The Boston Globe has a fantastic review of the research on how to get the most out of our holidays (or if you prefer, vacations):
For example, how long we take off probably counts for less than we think, and in the aggregate, taking more short trips leaves us happier than taking a few long ones. We’re often happier planning a trip than actually taking it. And interrupting a vacation — far from being a nuisance — can make us enjoy it more. How a trip ends matters more than how it begins, who you’re with matters as much as where you go, and if you want to remember a vacation vividly, do something during it that you’ve never done before. And though it may feel unnecessary, it’s important to force yourself to actually take the time off in the first place — people, it turns out, are as prone to procrastinate when it comes to pleasurable things like vacations as unpleasant ones like paperwork and visits to the dentist.
According to what psychologists call the "peak-end" rule, what we tend to remember from any experience are the most intense sensations (the peaks) and how it ends. So the optimium holiday isn't a long one, necessarily, but one that's packed full of events and ends on a high. Thomas Gilovich at Cornell says, "If you have to sacrifice how long your vacation is versus how intense it is, you want shorter and more intense.” It can help if you strategically break it up with dull stuff - it might actually be a good idea to take your work on holiday, providing it doesn't dominate your time:
Having a trip interrupted in effect turns what had been a more open-ended experience into a bounded one, triggering the peak-end rule. That means, says Gal Zauberman of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, that if we break up our trips strategically, we might actually get more enjoyment out of them. “If you partition after each peak experience, then you remember that piece as better than if you partition after each lousy thing,” he suggests.
So as soon as you've returned from your diving trip or your dinner under starlight, you should open your laptop and get to work on that revenue projection spreadsheet. Your partner or family will think you noble and wise.
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