Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and Julie Douglas. Julie, you're
Speaker 1: looking forward to vacation. I am. I love a good vacation.
Speaker 1: To good vacation, you know, just really really recharges you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I've been thinking about I mean, it's only May
Speaker 1: right in my My vacation is not until July, and
Speaker 1: I like every couple of days, I just sit there
Speaker 1: and think, yes, one day I will be going on
Speaker 1: you vacation. Now, A lot of people don't know this,
Speaker 1: but compulsory vacation in the United States was almost a thing.
Speaker 1: Uh William Howard taft In he proposed giving American workers
Speaker 1: two to three months of vacation every year. Can you imagine?
Speaker 1: I really cannot imagine how that would work, but it
Speaker 1: would get speaking from the vantage point of today's modern
Speaker 1: vacation adverse culture, Yeah, particularly in the United States. You
Speaker 1: hear that, you know, two to three months in nineteen ten,
Speaker 1: and you sort of wonder what Americans would be like
Speaker 1: if they had that today, how that would change the culture. Um,
Speaker 1: of course this brings up this idea of a rather
Speaker 1: question when did humans start vacationing in earnest And we
Speaker 1: can't say, uh, this exact date, we can't point to it.
Speaker 1: But we have a couple of clues because, according to
Speaker 1: psychologist Jessica to Bloom, ancient hieroglyphic graffiti found engraved into
Speaker 1: the walls of the Pyramid of Jos their state quote
Speaker 1: Hand and his brother have been here to make an
Speaker 1: excursion and enjoy Memphis. These hieroglyphics date back to two
Speaker 1: thousand years ago. I'm picturing Uma with their Rick Steve's
Speaker 1: travel backpacks standing in ancient Egypt. I love that they
Speaker 1: just put a little graffiti to pyramid, like, you know,
Speaker 1: a sort of Julie was here, Robert was here. I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, we were here, we were visiting from Memphis.
Speaker 1: That was a vacation blogging of the day, indeed, very
Speaker 1: short and to the point. Uh. The etymological origin of
Speaker 1: the word vacation also dates back to the time of
Speaker 1: the Roman Empire and stems from the Latin word of
Speaker 1: the kato, which means being free from being at leisure,
Speaker 1: having time for and Yet it wasn't until the twentieth
Speaker 1: century that some nations began to recognize and institutionalize vacations.
Speaker 1: All right, So where are we now in terms of
Speaker 1: vacation appreciation and the vacation deprivation. Well, there's a two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen survey that came out that was handled by
Speaker 1: Expedient and they looked at different countries, different cultures to see,
Speaker 1: all right, who's who's really maxing out on their available vacation,
Speaker 1: who's pulling back, who has the most available, etcetera. And
Speaker 1: they found that the average Japanese worker gets thirteen days
Speaker 1: off each year but only takes five UM on the end. Uh.
Speaker 1: In a similar vein South Koreans UH get an average
Speaker 1: of nineteen days off but only takes seven. So that's
Speaker 1: kind of like the low end of of taking advantage
Speaker 1: of your vacation in the modern world. Uh. Here in America,
Speaker 1: Americans tend to get twelve days off a year on average.
Speaker 1: Uh they'll take tenidate again on average, while Mexicans get
Speaker 1: fourteen days of vacation and only take keen. So we
Speaker 1: haven't really hit in upon any of the real vacation
Speaker 1: levers yet. For that, by and large, you have to
Speaker 1: go to Europe because Europeans in general tend to score
Speaker 1: twenty five to thirty vacation days a year um, and
Speaker 1: among the European nations, the French and Spanish tend to
Speaker 1: take the full thirty available to them. Germans tend to
Speaker 1: take only twenty eight. And for another high vacation country,
Speaker 1: you have to travel across the ocean to Brazil, where
Speaker 1: they follow suit and generally take the full three. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's very leisurely beautiful. Top of the spectrum Brazil, Spain,
Speaker 1: France and Germany, bottom South Korea and Japan. Now I
Speaker 1: know we alluded to this, but the US is the
Speaker 1: only advanced economy with no national vacation policy, and one
Speaker 1: in four workers have no paid vacation at all, which
Speaker 1: makes you wonder, are we just really addicted and obsessed
Speaker 1: with work or is the structure just not there to
Speaker 1: support vacationing well. Americans tend to put more hours in
Speaker 1: during so called leisure hours at night and on weekends,
Speaker 1: pointing to this idea that we might be sort of
Speaker 1: addicted to our work. And economists Don hammer Mesh and
Speaker 1: Elena san Connelli published their findings on American work habits
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fourteen, and they found that in
Speaker 1: a typical weeknight, a quarter of US employees did some
