The Science of a Happier Vacation (Most People Get This Wrong)

It's summertime. It's June. And that means that a lot of you are thinking about your vacations. And that's what I want to talk about today. Today's episode is about how you can have a happier vacation. Really what it's about is how you can be happier as a person by taking the right kind of vacation and not the wrong kind of vacation, which many people do, and also how you can be happier while you're on vacation. In the literature, out come 9 rules for having a great vacation this summer or any time in your life. So that's what I want to build. Now, I want you to think about this in terms of your own priorities. I'm not going to tell you where you should go. I want you to understand yourself better, starting with rule number 1: discern your motive for going on vacation in the first place. Different people have different motives for going on vacation depending on their tastes, their memories, their history. Their pocketbook, their psychological wiring. And there's all sorts of interesting patterns. I'll give you an example. Introverts like the mountains and extroverts like the beach. Like, huh, that's weird. Why is that? I'll tell you why. Because introverts don't like to get naked in front of other people. I mean, practically naked in America, like literally naked in Spain is unbelievably awkward. That's why. It makes sense, right? Because in the mountains, you're all covered up, which introverts like to do. Okay, got it. By the way, some of you are very modest extroverts, so don't take offense. But that's one of the funny things that you find in the literature is that different strokes with different personalities and different motives for what they actually do. Okay. So what's your motive? Knowing what your motive is, is going to be really helpful for building the vacation that best suits your motives. Because one of the reasons people don't like their vacations, they got one motive and they wind up going on a kind of vacation that's incongruent with that. So for example, you have a you have a motivation of getting away from it all, but you're doing something that's actually unbelievably stressful and intensive. And you're wondering why you don't like your vacation because it's, there's incongruence. So let's start with your motives. Number 1 is exploration. A lot of people really want to explore, which is a learning motive. Number 2 is escape, just not ordinary life. Some people want to get away from ordinary life. That's a primary motive. Number 3, family and friends. Aka relationship deepening. Very big motive for a lot of people on vacation. Number 4 is prestige. Their motive for going on vacation is kind of looking cool or looking rich. Now that's a bad motive, as you can imagine. If you've watched any of my stuff, you know that that's all based on social comparison. I'm going to come back to that one later. Still, that's something that shows up a lot that people will say that that's their motive. Usually not in those words. They don't say, "My motive for vacation is prestige." But what it comes down to through the structured interviews is that's what they want. They want social comparison. They want to do something that other people envy. Number 5, nature, just the beauty of nature. Now I've done episodes on the importance of nature and how nature actually changes your brain. And some people actually know that. And they know that the more nature that they can actually get into, long hikes, sleeping outside, whatever it happens to be, these are sort of national parks people typically, that they really, really get a lot out of it. And if you know that's the case, then that's an important motive for you to be gearing your vacation plans around. And number 6, is history and heritage. That's different than exploration. It's not just seeing new things, but it's a learning motive as well. And people really, really love that as it turns out. So how does that map onto your motives? And by the way, you don't have to choose just one. You might have like 3 and have them in order, but the more that you know what they are, the more likely you are to choose a vacation that's going to be satisfying to you and regenerative for you. I'll talk in a minute about prestige. So I'm gonna leave that aside for now. One thing that I will note is that in almost all of the cases, no matter what your motive is, you'll get more from your vacation if you share it with people that you love. One of the things that you find is that very, there are very few people that have the most fun vacations by going away by themselves. Now, maybe you're one of those people. Okay. But that's not typically the case. It's not what we see. When you're enjoying something and you're enjoying it with others, the enjoyment tends to rise because we are social animals. That doesn't mean you're out there with 300 people. It might mean one other person, whoever it happens to be, but consider the social aspect, the social magnifying aspect of the motive that you have. Okay. That's rule number 1. What's your motive? Now, rule number 2, when you do choose a vacation that's congruent with your motive, savoring the anticipation of the vacation is a critical component of getting the most out of it. One of the happiest parts of vacation is looking forward to it. There's some good studies on Dutch and Chinese, uh, vacationers, and they see that, that they have way greater happiness over non-vacationers in the, in the weeks leading up to their holiday. It's not just that people go on vacation and they're happier than people who stay home. It's people who are going to go on vacation are happier than people who are going to stay home. I mean, a really significant thing as it turns out. I'll put a couple of links to the research in that, one from the Applied Research in Quality of Life. Great journal. And the Annals of Tourism Research: Empirical Insights. The data say that, that one of the greatest sources of happiness from any pleasurable activity actually is the anticipation