Dirk Verburg

For a number of people, the summer holidays represent the mental equivalent of an oasis in a desert: a perfect opportunity to temporarily escape their daily grind and the stress of their work.

Although holidays are a fairly new invention in the history of mankind, and actually only a privilege for a, largely Western Europe-based, minority of the workforce, we ascribe almost magical powers to them. The most important ‘super’ power is the one that suggests that if we take one or more weeks off and label this ‘a holiday’, we are fully relaxed and ready to face our challenges in the workplace again.

Switching off?

However, many people find it hard to mentally switch off from their work during their holidays. Usually, they spend the first days of the holidays decompressing from their work, and they switch back on a couple of days before their work starts again.

I firmly belonged to this category as well.

In the past, I typically went to a house somewhere in the countryside (the last couple of years in Scotland) where I could read, hike, and enjoy some culture. However, what I discovered was that I found it hard to unwind, and started to “rewind” early, so most of the time I was only able to truly relax for a couple of days in the middle of my holiday.

Personal Experience

This summer, my wife and I decided to take an extensive city trip through Scandinavia by train. Within two weeks we visited Copenhagen, Oslo, Trondheim, and, Stockholm, and managed to include an overnight stay in Hamburg on the way back.

It was one of the most complex holidays we ever had. Rail work meant that we constantly had to change our travel plans, the heatwave made part of the tracks unusable, meaning we had to switch to buses. Furthermore trains were often delayed, which made us worried about not making ‘must-make’ connections (some trains only went once or twice a day), etc.

When we stayed in cities, we had to work out transport arrangements (including downloading and activating apps for rental bikes and scooters), plan routes to sights we wanted to visit, and ensure booking the restaurants everyone else was booking as well (thanks to the Lonely Planet guides and DK books!).

To make matters even more complicated, during these weeks I also connected with clients and continued my executive coaching practice.

All in all, the mental effort associated with this holiday was not dissimilar to what I experience in my executive coaching and consulting practice: setting priorities, analyzing and incorporating new information, and reacting in an agile manner to changing circumstances.

A surprising discovery

Now, if you read this, you probably think that I had two very stressful weeks.

The strange thing, however, is that I came back more relaxed than ever!

Furthermore, I also discovered that my experience was not unique. One of my clients told me he had a holiday with a similar pattern (multiple different countries in two weeks, a couple of days in a bungalow near an entertainment park, followed by a couple of days on a camping site in the middle of nature, and finally a couple of days in a luxurious spa hotel). He told me he was also more relaxed than ever and looking forward to having exactly the same type of holidays next year.

My Hypothesis

My hypothesis is that I might belong to a group of people that are not successful in letting go of their work-related stimuli in a stimuli-free environment, where they have no obligations. However, they do seem to be able to relax if they replace their work-related stimuli with different stimuli.

Do you also struggle with relaxing during your holidays? If so, although this sounds counterintuitive, the key to a relaxing holiday for you might be to replace your work-related stimuli with different stimuli, rather than opting for no stimuli at all…

Do you have similar experiences? Let me know!