Speaker 1: kind of work between ten at night and six in
Speaker 1: the morning. Wow. Yeah, it seems very hardcore. And on
Speaker 1: the weekends, one in three workers in the u US
Speaker 1: we're on the job. Now, you can compare that to
Speaker 1: one in five in France, Germany in the Netherlands. So
Speaker 1: what happens when you take these hard working Americans and
Speaker 1: you strong arm them into something called deliberate periodic rest, Well,
Speaker 1: they don't like it. And we know this because there's
Speaker 1: a four year study by Leslie Purlow of the Harvard
Speaker 1: Business School and her colleagues who tracked the work habits
Speaker 1: of employees at the Boston Consulting Group. And in one experiment,
Speaker 1: each of five consultants on a team took a break
Speaker 1: from work one day a week. That's kind of a
Speaker 1: big deal, right, Um, that's that's a significant chunk of
Speaker 1: your work week. And then in a second experiment, every
Speaker 1: member of a team scheduled one weekly night of uninterrupted
Speaker 1: personal time, even though they were accustomed to working from
Speaker 1: home in the evening, so not even checking your email, right,
Speaker 1: So understandably, people in this experiment they felt a little
Speaker 1: bit annoyed by this, right, because their routines had been
Speaker 1: disrupted and they felt like they might get behind or
Speaker 1: they would be out of the loop. And this is
Speaker 1: the thing though, After five months, employees experimenting with deliberate
Speaker 1: periodic rest were more satisfied with their jobs, more likely
Speaker 1: to envision a long term future of the company, and
Speaker 1: more content with their work, left balance and prouder of
Speaker 1: their accomplishments. They just had to have it forced upon them,
Speaker 1: like essentially tazed in the hallway and their their work
Speaker 1: email removed from their phone exactly, and it's like her,
Speaker 1: now now you must rest, mandatory rest. But this mandatory
Speaker 1: rust really helped them to reset their minds. And in
Speaker 1: order to do that, you have to get to something
Speaker 1: called the default mode network. Yeah, the default mode network.
Speaker 1: And we've talked about this before in previous podcasts. I
Speaker 1: think it came up especially during the scientists in the
Speaker 1: Shaman episodes. We did uh dealing with the psychedelics, But
Speaker 1: essentially it boils down to this the stream of human consciouness. Right,
Speaker 1: that's the analogy we tend to to to use. But
Speaker 1: if we were to use the more fluid dynamic e term,
Speaker 1: it's not a single stream, but it's more like an
Speaker 1: elaborate convergence of currents and bodies. Then, even when we're resting,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of activity going on. Uh. In fact,
Speaker 1: we've known since the early twentieth century that there's actually
Speaker 1: a considerable amount of activity in the resting brain. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: a lot of that is simply your brain maintaining unconscious
Speaker 1: control of the of the body spaceship, but a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff is going on under the hood. Um, go
Speaker 1: back to that's when a team of neuroscientists led by
Speaker 1: Marcus Roushell of Washington University in St. Louis discovered that
Speaker 1: the brain constantly demands of all the energy the body produces.
Speaker 1: And if you really need to put your thinking cap
Speaker 1: on for something, you know, to do your taxes or
Speaker 1: you know, try and figure out what the tip is
Speaker 1: that at a restaurant, Um anything math for me? I
Speaker 1: guess um, you're only gonna add five on top of that.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like looking into the process the section
Speaker 1: of the window task manager, right, you suddenly see all
Speaker 1: these different things going on, and you're wondering, well, what's
Speaker 1: using all of the resources of the computer. Well, um.
Speaker 1: In this research, they also noted that a certain set
Speaker 1: of scattered brain regions quieted down during serious contemplation. So
Speaker 1: you're put on the thinking cap and these sections go quiet,
Speaker 1: but then they crank back up when the patient's mind
Speaker 1: is just idly wandering and daydreaming. Uh. And they were
Speaker 1: engaged in coordinated communication with one another, So scientists can
Speaker 1: to label this day dreaming chatter as the default mode network,
Speaker 1: though we now know that it's just one of at
Speaker 1: least five different resting state networks that are involved in vision, hearing, movement, attention,
Speaker 1: and memory. So it's in this state that you know,
Speaker 1: on a good day, you're you know, you're setting there,
Speaker 1: you're just thinking idly. Your thoughts are kind of doing
Speaker 1: their own thing, and you're you know, thinking about something
Speaker 1: you're excited about in the future. You're thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: some pleasant memory in the past or something you saw
Speaker 1: on TV. Right general, you know, mundane or ales and stuff.
