We all know that vacations reduce stress. Just planning a vacation makes you happy, thanks to anticipatory consumption.
But the real magic is amplifying your creativity. Studies show that vacations increase cognitive flexibility — they help you combine more raw ideas.
What's behind this effect? It turns out that creativity has 3 key ingredients: a relaxed state of mind, freedom from distractions, and an influx of dopamine — all of which we get on vacation.
When you have time to indulge your hobbies — mountain biking, cross-stitch, video games — your brain can combine ideas in ways you least expect. By taking a vacation, you increase your adaptability to learn and create in profound ways.
Enshrining our principles: Try creating your own vacation shared document for your team.
Vacation principles, like any other, must be easy to understand and easy to locate.
They enshrine theirs in Notion, and heavily reference them from elsewhere.
Oversharing vacation plans: Create a public vacation channel just for sharing vacation ideas and tips.
The biggest fear teammates have about vacation is leaving colleagues high and dry. They mitigate this by sharing early and often.
This reduces anxiety, allows for better planning, and — as a bonus — sparks great conversations about the vacations themselves!
Leading by example: Make sure you take vacations yourself and nudge your team as much as possible to do the same.
The founder of Superhuman takes a week of vacation every quarter, during which they disconnect completely.
Not only does this encourage the behavior, it also steels the company to become more resilient.
