My recent travel to Thailand has been filled with moments of both relaxation and stress. Traveling with a 5-month old baby brings it’s own challenges, but in reflecting on past breaks, I’ve noticed familiar patterns on how my enjoyment levels fluctuate.
In fact, a Harvard study found that 62% of people say their stress levels are elevated during the holidays. This isn’t surprising. The holidays bring with it novel situations, unstructured time, and one’s own expectations on what a holiday should look like.
Why does this happen and how can you make your time off less stressful and more relaxing, fruitful and rejuvenating? Let’s explore.
#1. Leisure sickness
When I was burned out years ago, it didn’t really hit me until I actually took a break. Prior to that, I was working on my startup and running on coffee, adrenaline and sympathetic, fight-or-flight energy. When I let my body finally rest, my hormones went all haywire, and I became exhausted and practically collapsed.
People tend to get sick right before or during their holiday, a condition aptly named “leisure sickness” or holiday sickness. The theory is that during those times (before a holiday, during an exam) you are constantly in fight-or-flight mode. This gives you energy and lets you push through tough times. When you finally rest, your hormones try to rebalance, but because they are all out of whack this causes you to get sick.
Obviously when you work around the clock for hours and also don’t sleep, this is going to lower your immune system. But interestingly, when cortisol is elevated acutely it actually increases your immune system function and has an anti-inflammatory response (this is why they give you cortisone shots for your bad knee which is a man-made version of cortisol). This could be why you’re not getting sick if you’re just working in short, intense bursts – you are fueled on the rush and your body is pushing you through it.
But when you finally give your body a chance to rest, your cortisol drops and with it drops your immune system, which leaves you more susceptible to illness. In other words, when you finally take a break after working especially hard, don’t be surprised if you find yourself getting sick and feeling worse for a while.
#2. Breaking routine
On a normal day, I wake up, do my morning yoga, stretches and meditation, play with baby, walk the dog, have a coffee and breakfast, and then I am off to writing or hosting an event. There is variation in my routine but the cognitive load around my day is quite low, which saves me energy to focus on the task in front of me.
Holiday throws a wrench in this routine, for better or worse. Your sleep patterns are likely interrupted, especially with longer travel, making you more cranky and irritable. Your body is adjusting to a new, foreign diet, which has the added benefit of potentially giving you food poisoning. I used to be very ambitious with street food and oysters in particular, but I have since learned my lesson.
Unless I have planned everything on the holiday, which I usually don’t because neither my wife or I like that style, the day is a bit of an unpredictable mystery. While this leaves room for flexibility and spontaneity, the downside is I have to spend more decision-making effort figuring out what the plan of the day is. Ditto for deciding what to eat. For a creature of habit, this can create more stress than joy.
#3. The paradox of choice
Depending on where you go, you are surrounded by a smorgasbord of activities. Should you go snorkeling, mountain-trekking, free-diving, kayaking, swimming, island-hopping, temple-seeing, rock-climbing, explore the temples, sit under a waterfall, or…?
In his book The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz explains our predicament:
“Choice overload can make you question the decisions you make before you even make them, it can set you up for unrealistically high expectations, and it can make you blame yourself for any and all failures. In the long run, this can lead to decision-making paralysis.”
Compounded by the paradox of choice is a lingering FOMO about what you are missing out on, and whether or not you made the right decision. The guilt-tripping that follows takes you out of the present-moment, which is a recipe for further frustration. It all depends on the type of travel and duration, but limiting your choices, whether that means choosing activities ahead of time or selecting a spot with a limited number of options, could actually boost your happiness instead of decrease it.
This can backfire, though. One trip we took to an island resort when my wife was pregnant was a bit too limiting; she had a visible bump by this stage and they refused to let her do even the most basic activities like kayaking, so we ended up just swimming, eating and reading most of the time. I also skinny dipped and was inspired to write about the Nude Awakening. So, all in all, not so bad, but perhaps tricky if you have high expectations. Speaking of which…
#4. Letting go of the “perfect trip”
We expect something to make us a feel a certain way, but we end up defaulting to old patterns and quickly get bored, negative, or critical (funny enough, as I write this, the girl sitting next to me is complaining about how tiring her boat-tour was). Part of enjoying a holiday, I have found, is taking an honest look at what I do and don’t enjoy doing, and keeping my expectations low (with varying degrees of success). I was reminded of this the first day on our Thailand trip when we encountered the unhinged taxi driver. Any expectation of the perfect, relaxing trip went out the window in that moment.
Think about it this way: There are thousands of moments within a day. Or, millions, depending how small your increments are. Each moment is part of our experience. And yet, we tend to paint experiences with large brushstrokes of judgement, “good” or “bad.” But look carefully. This is never actually the case. You could say “Argh, the weather is so hot today,” a statement of frustration. But you also have a drink of cold water, go inside the hotel with cool AC, go for a swim in the cool pool, and then had hundreds of other moments that had nothing to do with the weather being hot.