Speaker 1: But then also on a bad day, this is where
Speaker 1: the brain is gnawing on itself, right, you're worrying over work, stress,
Speaker 1: You're it's bashing us in the face with embarrassing or
Speaker 1: or downright traumatic memories. From the past. So it's a
Speaker 1: place of introspection, place of depressive thoughts and uh, it's
Speaker 1: a place of endless ego at tinkering with the story
Speaker 1: narrative that we build around our lives. And one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why it's so important to recharge and to
Speaker 1: try to to get into that default mode network in
Speaker 1: a positive way is because that's when you do that
Speaker 1: sort of mind wandering again. And you would pointed out
Speaker 1: your mind is going to take up twenty percent of
Speaker 1: resources no matter what it's doing, right, so if you're
Speaker 1: meditating or if you're taking a test, maybe test, but
Speaker 1: so you when you get into the default mode network
Speaker 1: and you allow the mind chatter too dim and just
Speaker 1: kind of meander, well, that's when you get some really
Speaker 1: good stuff going on. And this is from Fairesh Chabra
Speaker 1: from Scientific American and his article why your brain needs
Speaker 1: more downtime. He says, while mind wandering, we replay conversations
Speaker 1: that we had earlier that day, rewriting our verbal blenders
Speaker 1: as a way of learning to avoid them in the future.
Speaker 1: So it's kind of a safe space, um to revisit
Speaker 1: some of those and not in a negative way. We
Speaker 1: shuffle through all those neglected mental post it notes listing
Speaker 1: half finished projects, and we moll over the aspects of
Speaker 1: our lives with which we are most dissatisfied, searching for solutions.
Speaker 1: We sink into scenes from childhood and catapult ourselves into
Speaker 1: different hypothetical futures, and we subject ourselves to a kind
Speaker 1: of moral performance review, questioning how we have treated others lately.
Speaker 1: These moments of introspection are also one way we form
Speaker 1: a sense of self, which is essentially a story we
Speaker 1: continually tell ourselves. So that's one of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we have to have that time away from our work,
Speaker 1: so that our brains can actually dwell on solutions, dwell
Speaker 1: on how who improve ourselves, and also create a better
Speaker 1: sense of self. And to illustrate this point that our
Speaker 1: brains need to take advantage of every bit of downtime
Speaker 1: that they can get, consider this two thousand and twelve
Speaker 1: study about blinking. I feel like I've been talking about
Speaker 1: blinking a lot lately. It's from to Mommy Nicano of
Speaker 1: Osaka University, who recorded electrical impulses in people's brains as
Speaker 1: they watched clips of British comedian Missed Being and you
Speaker 1: found that the brain can engage in the default mode
Speaker 1: network and the blink of an eye literally when you
Speaker 1: blink your eyes, the default mode network comes alive. And uh,
Speaker 1: the idea is that the brain is trying to catch
Speaker 1: its breath, even if it's just for that the fraction
Speaker 1: of a second and blinking. And so when you think
Speaker 1: about vacation, it turns out that it's just the right
Speaker 1: kind of distraction for the default mode network, and it's
Speaker 1: really kind of like an extended blink for the mind.
