Wednesday’s article on vacation made me really start to consider vacation a bit more… Figured I should craft something on how to maximize vacation since I clearly overanalyze vacation to wit’s end.
Some people are the type that like to take extravagant vacations and totally disconnect themselves from reality. No work email, no phones, no connectivity, no distractions. I really respect those people. I’m certainly not one of them though.
The way I see it, I would much rather stay somewhat connected and take more frequent expeditions that are shorter in nature and cheaper (so I can afford more of them). As long as I can stay relatively up to date on work email and other areas that could get behind, I’m typically able to reconnect and pick back up where I left off without missing a beat (aside from the couple days I was “gone”).
Said another way – if I were to tell you that in any given year, you get 25 days of vacation, how would you most like to spend them? Many people I know are of the opinion that you should take off longer periods of time (say, 3 weeks at Christmas, a week in the summer, and another week perhaps over spring break, especially if you have kids). Some people, though, see 25 days off as the ability to take every other Friday off. And there’s something to be said for that. Every other week is a 4 day week in that scenario. True – you don’t get to take off much time around the holidays – but you can surely isolate ways to prepare for that and still enjoy the family time (and, let’s be honest, some of us only need a few days with our family at a time before it starts to stress us out more than work itself).
It’s all an exercise in marginal utility. The person that takes one small trip every month will inevitably have slightly less enjoyment, but they won’t have to wait as long between trips. The person that has a blowout every 6 to 12 months is sure to have more “fun”, but how quickly does that wear off before you’re anxiously counting down until the next one?
Maybe I’m a simple man, but sign me up for the more frequent, less grandiose vacations so that I have a good cadence of always having something nice to look forward to in the not-so-distant future?
What about you?
Til Next Time,
Michael