The Ideal Vacation Length for Peak Relaxation, According to Experts Andrea Sachs - The Washington Post
go to original January 19, 2024

Is there a magic number of days for a vacation? (Elena Lacey/The Washington Post)

Somewhere between a 48-hour Las Vegas bender and a nine-month world cruise lies an optimal number of vacation days.

In a 2012 study making the rounds again, researchers concluded that a traveler’s health and well-being peaks on the eighth day of a holiday. So for the greatest returns on your trip, should you hard-stop after a week?

Unlike the time we devote to exercise and screens, we do not have much guidance on how much vacation time we need to fully decompress and detach from our daily labors. While our annual PTO allotment and travel budget are key determinants, there is no algorithm yet to help us calculate the number of days necessary for a reset. So much depends on our personal travel preferences and our individual ability to switch from work to vacation mode and back.

“Overall, my conclusions are that the optimal vacation duration is (almost) impossible to investigate because you cannot assign people randomly to vacation durations,” Jessica de Bloom, one of the study’s researchers, told The Washington Post by email. “And even if you could, more factors would vary, such as vacation location, weather, social context, etc.”

In the 2012 study, which was published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, de Bloom and her colleagues determined that participants’ wellness levels rose early but crested after a week away. They also concluded that vacation length (for the study, the average duration was a very European 23 days) and most vacation activities (except “passive” ones) were only “weakly associated” with health improvements during and after their trips.

“We could see a peak on the eighth day,” said de Bloom, a professor at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, “but that does not imply that this would be the optimal vacation length.”

When asked about the golden number of days off, Ondrej Mitas, a researcher and senior lecturer at Breda University of Applied Sciences, also demurred. “It’s tremendously difficult to measure,” he said by phone from the Netherlands. However, he did set some parameters in the otherwise open field: Avoid vacations that are too short or too long.

On too-brief vacations, he said travelers might not be able to disengage from work, physically recover from life’s daily stresses or truly reconnect with loved ones. On lengthier trips, the vacationer might fall into a routine as the novelty of travel starts to wane. (Many people embrace familiarity, returning to the same destination year after year, or stay put long enough to become part of the community.)

One piece of advice that is especially pertinent at the top of a new year of vacation planning: We should take several shorter vacations throughout the year instead of blowing all of our leave on one epic trip. According to such experts as Mitas and de Bloom, the multi-vacation plan can keep your spirits up.

“We see relationships between frequency of vacation and happiness or well-being,” Mitas said. “So all else being equal, you should take more vacations.”

Read the rest at The Washington Post