Speaker 1: I can also see though, with if someone as a
Speaker 1: particularly busy brain, they might they it might almost be
Speaker 1: a little apprehensive about going on the vacation because it
Speaker 1: brings to mind just setting on the beach, like next
Speaker 1: to your brain in a beach chair, and your brain
Speaker 1: is just like, hey, what's up, let's talk about about stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, it's like a fight right now. I'm trying
Speaker 1: to relax here. I don't want to talk about stuff
Speaker 1: all right. So what are some of the general benefits
Speaker 1: of vacation. Some of these are no brainers, no pun intended,
Speaker 1: but but just to roll through them. Uh, vacations revitalize
Speaker 1: our mind and body by distancing us from our job
Speaker 1: related stress. Um. I with a few times that I've
Speaker 1: traveled essentially to the other side of the planet. I
Speaker 1: like to think of it in terms of I'm actually
Speaker 1: placing the center of the Earth between me and anything
Speaker 1: that could conceivably stress me out, you know, So it's
Speaker 1: like a nice earth barrier there. Um. Also, vacations allow
Speaker 1: us to drop into a new place, a new culture,
Speaker 1: surrounded by new people, new set of experiences, and a
Speaker 1: new environment for our mind to chew over. So suddenly
Speaker 1: you have all of this brand new stuff, be it
Speaker 1: you know, pleasant brand new stuff like the wonderful tourist
Speaker 1: attraction you're at, or the more negative stuff like the
Speaker 1: tourists that are with you at the tourist attraction that
Speaker 1: you've been looking forward to. Uh. And of course all
Speaker 1: the newness can generate new ideas and thoughts. And we
Speaker 1: also tend to kick forced concentration to the curb side,
Speaker 1: so by and larger going on vacation, there's not gonna
Speaker 1: be any crunch time. We're like, all right, I really
Speaker 1: got to figure this out, unless it's you know, getting
Speaker 1: around town in a far in metropolis. And finally, when
Speaker 1: you go on vacation, hopefully, hopefully you can get a
Speaker 1: decent night's sleep and maybe grab a nap or two.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking, the allusive sleep that we
Speaker 1: all are pursuing. You finally get a taste of that,
Speaker 1: and that makes such a big difference. Let's take a
Speaker 1: quick break and when we get back, we'll talk about
Speaker 1: something called time poverty. All right, we're back. Yes, we're
Speaker 1: talking about vacation and now time poverty, which actually doesn't
Speaker 1: have anything to do with doctor who Nope. Ever since
Speaker 1: the clock was first used to synchronize labor in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, time has been understood in relation to money.
Speaker 1: So we started to put time into three different buckets.
Speaker 1: Here we have the wasting, the saving, and the using.
Speaker 1: And as the industrial revolution gave way to the technological revolution,
Speaker 1: we've seen a decrease in the amount of time it
Speaker 1: takes to do things. So just even the most wrote
Speaker 1: things like doing your laundry or getting from you know,
Speaker 1: place A to B, none of this stuff is quite
Speaker 1: as involved as it used to be. And so as
Speaker 1: a result, paradoxically, we have more time on our hands,
Speaker 1: and yet we feel as though we don't have enough time.
Speaker 1: And part of that is because we keep cramming it
Speaker 1: with stuff to do, because there's this idea of at, uh,
Speaker 1: the more time you have, the more you should jam
Speaker 1: in some work because time is money. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: is interesting to think about, how you know often you'll
Speaker 1: find yourself in a situation where you did an hour's
Speaker 1: worth of work and you washed all the clothes in
Speaker 1: the house. And these two things were for the longest
Speaker 1: stretch of human history, um could not be done at
Speaker 1: the same time. Right. You ate food that you didn't
Speaker 1: have to grow right and harvest um. So this idea
Speaker 1: this time is money, we don't have enough of it
Speaker 1: is a concept known as time poverty. And in the
Speaker 1: article by Jenny Dearborn Why is Everyone so Busy? In
Speaker 1: The Economist, she says, quote, this makes time, that frustratingly finite,
Speaker 1: unrenewable resource, feel more precious. And as a result of time,
Speaker 1: or rather a lack of it, it becomes this kind
Speaker 1: of status symbol. And she says that Daniel Hemmermash, who
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, calls this a yuppie cavetch. This ethos
Speaker 1: that busier is better. And if you look at an
Speaker 1: analysis of international time stress data, Hammermish found that complaints
Speaker 1: about insufficient time come disproportionately from well off families, even
Speaker 1: after he controlled for holding constant hours spent working at
Speaker 1: jobs at at the home. So the bigger the paycheck,
Speaker 1: the more anxiety there was about time in this kind
Speaker 1: of time poverty communication about it moreover. A two thousand
Speaker 1: and eleven pull from Gallop concluded quote, the more cash
Speaker 1: rich working Americans are, the more time poor they feel.
Speaker 1: And it's this kind of it almost kind of builds
Speaker 1: into this work macho is m And the Harvard Business
Speaker 1: Review had an interesting article about this, and it's called
Speaker 1: extreme Jobs Societea that really high performing people in very
Speaker 1: lucrative jobs are these warriors and they're putting, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy plus hours of work per week in and in
Speaker 1: the article they say it's like they're trying to prove
Speaker 1: their worth. It's akin to going up against the elements. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds in more extreme cases, less like
Speaker 1: work macho is um and more like work masochism. You know,
Speaker 1: as if you're trying to tell your employer, look at me,
Speaker 1: I hate myself. This is the kind of employer you
Speaker 1: want on your team, because I would just bleed all
Speaker 1: over the place for you. Yeah, I will cancel my vacations.
