Dear Stoics,
Not everyone can travel around the world. Flights are expensive, and daily life likes to keep us close to home. So this week, as a little pick-me-up, we’d like to tell you about a piece of research that gives the holidays back to everyone, no time off required.
Researchers at UCLA — Colin West, Cassie Mogilner Holmes, and Sanford DeVoe — began with an analysis of over 200,000 Americans. People who prioritised vacation were reliably happier, and yet large numbers of paid vacation days go unused, with money and time said to be the usual reasons. So the researchers asked a practical question: could people get some of the emotional benefit of a vacation without going anywhere at all.
Their experiment was quite simple. Just before the weekend, one group of workers was told: treat this weekend like a vacation. The other group was told: treat it like a regular weekend. There were no itineraries, budgets, or instructions on how to do it exactly. One rule, though: everyone stayed in their own homes and kept living their own lives.
Come Monday, the difference was measurable. The “vacationers” returned to work happier. They had more positive feelings, fewer negative ones. They were also much more satisfied than those who’d had a normal weekend. When the researchers dug into why, they found the reason for the effect wasn’t what people did during the weekend, but how present they were while doing it. Told they were on holiday, people paid greater attention to their own ordinary lives. They had long, relaxing meals; they noticed the food, the company, and their surroundings. They also did less housework, ditching cleaning and laundry as they would on an actual vacation in a hotel.
We usually believe the point of holidays is the destination, but the research suggests it's much more about paying attention. The good news is that attention is free and travels with us everywhere. The beach doesn’t make us present; being present makes the beach. The researchers were so intrigued by the results that they decided the effect deserves further study. You can run that study on your own to test it, too!
How to take a vacation without leaving:
Book it: write the date in your journal tonight, like a reservation.
Change one morning ritual: eat breakfast in a different spot, even just by the window.
Forget about the chores. The laundry would have waited if you were away; it can wait now.
Be a tourist in your own city: walk a street you’ve never taken, photograph your neighbourhood, enjoy people-watching.
Eat or cook one thing you’d normally only try on a trip. Or, if your budget allows it, go to a coffeeshop or a nice restaurant.
Use holiday phone rules: check your phone like you would abroad, if roaming were expensive.
In the evening, write a travel journal entry about the day. You can do it in the Stoic app.
Will one appointed holiday change your life? No, but neither would one week abroad. It gives you something precious, though: the knowledge that the thing you were saving up for was, in large part, the attention you already have.
Have a good holiday!
The Stoic App Team
P.S. The research is real. Check it out.
To live is so startling, it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson
We’re raised on a firm equation: the harder we try, the better things go. With this week’s theme On Less Effort we’ll challenge this belief. Because anyone who has ever rewritten a message eleven times before sending knows that past a certain point, pushing harder makes things worse.
We’ll map where our energy actually goes, revisit the things that came suspiciously easily (and ask why we distrust them), and look honestly at what we’ve been trying to force that refuses to be forced. Maybe along the way, a question will arise: what in your life might improve if you tried a bit less? Open the Stoic app every day and find out!