The truth is there will be fun times, and there will be stressful times. Hot and cold, sweet and sour, spicy and mild. Maybe it is worth reframing our expectations and instead paying attention to what’s in front of us. And if we leave ourselves open to the possibilities, then the smallest things can bring us joy. It reminds me of Louis C.K’s comedy skit about the wonders of flying through the sky — on your flight there, you are literally partaking in the miracle of human flight. But instead we complain about the long wait at security, poor movie selection and the tasteless chicken airplane dinner.
#5. How do you do “nothing”?
Given that our attention-spans have decreased by several hundred percent over the last decade, it’s rare to see anyone lounging by the pool and reading the Infinite Jest or some other 500-page novel. Our minds have become accustomed to constant stimulation, desensitizing our dopamine receptors and making it difficult to enjoy activities that require sustained focus.
In the last few weeks in Thailand I have seen so many couples, and friends, sitting over dinner just staring open-mouthed or frowning at their smartphones the whole time (couples therapists should really advertise their services in popular vacation spots, they would make a killing). Despite being on a beautiful beach, teeming with various creatures and activities that you could spend hours just observing, none of that is really interesting to our brains.
Perhaps the antidote to this inability to do nothing is to spend more time doing nothing, which is going to be uncomfortable at first. This starts with cutting screen-time. Put it in a box, leave it in your room, or put yourself in a situation where you don’t have to touch the phone for a few hours. See what happens — get that novel you’ve always wanted to read or sign up for an activity that you’ve been keen to try.
This isn’t really “doing nothing,” and I am not sure if you could just do nothing, as even meditation is doing something…So, another way to say this is spending less time on screens, which is quite an accomplishment in itself and is unlikely something you will regret (no one ever said, “I wish I spent more time on my phone during my last holiday!)
#6. Shorter trips vs longer trips?
One study found that happiness levels went back to baseline after a holiday within a couple of weeks, regardless of the length. Their findings conclude the following:
From an individual point of view, vacationing is something which is looked forward to. However, the length of such a vacation does not matter in terms of post-trip happiness. This suggests that people derive more happiness from two or more short breaks spread throughout the year, than from having just a single longer holiday once a year.
I can think of situations where this wasn’t true, for example, my extended travels across Asia brought me a lot of energy, creativity, stories, lessons and happiness for several weeks or months, whereas shorter trips didn’t (but I got that “out of my system” for now). So, I think it depends. There is a little bit of trial and error to figure out what length of time works best for you.
Another variable: When you already have a great balance in terms of energy, play and work in your life, taking an extended amount of time off may not seem as attractive, and shorter trips might make more sense. The line between work and holiday also blend together when you work online, so it’s very possible you can take an extended break away from home and work, combining in-person activities/new location with your job online.
#7. What kind of travel do you really want?
We often take a trip with the blanket idea of “I just want a break.” The real meaning of this warrants some exploration. It can be worth the time to reflect on what you are really looking from a break instead. Indeed, taking a break means different things to different people.
If you are looking to explore and see where life takes you, then unstructured trips with low expectations make sense. If you are looking to rest your mind or raise your baseline happiness, then going on meditation, psychedelic or yoga retreat is going to be a lot more effective then snorkeling. If you enjoy learning or gaining a specific skill, then the backbone of your trip should be supported by more structured activities like a scuba-diving course or horseback riding lessons.
This can change over time as our personalities, life situations and interests change. My Asia travels were done very much in the Vagabonding style of travel without a particular goal over long stretches of time. More recently I’m interested in structured activities and deepening certain skills like free-diving. Surely as our baby gets older, we’ll want to take different types of trips with him, too, and the types of activities we can do changes.
The balance that works for me to do, after observing myself on many trips, is some mixture of the following:
At least some structured group or solo activities (20-30% of the time)
Chunks of idle time to rest, relax, and explore; reading books, trying new food and dedicated time for creative pursuits like writing in the morning
Shorter breaks taken more frequently instead of longer breaks
How to make your next break more enjoyable:
Give yourself more breaks, more often. If you wait too long to take a break (like in my burnout example), then you are more likely to get sick before/during holiday. Before you take a break, plan head and be mindful of how much work you’re putting in; wind down instead of wind up, allowing plenty of time for handover.
Find the balance of structure/down-time. Happiness can come from a pure awareness of the present moment. When we have so much down-time, our minds wander to the past or future, which is a recipe for dissatisfaction. To minimize this, decide if you want more structured time or less structured time, and what you plan to do with that space.
Allow time for adjustment. Regardless of the type of travel you chose, there will be a period of adjustment to food, environment, sleep, time zones and so forth. Give yourself a bit of leeway where things might feel a bit wobbly before they get fun.
Let go of expectations like idea of a “perfect” holiday. Be open to the unexpected and use travel as an opportunity to Let Go.
Reflect on what kind of holiday you really want. Think about past holidays and what you enjoyed/didn’t enjoy. Center your activities around that instead of leaving it to pure chance (unless that’s your style). This can also limit decision-fatigue.