Speaker 1: I'll only take half of my vacation days. And we
Speaker 1: mentioned all this because we want to try to set
Speaker 1: up the conditions that are here, the corporate culture that's
Speaker 1: at play, that doesn't say, hey, please take a boatload
Speaker 1: of vacation days. And then this kind of warrior perception
Speaker 1: of people who are um over compensating, maybe overworking their hours.
Speaker 1: So then the question becomes, well, what happens when we
Speaker 1: finally get to take a vacation, well leading up to it,
Speaker 1: and that's that's a big thing too, is there's the
Speaker 1: lead up to the vacation, the launch towards the vacation
Speaker 1: and uh, and it affects the way that we perceive time.
Speaker 1: The easy analogy here is do you think back to
Speaker 1: you when you were a kid, right, and you're in
Speaker 1: the lead up to Christmas and it just seems to
Speaker 1: take forever and ever because it's the thing you want
Speaker 1: most in the world, right, Um, But when you of course,
Speaker 1: when you're grown up, it's just another two months between uh,
Speaker 1: you know, between Halloween and in Christmas. But vacation is
Speaker 1: kind of the adult version of this. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: you have this this destination in time that you're looking
Speaker 1: forward to. But it's not just the temporal distance here,
Speaker 1: but also the geographic distance that plays into all of this. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a two thousand and twelve study that was publishing
Speaker 1: the Journal of Consumer Research, and they actually found that
Speaker 1: consumer decision making is affected by the relationship between time
Speaker 1: and spatial distance. So in the study, the authors asked
Speaker 1: test savors to imagine visiting a post office today and
Speaker 1: a bookstore three months from now. Okay now. Sometimes, depending
Speaker 1: on on the test study, sometimes the distance between these
Speaker 1: two places is short, Okay, the bookstorce is right around
Speaker 1: the corner. Other times it's a longer distance. Maybe the
Speaker 1: bookstore is across town or in another city, another state.
Speaker 1: So the greater the distance between you and your vacation destination, uh,
Speaker 1: then the longer it seems to take, the slower time
Speaker 1: seems to pass between now and then. And in the
Speaker 1: same study, they also found that test subjects who imagined
Speaker 1: retiring far away, uh, you know, retiring down in Florida
Speaker 1: when you're living up in Minnesota. Uh, they felt like
Speaker 1: the retirement was also further away in time. So the
Speaker 1: key here for the purposes of the study. Of course
Speaker 1: we're business related and that spatial distances can change your
Speaker 1: perception of future time and make you impatient. Uh. But
Speaker 1: the breakdown for vacation is pretty clear. The more of
Speaker 1: a destination vacation you have planned, the more it's going
Speaker 1: to cause the time leading up to it to track.
Speaker 1: So that that's a bit of a bummer, right, because
Speaker 1: you're really side of let's say that you're going to
Speaker 1: China and we we're here in Atlanta, so you're that's
Speaker 1: that's quite a distance. So you're sitting there kind of
Speaker 1: nailbodding for you know, a couple of months waiting for
Speaker 1: that moment. But then again, um, you get to experience
Speaker 1: life longer, like maybe you actually live a little longer
Speaker 1: by stretching it out. I don't know, that's nice. No. Um,
Speaker 1: the same sort of mind time happens while you're taking
Speaker 1: vacation and then when you reflect on that vacation afterward.