of it. And there's a reason for that. There's a neurochemical reason for that. I've talked a lot about the neuromodulator dopamine, which is really, it's not, people think of it as a kind of a pleasure chemical. It's not. It leads to anticipation of reward. Dopamine is implicated in the wanting and learning and liking cycle. Where you learn about something that actually is good for you. And so the result of it is that you want it more and that you crave it and you anticipate the reward from getting it the next time. All of those feelings that you get, that's all, it all has to do with dopamine. It's being sprayed from a little thing in your brain called the locus coeruleus, largely onto the nucleus accumbens in your brain. Psst, I want that. I want that roast beef sandwich. You know, I want that, you know, to see that person, you know, that I'm anticipating seeing somebody that I'm falling in love with. That's dopamine talking right there. And the same thing is true when you anticipate a beautiful vacation that you've planned and when you savor it in advance, what you're doing is giving yourself little spritzes of dopamine onto your nucleus accumbens. Like, it's going to be so fun. I'm going to like it. It's going to be so great. And that adds to your happiness in the run-up to the vacation, which net-net is good for you, good for your well-being. That's great. Use this science to your advantage by setting up your vacation agenda in advance and studying it, studying it, your destination, learning more about actually what you're going to see. Number 3, manage your expectations. That kind of picks up on the last point that I just made in the following way. Time away might raise your perceived well-being, but it doesn't last super long. I'd like to tell you that the perfect vacation will make you permanently happy, or at least happy for the rest of the year. But it doesn't because that's not the way that your limbic system works. Your limbic system is console of tissue inside your brain between 2 and 40 million years old, which is basically the, the, the factory of your emotions. It's there to give you signals about things around you, whether they're threats or opportunities. It's not there to give you a permanently nice day. If you did something like had a good vacation or ate a, you know, a delicious Snickers bar and it gave you permanently better mood, that would distract you from things you need to be paying attention to, potential threats. That would be dangerous. The result is that, yeah, you can get a higher affective state. You can improve your mood. You can get more positive emotionality by having a really great vacation, but it's not going to be a permanent state of affairs. And it's important that you manage your expectations about that. Not thinking, oh, it's going to be great forever because it isn't. It tends to wear off. And in some cases kind of quickly. There's a 2010 Dutch study of vacationers and it found that for sure, while they were on holiday, that's what they call it, people on vacation were healthier than when they weren't on vacation, less stressed, more energetic, more satisfied, in better spirits for sure. In general, they were. Those effects largely disappeared at the end of the first week back at work. They got a glow of a few days. That's what it came down to. Now, there's some studies that find a slightly longer lasting effect, even up to weeks at a time, but none of them say that they're going to be permanent or even really, really long-term. So manage your expectations that this is a good thing to do. What you're trying to do is to make some really nice memories with people that you love doing something you really enjoy. You're going to be really significantly happier and healthier while you're doing it. And you get a lot of savoring beforehand, but don't think that 6 months from now that this is, this is the game changer because it probably isn't. Okay. Now one way to make it last a little bit longer, however, is lesson number 4, is strategy number 4, break your trip or break your vacation into vacationettes, into little vacations. Don't take 1 month in Borneo, take 15 long weekends to the Jersey Shore or wherever your thing is. What it comes down to. Now, this is a great way to get an afterglow that goes on longer because it's more frequent. It's more frequent dosage. Number 5. Okay, here's a counterintuitive one. Take fewer pictures. I know, I know you want to take pictures so that you can remember this, but think about this. It's such a funny thing. Human beings are just time travelers. This amazing prefrontal cortex behind our foreheads, the supercomputer of our brains, allows us to live in 2 or 3 time zones simultaneously: the past, the present, and the future. We're retrospective, we're mindful sometimes, and we're prospective, which is to say that we're thinking about things to come. The trouble is that we're better at retrospection and prospection, the past and the future, than we are at being here now. That's why the great Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thích Nhất Hạnh wrote The Miracle of Mindfulness, that starts off by saying, when you're washing the dishes, you need to be fully present while you're washing the dishes. Because if you don't, you're missing your life. You're literally thinking about a time that's not now. And in so doing, by the time that, that, that now is over, well, it's gone because you weren't fully present. You were probably thinking about the future, the future when you know, at that particular time when it comes, the things that you were thinking about will already be in the past. People live this way and I live this way, and that's a problem, isn't it? That's what taking pictures on vacation kind of is. It's like, I'm going to take a picture of something so that— and I'm thinking about the future while I'm taking the picture, imagining myself in the future, remembering what is currently the present, but at which point it will be the past. Number 6 is an adjunct to number 5. Don't