It benefited me in the short term by allowing me to conduct my job search without having to continually make excuses for things I was doing, and by giving me time to work on leaving my team in good hands it had the long term benefit of leaving me on good terms with my team and manager who may work with me again in the future.

But I see this as very context specific. I was confident that this would work out well in this case, but can easily imagine situations where it would not. I don't mean this as universal advice at all.