Speaker 1: So again, when we talk about time, we usually think
Speaker 1: about it in more linear terms and and highly strettured, right,
Speaker 1: But in on side of our minds, it becomes a
Speaker 1: bit of a jumble. Um. And this is something that's
Speaker 1: psychologist and BBC broadcaster Claudia Hammond examined. She calls this
Speaker 1: the holiday paradox. In her book Time Work, she writes,
Speaker 1: quote that the paradox is the contradictory feeling that a
Speaker 1: good holiday or vacation for US Americans whizzes by. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels long when you look back. And she says
Speaker 1: the reason for this is that, say, in any given
Speaker 1: time period, maybe two weeks um, the average person would
Speaker 1: accumulate something like six to nine new memories because so
Speaker 1: much of what we do is routine. Is routine, right,
Speaker 1: is the wrote stuff that we do day after day. Um,
Speaker 1: there's not much out of the ordinary. But she said
Speaker 1: that on vacation we can build up that number of
Speaker 1: memories in a single day because everything we experience is new,
Speaker 1: meaning that when we look back it will seem to
Speaker 1: have lasted much longer than it really did. And so
Speaker 1: that's where you get this fast, slow paradox. While you're
Speaker 1: experiencing the vacation in a new place, it all feels
Speaker 1: like it's whizzing by. But then afterwards you get to
Speaker 1: linger on all those new memories that are made. And
Speaker 1: if you think of yourself and your brain is this uh,
Speaker 1: is it just a collection of memories. Not taking vacation
Speaker 1: or not being able to take vacation. Uh, you're really
Speaker 1: short changing yourself. You're short changing this flood of memories
Speaker 1: that makes up who you are. Well, that is exactly
Speaker 1: what Farish Chabre was touching on in that Scientific American
Speaker 1: article when he said that that mind wandering, those moments
Speaker 1: of introspection are one way that we form a sense
Speaker 1: of self. So you're right, you're you're shortcutting yourself out
Speaker 1: of these moments that really add to, uh, this sort
Speaker 1: of dictionary of self, this reference book of self. Now
Speaker 1: to return to that that lead up to vacation, right,
Speaker 1: the months and months that that occur before you actually
Speaker 1: get to take the trip. Uh, there's some interesting a
Speaker 1: science surrounding the idea that fantasizing about vacation can lead
Speaker 1: to poor decisions. And of course we all fantasize about vacations. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then they're kind of two levels. Right, there's like
Speaker 1: the early stage where you think, hey, maybe I should
Speaker 1: go to Hawaii. What would that be would be? What
Speaker 1: would that be like? Without thinking about how much it's
Speaker 1: gonna cost or how I'm gonna get there, or when
Speaker 1: it's gonna work best for my work schedule, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. And then there's when you actually boil down
Speaker 1: to it and start start weighing the pros and the
Speaker 1: cons right and saying, all right, you know, how much
Speaker 1: is it gonna cost? How long can I stay? What
Speaker 1: am I going to do when I get there? Well?
Speaker 1: A two thousand twelve study by New York University's Heather Cappies,
Speaker 1: published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, looked into this, uh,
Speaker 1: looking at how positive fantasies such as a vacation influence
Speaker 1: the decision making process. Because these fantasies are powerful, right,
Speaker 1: they keep us going in those months leading up to
Speaker 1: the vacation, but they also can influence our behavior in
Speaker 1: the present. So in the study, she asked people to
Speaker 1: imagine a particular future about one of three topics, wearing glamorous,
Speaker 1: high heeled shoes, making making money in the stock market,
Speaker 1: and taking a vacation, okay and so, and then she
Speaker 1: prompted people to think about how great they would be,
Speaker 1: just to make sure they're putting a positive spin about
Speaker 1: it in their minds. Okay, you know, just imagine how
Speaker 1: wonderful those shoes are. Gonna look, or how much money
Speaker 1: you're gonna win the stock market, or how great this
Speaker 1: vacation is going to be. But then there's a control
Speaker 1: group as well that she said, but would it really
Speaker 1: be that great? Would the vacation only be that great
Speaker 1: with the shoes be a little uncomfortable, etcetera. So they're
Speaker 1: inserting some doubt there, yea, to make sure that there's
Speaker 1: a control group that's thinking about these things in a
Speaker 1: in a less than positive way. Then after all this,
Speaker 1: everyone was presented with material on the pros and cons
Speaker 1: of these future events. So, you know, like a pamphlet
Speaker 1: about the wonders of high heeled shoes, and a pamphlet
Speaker 1: about the the the pain of high hilled shoes, that
Speaker 1: sort of thing. Pamplet about how great this vacation destination
Speaker 1: is and one about how it sucks. So for each topic,
Speaker 1: imagining the idealized positive version made people prefer to learn
Speaker 1: about the pros rather than the cons of the future event,
Speaker 1: especially if they were not seriously considering doing it. So
Speaker 1: the idea here is that when we actually boil down
Speaker 1: and decide yes, I'm going, that's when we tend to
Speaker 1: actually weigh the pros and cons more evenly. But in
Speaker 1: that fantasy zone, Uh, that's leading up to the serious zone. Uh,
Speaker 1: We're we're going to be more inclined to just focus
Speaker 1: on the positives. But the risk here is that in
Speaker 1: that fantasy period, you end up a skewing your results
Speaker 1: towards towards the positives, and then that's going to affect
Speaker 1: your supposedly unbiased exploration of the pros and cons when
Speaker 1: you're planning the vacation. So this is the reason why
Speaker 1: I made the decision early on when my husband and
Speaker 1: I went to Belize to engage in this, uh, this
Speaker 1: escapade of climbing a Mayan ruin. But I don't know
Speaker 1: how many hundreds of feet tall it was, but it
Speaker 1: was incredibly steep. And while I was doing it in
Speaker 1: the degree heat and looking down because I have a
Speaker 1: fear of heights. Uh, I was wondering why I have
Speaker 1: made this choice? Yeah, right, pssibly, because I hadn't really
Speaker 1: pondered it long enough and it seems like a really romantic,
Speaker 1: wonderful thing to do while I was planning the trip. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you end up just focusing on the pros and then
Speaker 1: when you actually start start weighing the pros and cons,
Speaker 1: you're still waiting towards those pros, so that kind of
Speaker 1: gets us towards this category of travel called adventure vacations.
