Vacation Tips for Workaholics

Even workaholics can enjoy great vacations; in fact their fear of being away from the office for too many days at a time may even work in their favor. Here are my three key vacation tips for workaholics…

Always be planning your next vacation.

Relaxing on the beach

The results are in: people who have a vacation planned are happier than those who don’t. Specifically, they tend to feel better about their health, family life and economic circumstances. Researchers consistently attribute positive outcomes to the everyday process of daydreaming about an upcoming break, while people in the travel industry know that advance planning delivers down to earth benefits like wider choice, cheaper fares and lower room rates. Sure, last-minute is fun, but all the benefits that come with planning a vacation ahead of time suggest it should be the exception, not the rule.

Don’t hoard your vacation days.

Leaving the work behind

The length of your vacation won’t have any effect on how good you feel afterward; in fact research suggests that trips lasting 3 to 6 days are best. That’s because a mini-vacation is long enough to enjoy, but not so long that you lose patience with your travel companions, who, after all, are the main causes of heartache and stress on any vacation.

We humans tend to be most affected by the intensity of a sensation, rather than how long it lasts. Three brilliant days on Maui will do you just as much good as ten. Use that fact to your advantage by breaking your available vacation days into a few chunks: you may not have time for an African safari, but you’ll always have a destination to escape to on the near horizon, close enough that you’ll be counting down in weeks, not months.

Get out and Travel!

Do research.

Not just because it seems obvious, but because a little advance work can eliminate the things that might turn a great trip into a lousy trip. Concrete benefits that flow directly from advance planning include more funds to spend on destination activities (from the money your research saves you on fares and accommodation), more time to discuss the trip with travel companions (to ensure you’re all on the same page about why this trip is going to be fun), and more time to investigate and solve problems that might otherwise drive you crazy (like no WiFi at your first-choice hotel).

Vacation Tips for Workaholics