July 26, 2010 - The Business of Vacations

Without going into unnecessary detail, in a recent episode of the deliciously-authentic TV show, Modern Family, the matriarch, Claire, arrives in Hawaii for a week of R&R with three kids, in-laws, and a little “baggage.”  Her husband is in “ready to kick up his feet” mode.  She is not.  As she explains, “This is not a vacation, it’s a business trip.” 

While Modern Family episodes typically inspire gut-wrenching laughter, “Claire’s” comment was differently gut wrenching.  She acknowledged out loud what perhaps we can’t admit to ourselves.  Vacations for many of us are work projects that we veil in exotic food, beautiful scenery, new adventures and/or a foreign language.

It’s my sense and regret that our daily language (and behavior) doesn’t change all that much during vacation. Granted, vacations can be immensely enjoyable.  Moreover,  “fly by the seat of our pants” holidays are rare, especially when “J’s” as in “junior” travelers or “judging” travelers (as in Myers Briggs) are involved.    

Yet, the vacation conversation is too often about “to do” lists, plans, timelines.  I, for one, continue to find it hard to strike that sacred balance between “moving” and “slowing down” even when a pool, not a boss, beckons.  A summer trip may present opportunities to learn new currency but I’m not convinced that the currency of human interaction changes all that much.

The similarities between how some of us “spend “vacation and non-vacation time suggest that we (not our work environments, our colleagues, our bosses, our carpool schedule) are partly responsible for any changes in pace that we seek and may not ultimately experience during a break.  So what stands in our way?  The themes are part of our DNA:

• Control (“We have to leave the hotel by 9 am sharp to make the last bus to the waterfall before the lunch crowd and the predicted rain shower.”)
• Achievement  (“They say the hike up the mountain is hard but I know we can do it.”)
• Experience (“I can’t wait to get home and tell everyone about what an amazing things we did and saw.”)

It’s quite possible that such well-entrenched behaviors are hard to erase from our psyche just because we’re “off.”   Rather than pretending that they don’t exist, perhaps we can think about them differently.

• Is being able to really “let go” for a defined period of time as much a reflection of control as micro-managing a work plan or an itinerary.
• Can achievement within the context of vacation be more about what we   try not to “accomplish” than what Frommers or performance objectives tell us we should?

“Experience” is probably the trickiest concept around which to shift our thinking.  For those of us who take pride in  showcasing our pinnacle professional or personal life moments, it makes sense that vacations to some degree would be about the grand experience and its storytelling –  how much we did, saw, learned.  For some, a vacation, in absence of an exciting narrative, may be considered uneventful and not worthy of even a Hi, I’m reading a book on the beach postcard.

What may be worthwhile is some pre-vacation reflection if indeed you seek to take a vacation from your typical “working” vacation.  The following questions may help:

• On a Scale of 1-10, how hard do you work at your vacation?
• What drives this behavior?
• What changes do you seek for your  next trip?
• What are you concerned might happen if you don’t “manage” your  vacation? 
• How can you test these assumptions?