“It’s definitely time to take a break, to recharge my batteries,” says Beyoncé, 28. “I’d like to take about six months and not go into the studio. I need to just live life, to be inspired by things again.”

In the spring, the singer launched the I Am … Tour, which took her to 110 cities around the world. Despite her hectic schedule, Beyoncé was determined “not to just perform and stay in the hotel. I visited the pyramids in Egypt. I saw the Great Wall of China and went out in the middle of the ocean in Australia to see the whales. I actually got sprayed in the face. I made some great memories this year and really learned to enjoy life.”

So much so that “when I got home, I wrote out a contract with myself. I made a list of everything I want to do that has nothing to do with music. Well, some of it does. But I promised myself that I would not go back on tour or in the studio until I finished these things.”

The to-do list consists of “random things. I want to go to restaurants, maybe take a class, see some movies and Broadway shows.” (Beyoncé says she would love to do a stage musical, eventually.) She’s also keen to spend more time with her 5-year-old nephew, Daniel, whose mom is Beyoncé’s younger sister, Solange, 23. “He’s a wonderful kid, amazing, so smart. And I spoil him, so it’s a lot of work. He’s a 24-hour job.”

Still, Beyoncé doesn’t expect her sabbatical from the music business to be easy, or even necessarily successful. “It will be the hardest thing in the world for me to make myself not do an album and shoot a video and turn it in and say, ‘I’m ready!’ I already have all these melodies and ideas in my head. I have to tell myself, ‘Sit down! Sit down!’ ” [source]