Vacations Mean Happiness? It all depends. According to an article by Christie Johnston for The New York Times…Do vacations make you happy? Seems happiness comes from unexpected quarters! For years I have been consistently against long absences for myself. Many an occasion has shown the advantage of a timely handling legal inquiries as well as all things marketing, accounting, regulatory, governmental agencies, etc. These items immediately handled often can mean dramatically favorable results, or rapid solution and diversion! If you just do not deal with promptly, cutoff to avoid negatives often incredibly short! This age of lightning fast communication usually means that prior delegation to third parties fail because of the practical logistics to be completely ‘up to speed’! Longer vacation time usually means more accumulation of issues upon one’s return. This is particularly so when it comes to fundamentals. Say one manages accounting…all that inter involvement with auditors, and retained accountants, just cannot be replicated within the office…BUT the deadlines for filing, arbitrarily prescribed…example by Tax authorities, do not change!
Jeroen Nawijn, tourism research lecturer, at the University at Breda University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands, has far reaching thoughts Vacations Mean Happiness!!
Study, published in ‘Applied Research in Quality of Life‘ showed largest boost in ‘happiness’ comes from planning!…this anticipation boosted ‘happiness’ for some 8 weeks!..after the vacation that factor quickly dropped off. The amount of stress or relaxation experienced influenced post vacation happiness. But those experiencing ‘relaxing’ showed NO jump in happiness after trip! No happier than NOT taking the holiday. You had to be very relaxed to get ANY benefit. Then only couple weeks worth! Anticipation KEY! Major problem today…stress upon work return! Particularly after vacation, exacerbated by length of absence, with resultant quantum proportional increase in problems!? Also actual holiday could be stressful anyway, due to variety issues! Example: disagreements..illness! Study concluded more obtained from several small trips a year than one big vacation! Problem no doubt once starting work again after longish holiday catch up necessary and there is pile of work and often unnecessary issues that could have been solved by simply curtailing length of absence. Personal opinion, because no one else has the skill set to solve that problem, as they are not informed or skilled enough to substitute! So big negative Vacations Mean Happiness!