post about your vacation. That one is really clear. That gets back to the prestige motive. You know, why am I taking my vacation? Because I wanna be fancy. Well, what's the best way these days to be fancy on your vacation and get the, the, get the benefit of showing what a fancy person you are with your vacation of Fiji or something? You put it online. And so other people can say, oh man, she's living, man. She's, she's obviously making a lot of money. And having a great time and she's with some really, really handsome guy and the whole thing. But the truth is you're ruining your own experience when you're doing that because you're living your vacation for somebody else. You're trying to elicit envy, for example. Now, evolution is what's making you do this. This is not your fault. You're not a terrible person. You're not venal and weak. Evolution says that you live in a hierarchy and you want to rise in the hierarchy. Evolution doesn't care about your happiness at all. This is not something that's been noticed, that natural selection or sexual selection is based on happiness. It's based on fitness, on biological fitness. And, and that's exhibited in all sorts of different ways, including the extent to which we can afford a fancy vacation. So the reason that you want to put this stuff online is to show how fit you are, to show that you're somebody who has high status. Is the way that that works. That's the prestige motive. And that, my friends, will lead you to enjoy your vacation less and to be less happy. Number 7, a lot of people talk about taking a working vacation or just doing a little work when they're on vacation. Bad idea. Generally speaking, that's a bad idea. Vacation is super hard on workaholics because they're thinking about their work the whole time and they're stressed out because they're not doing their work. And because their work is actually piling up. And so one way to cope for a lot of workaholics— trust me, I know— is to take along a little work. Like, this way, look, my emails won't pile up and I'll have something to do after the kids go to sleep. Don't do it. This strategy won't just lower your satisfaction during the trip, it'll also give you a worse vacation hangover when you come back. Here's a really interesting finding from the Journal of Stress and Health. Researchers find that engaging in work-related activities lowers the positive effects of vacation 1, 3, and 10 days after returning from work. In other words, the glow that you get, which is not permanent, not even super long-term, you won't get it if you work while you're on vacation. Plus, my friends, you'll have a spouse who's annoyed with you and you'll have kids who are like, "Dad, dad, dad, dad, dad." Sounds an awful lot like I know that. Soundtrack. If you want to busy yourself with something, pick up a book and learn something that you're not getting paid to learn. Okay. Number 8, come home early. Now, I don't mean cut your vacation in half, you know, get into a screaming argument with your spouse and leave. That's not what I'm talking about at all. I don't want that to happen. But what I am saying is come home a little bit earlier from your vacation than you have to. So that you don't have to immediately jump right back into work. Researchers find that easing back into your work routine is better than traveling up to the very last second for enjoyment and for happiness. And it actually gives you something to look forward to, kind of like a second mini vacation. And so you finish your vacation and you get 3 days at home before you have to go back to work. You're actually going to really enjoy those days at home. It turns out it's going to be kind of relaxing for you. You'll be able to, to do some things that you want to do that that, that are not just your vacation, you should come home before the weekend rather than returning on Sunday night with a full work week ahead. For example, come back on Friday and give yourself a vacation from the vacation, and you're going to actually like that better. Okay. Number 9, we got one more to go. Brace yourself when you return and manage your feelings. And the reason for that is that one of the great benefits of vacation is the contrast with work. With a contrast with the day-to-day grind, the things that you don't like that you're actually able to get away from. That's really good. But there's contrast when you come back as well, which you're going back to the things that you were actually getting a break from. Now again, if you're a super workaholic and vacation is just, oh, the worst, then you'll be looking— if you're a thank God it's Monday kind of person, then who knows? Maybe you'll get the warm glow from actually having the thing that's over. You know, when you go back from work, how was vacation? You're like, I got through it. Like you're just coming back from Vietnam or something, this is not for you. For most people who really do like their vacations, you got to brace yourself because, and manage your feelings, because if all goes well and you're successful at having a really good vacation, you'll have increased enjoyment and life satisfaction, which is good news. The bad news is that ordinary life might be, the contrast might be disappointing or frustrating to you, like, you know, eating a carrot after a piece of candy. It's not that great. There's a way that that works. But the more that you know, the better off you're actually going to be. Don't be surprised by that. It's completely normal. I have a policy of paying attention to this and thinking about how I'm going to use my work when I come back in the most generative possible way. I also have a policy of not making significant life changes in the first week that I come back to work because I'm not really in the right frame of mind to do so. So think about it. And once again, once you know what's actually happening inside your brain and inside your heart, then you won't be surprised. And, and not being surprised is the essence of managing yourself so that your feelings don't manage you.