Who doesn’t love a good vacation? Just about everyone enjoys a good summer trip, but there’s a lot of reasons you might be procrastinating. Not having the time or resources can easily cause you to postpone trips for months or even years.
The fact is that vacations are good for you both physically and mentally. Therefore, you should seriously consider taking one this summer to ease your mind and rest your body. This article will explain why you need a vacation and how you can make time for one this year:
Why You Need a Vacation
Let’s begin by talking about why you need to take a vacation this summer. Understanding how you will benefit from a trip will motivate you to put in the effort to take one:
You Didn’t Get One Last Year
The biggest reason you deserve a vacation this summer is that you probably didn’t get one last year! The summer of 2020 was kept in lockdown thanks to Covid-19, canceling flights, cruises, and hotel stays by the hundreds of thousands. If this happened to you, it’s time to cash in whatever vouchers you hopefully received.
Now there’s no need to feel obligated to take a vacation every single summer, especially if you don’t feel financially capable. However, last year presented enough stress and strife for an entire decade. You could really use a vacation to wash all of that away.
Helps Prevent Burnout
It’s honorable to have a strong work ethic, but you still need to be cautious about burnout. Feeling exhausted and worn out happen to the best of us, and a regularly scheduled vacation provides an opportunity to rest and reset.
As a matter of fact, a recent survey of post-Covid American workers states that over three-quarters of employees are currently experiencing work burnout. That’s quite the majority. Taking a vacation might not be the fix everyone needs, but it will certainly help workers to rethink their priorities and take a much-needed breather.
Keeps You Happier
A survey of Taiwanese adults determined that those who traveled several times a year were 7% happier than those who didn’t. Measuring happiness certainly is subjective, but there’s not much difference between the individuals in this survey and the rest of the world. So you can, in fact, be happier and stress-free by making time for the occasional vacation.
What is it about a vacation that makes you happier? For some people, it’s the thrill of travel, seeing new places, and experiencing new things. For others, it’s the simple joy of not having any pressing responsibilities to stress them out. Find out what brings you joy on vacation and focus on that for maximum happiness potential.
How to Take a Vacation
Now that you’re itching to take a trip soon let’s discuss how you can make time for one. These tips will help you make space in your online calendar even if you believe you don’t have the time to take a vacation any time soon:
Get on Top of Work
What probably stops people from taking vacation time more than anything else is the stress of work. There’s sometimes a sense of guilt that comes from getting someone to cover your shifts or leaving your coworkers behind while you soak up the sun on a beach somewhere far away.
Start by trying to get ahead on any work you have to do before taking a trip. You’ll feel a lot less stressed if you can clear some deadlines on the days directly following your vacation. In addition, using time management techniques in your online calendar, such as time blocking, can help you focus and get more done in the same amount of time.
Bring Work With You
This is a tricky one, but it might be worth your time to take some work with you on the road. Just be sure not to let it take over your entire vacation. Otherwise, you’re just paying way too much for a remote workspace.
If you plan on taking work with you, be strict with yourself about when you’ll handle tasks. For example, taking 30 minutes of our morning to reply to emails and review work documents won’t get in the way of your vacation fun but will keep things moving back in the office even while you’re away.
Plan in Advance
Sorry if you like to be spontaneous, but you’ll have more success making time for your summer vacation if you plan in advance. Start scoping out dates in August if you want the best chance at a trip this year. You can also consider taking your summer trip during the winter while it’s still warm in tropical countries and islands.
Taking a last-second trip can be overly stressful and make it difficult to get the joy out of traveling. In addition, it will be much harder to get time off of work with short notice, and your checklist will be jam-packed into a short time frame. Not to mention that plane tickets are typically more expensive when you put them off until the last minute.
Grab your online calendar and start planning when you want to take your next vacation. This way, you can weigh the pros, cons, and prices of different dates and locations. Then, leading up to your departure, you can spread out all of the tasks you need to complete before you embark with plenty of time to spare.
Go and try on that old Hawaiian shirt and start dreaming of beaches. You need a vacation, and you’ll be glad when you finally got yourself to take one. Use your online calendar to invite the whole family and sync up schedules for even more vacation fun.
Image Credit: mateusz dach; pexels; thank you!
Angela Ruth
My name is Angela Ruth. I aim to help you learn how Calendar can help you manage your time, boost your productivity, and spend your days working on things that matter, both personally and professionally. Here's to improving all your calendars and becoming the person you are destined to become!