Isnāt it great that all these productivity gains have improved peopleās lives?
A vacation?! What are you a loser!! Only closers get vacations! If you take a vacation, weāll have you replaced!!!
- every American business for the last 50 years.
TBH, businesses are slowly realizing that working your people to death actually harms the company line. Unfortunately, the thinking seems to be that āanyone can do your job!ā, so they donāt really care.
I think it depends on what sort of vacation it is. When I go somewhere I havenāt been before, I sometimes feel like I need to see everything of historical or cultural significance there and it isnāt all that relaxing. Going back somewhere Iāve been is more relaxing because I feel I can hang out in a cafe or pub for hours without feeling that Iām wasting valuable time.
Noted those that take vacations actually have money, exercise, and donāt work as frequent as those that vacation less.
Tell me about it. Try vacationing with small children. Itās all the stress of taking care of them at home without the support of predictable routines and all our stuff. Oh, and you still have to pay for them. Fun!
Clearly, according to BoingBoing, we should all quit our jobs and become full-time stay-at-home bloggers (preferably living in a small house on the edge of a national park in California).
(Cynicism aside, I think for purposes of the study, āvacationā is more loosely defined as ātaking your slotted days off and not coming in to work for a bitā. Some people just donāt take vacation days. Itās weird.)
You and @jhbadger are getting to something very real. A true vacation is not having a job that eats you alive every day.
When you have a job that you enjoy, working with people you like working with, doing stuff that you like doing, then the concept of vacation as I-NEED-TO-GET-AWAY-FROM-ALL-THIS-BS-TO-CLEAR-MY-HEAD is different. Itās more like, āHey, letās go soak up some rays onā¦ Maui! Yeah!ā Rather than, āI need this fucking vacation or Iām going to go POSTAL.ā
When itās the second one, itās not the vacation you need: itās a new job.
They donāt even have to be small! Vacationing with teenagers is also exhausting, for different reasons. They have Strong Opinions and can never agree on anything.
This Christmas, weāve decided to send the kids to visit various other relatives while hubs and I visit his parents. Itās going to be 100 times more relaxing without the complaining and the wrangling.
Soā¦ take a vacay-cay to prevent the cray-cray?
The study doesnāt necessarily say you have to go anywhere when you take time off, does it? Stay local, take day trips? Obviously depends on where you live, but much more budget friendly. And at least some people can leave the kids with grandparents, or aunts and uncles, for a night or two.
Then thereās the people who work while on vacation, thanks to email, etc.
I think poverty accounts for both the lack of vacation and the reduced health & happiness outcomes. I doubt many people are avoiding vacation just because it hasnāt occurred to them. Maybe a few workaholic silicon valley types, but while that might be a disproportionate number of BoingBoing readers, thatās not who is in the Framingham studies. If you canāt afford to take time off, surprise, your life is hard in other ways too.
I fall into this part. I really donāt take vacations due to we donāt do a lot when we have days off (mainly stay at home and play on the computers or watch movies on the Apple TV). Because of this, I have so much vacation time, I could almost take off a whole month and have it paid for the whole time. Even with the carry over of 40 hours at the end of the year, by the time the middle of the year comes around, Iām back up to 90 to 100 hours of time.
THAT, sounds like a beautiful idea!
We must consider though that a workplace, family finances, and ability to take time away all will have influence on the personās health, not just whether a person takes vacations.
After 10pm tonight when I clock off, Iāve got five days off. Iām going somewhere nice: bed.
As far as kids on vacations Iāve had some great times introducing my kids to new environments and different cultures. Watching them get an open-eyed look of amazement or their smile as they realize their own world just got bigger makes for great memories and adds to my fun too. Yeah there have times when they were a PIA but overall ifs been rewarding to have then along.
no, the real irony is I waited my whole damn life to take that trip and then the plane crashed down. What a nice thing a vacation is.
One thing I find funny is that at the time they might be total PIAs but a couple of years later theyāll tell everyone how wonderful the trip was and how much theyād like to go back.
Are they remembering the same trip I suffered through? 
EXACTLY this!!! I have the life experience to prove it on both sides!
Bedistan is especially lovely in the mornings! Enjoy!
This deserves all the likes.
