had stretched our management and organizational structure to the point that it was unlikely we could double again without major changes. I have felt for some time that Apple could be a $10 billion company sometime in the 1990s. What I didn't want was for Apple to come limping to the finish line with everyone totally exhausted. So when I returned, I reorganized the company into four divisions -- one product development division and three geographical divisions. I wanted to do it before any problems from rapid growth showed up. I don't have any regrets about being away, even though some questions have been raised recently about the reorganization and about our decision last fall to raise the price of the Macintosh. Unfortunately, several things happened at once and left the impression that Apple was having management problems. A fine company does not sour in a few months. In a few more quarters it should be obvious that we are still very much on track. If a CEO does not have the courage to stick his neck out, then he is in the wrong game. Now that I'm back, I've tried to alter my routine so that I have more balance in my life. I rarely stay in the office later than 5:30 or 6 P.M. I come in early to make up for it. It used to be that someone would become a CEO in his late 50s and could anticipate keeping the job for just a few years. But now people are retiring at 55, or even 50. So a lot of CEOs could use a sabbatical to ask, 'Do I want to be the CEO of my company for ten or 15 years, or do I want to find another career I want to do after this?' I NEVER HAD THE FEELING that I wanted to leave Apple, by the way. I can't think of any job that could be more exciting than leading Apple Computer. If I ever did leave, I'd want to do something on a very small scale -- start a company so I could focus on areas where I have a special interest. I don't want to work for another big corporation. Some people go on sabbatical and never come back. That's a risk companies have to take. But I think it's a risk well worth taking. My sense is that you probably gain more from letting people get away than anyone realizes. All the people I know who have come back return with such enthusiasm. That is clearly worth a couple of months off the job. If we make any mistake, it's that we have sabbaticals only every five years. I think we'd probably get a higher return if we had them even more frequently.''