Today's Article (2/7/2025)
How to make the most of your summer vacation
I like to distinguish between two kinds of getaways: vacations and trips. A vacation is focused on relaxation. The most difficult choices on a vacation should be where to eat, and whether to read by the pool or the ocean. A trip is busy. You’re there to see new things, meet new people, and explore the world.
Both vacations and trips can be rewarding. Vacations provide a true oasis from a packed daily life. The aim is to sleep late, relax, catch up on pleasure reading, and enjoy a slower pace. Vacations are most valuable when the fast pace of life has gotten to you. If you’re living a life when every minute is scheduled, then a vacation can remind you that time spent without an agenda has its benefits. It is also useful when you feel like you’re always living on the edge of exhaustion.
Trips are opportunities to create memories of experiences. They require a lot of advance planning in order to decide exactly where to go and what to do. Just about every day of a trip involves an itinerary in order to maximize what you get out of the place you’re visiting. Indeed, many trips are a little stressful while you’re on them, but they reward you with memories that you can look back on for a lifetime.
Another value of both vacations and trips is that they can slow time down. You have probably noticed that when you’re engaged in your normal routine that the days and weeks fly by. That is because your brain is able to predict what is going to happen next, so it doesn’t need to store a lot of new information. As a result, the moments go quickly as they are happening, and they don’t leave a lot of information behind, so they don’t seem that long even when you look back on them.
When you break up your routine, the days feel like they slow down, because your brain doesn’t know exactly what is going to happen next. Plus, if you are visiting a new place, you have lots of new memories to create, which makes the time feel long when you look back on it as well.