Speaker 1: Adventure can be anything from I don't know, like writing
Speaker 1: atop a dolphin, which I don't recommend, um, you know,
Speaker 1: to some of the more risky stuff like helicopter skiing.
Speaker 1: Do you know if us where you're on a helicopter
Speaker 1: and it takes you to the top of the mountain
Speaker 1: and then you jump off the helicopter and ski down
Speaker 1: the mountain. It sounds like a great idea before and
Speaker 1: this may be because some of those people are neophiliacs.
Speaker 1: We've talked about these people before. They possess a migration
Speaker 1: gene a d N, a mutation that occurred about fifty
Speaker 1: thousand years ago as humans were dispersing from Africa around
Speaker 1: the world. And just according to row Robert Moyses, who
Speaker 1: was a biochemist at the University of California at Irvine,
Speaker 1: and he says that these genetic variations affect the brain's
Speaker 1: regulation of dopamine. So this is that neurotransmitter that helps
Speaker 1: to process rewards and new stimuli, and variations have been
Speaker 1: linked to faster reaction times a d h D and
Speaker 1: a higher pension for novelty seeking and risk taking, which
Speaker 1: is why some people may instead of seeking out a beach,
Speaker 1: seek out, say tornado chasing um actually taking vacation time
Speaker 1: and chasing a tornado down. And that's because you do
Speaker 1: have these these different reactions to dopamine into new stimuli.
Speaker 1: But it's also because fear provoking situations can put us
Speaker 1: in a state of mental clarity. And that's also really
Speaker 1: interesting for our memories because that sort of mental clarity
Speaker 1: means that we can commit those memories in a way
Speaker 1: that feel really fresh and interesting. So you take that
Speaker 1: risky vacation and you chase after that tornado, and later
Speaker 1: on you revisit that material as if it's fresh and new.
Speaker 1: And that's because a type of protein within the cell
Speaker 1: walls of neurons called alpha two receptors respond to the
Speaker 1: release of nora adrenaline and they act to increase neural efficiency,
Speaker 1: and so then you have a boost of activity in
Speaker 1: your prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex, as we know, is
Speaker 1: kind of like the referee of your emotions and your memories,
Speaker 1: and so the net net effect is that is that
Speaker 1: you're you're kept on target, You're kind of have this
Speaker 1: zen mental clarity, and you've got the reward system amped up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I feel like we probably all have acquaintances like that
Speaker 1: who tend to go for the adventure vacations. Um, there's
Speaker 1: one guy I know, and I'll see him posting on
Speaker 1: Facebook and he'll post stuff like I partied in the
Speaker 1: most dangerous city in South America last night, and which
Speaker 1: is great for him, but inside I'm also thinking, why
Speaker 1: would you do that? Why would why would that be
Speaker 1: your vacation? But he's got the gene. What can you say?
Speaker 1: Can't help it. So we've mentioned already people tend to
Speaker 1: return from vacations relax and renewed, right, And according to
Speaker 1: Terry Hearted, an environmental psychologist at Solo University in Sweden,
Speaker 1: we tend to spread those viral vibes to everyone we
Speaker 1: come into contact with when we get back. Um, this
Speaker 1: is his take on it, called a collective restoration. So
Speaker 1: you kind of Greg comes back from his vacation. Normally
Speaker 1: Greg's a bit uh get bit anxious at work, you know,
Speaker 1: but he comes back, he's refreshed, he's renewed. And then
Speaker 1: all the people Greg interacts with, he kind of spreads
Speaker 1: a little bit of vacation vibe to them, and so
Speaker 1: it spirals out into a more pleasant workplace environment for everybody. Right,
Speaker 1: So that's his theory. He decided to put it to
Speaker 1: a test. A Heartig did so. He studied monthly antidepressant
Speaker 1: prescriptions in Sweden between and two thousand five, and he
Speaker 1: found that the more people that were taking vacations at
Speaker 1: a given time, the more prescriptions dropped exponentially. So overall
Speaker 1: some was the happiest time. Uh So, low prescript prescription
Speaker 1: rate and in high vacation rate, and do in part
Speaker 1: perhaps because Swedish law has mandated that every worker have
Speaker 1: five weeks of paid vacation every year since nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: And on top of that, workers can take four consecutive
Speaker 1: weeks off during the summer, so that tends to be
Speaker 1: when people take advantage of the of the policy. Now
Speaker 1: you think about that, the fact that depression costs the U.
Speaker 1: S economy and estimated twenty three billion dollars a year
Speaker 1: in lost productivity alone, and you can see where a
Speaker 1: little more mandatory vacation might be helpful for the populace. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we should also say to that, you know, don't
Speaker 1: go away your prescriptions here quite yet, because um, there
Speaker 1: are fleeting effects of vacation. In the paper how do
Speaker 1: vacations effect workers health and well being? Jessica to Bloom
Speaker 1: looks at a meta analysis of the benefits of vacation
Speaker 1: and concludes that the restorative effects generally fade within two
Speaker 1: to four weeks. And then one of her studies of
Speaker 1: nineties six Dutch workers, they all reported feeling more energetic, happy,
Speaker 1: less tense, and more satisfied with their lives uh than
Speaker 1: usual during one of their vacations. In this vacation was
Speaker 1: between seven and nine days long, but within just one
Speaker 1: week of returning to work, uh, this began to dissipate.
Speaker 1: In a second experiment on four and five days of
Speaker 1: respect came to essentially the same conclusion. Now, there are
Speaker 1: a raftive studies on this, and they all kind of
Speaker 1: point to this, you know, one to three week um
Speaker 1: attenuation of effects here, and a lot of it depends
Speaker 1: on how long someone was on vacation. So maybe that
Speaker 1: juicy or meteor you know, four or five week vacation,
Speaker 1: maybe you had two weeks of these effects. Uh, but
Speaker 1: they all point to the fleetingness and that that seems
Speaker 1: a little depressing. But for me, it just makes the
Speaker 1: case that we need to take more vacations more often. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And plus I mean everything's fleeting, so life. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: just life. So as we've discussed, we we Americans, we're
Speaker 1: a little hesitant to take those vacations. And you might
Speaker 1: wonder if some of that has to do with fear
Speaker 1: of missing out, because I know that when I take
Speaker 1: a vacation, it takes a good two days for me
Speaker 1: to settle into it and shed my work skin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I find it find the same situation in my life,
Speaker 1: and I even think about it in terms of launching
Speaker 1: something into orbit. Right, you have to you have to
Speaker 1: deal with, you know, getting everything squared away at the house,
Speaker 1: you have to get somebody to feed the cats. You've
Speaker 1: got to make sure your work life is in order.
Speaker 1: Then you've got to actually travel there, so you having
Speaker 1: to fuel the rocket, launch the rocket. And then once
Speaker 1: you get up there, once you get into space, once
Speaker 1: you get on your vacation, you still got to decompress
Speaker 1: a little that you've got to deal with your with
Speaker 1: where the expectations of say, a vacation, beach house, meet
Speaker 1: the reality of it. Um, you have to deal with
Speaker 1: all that and then letting slowly come down from it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I tend to find it's like the second
Speaker 1: day before, I suddenly find myself just like thinking idly
Speaker 1: about things that are not work and actually enjoying the experience. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because for me, those first two days really boiled down
Speaker 1: to routine. And I was thinking about Charles du High,
Speaker 1: who has a book called The Power of Habit, and
Speaker 1: he says that something of our decisions are just habit.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, it's it's about right, because you know,
Speaker 1: you have the habit of checking your email at a
Speaker 1: certain time or doing these certain things day after day,
Speaker 1: and so it would make sense that you have your
Speaker 1: mind kind of circling and saying, but wait, you can't relax.
Speaker 1: We usually do this at this time, all right. So
Speaker 1: there you have it, vacation and the brain. What happens before, during,
Speaker 1: and after you finally take that trip to the beach
Speaker 1: or the mountains or what have you. Hey, if you
Speaker 1: want to check out more of what we do here,
Speaker 1: you can check out more episodes of the podcast. You
Speaker 1: can check out blog post videos you name it, it's
Speaker 1: stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. And if you
Speaker 1: have thoughts about vacations and re entry after a vacation,
Speaker 1: you can send those thoughts our way by emailing us
Speaker 1: at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
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