Take a minute to recall your last vacation. Maybe you jetted off to an exotic seaside location and awoke to the sound of crashing waves or snuggled up in front of a fireplace at an Airbnb in the mountains. No matter your locale, you probably didn’t jump out of bed in the morning to get a head start on your to-do list. Perhaps you smiled more, savored your coffee, and got cozy with your loved ones. Though we sense it intuitively, decades of research confirm that vacations tend to leave us happier, healthier, and more restored.
Of course, most (all?) of us can’t escape our daily lives for a week or two whenever we need a refresh, but it turns out that it may be possible to reap some of those vacation rewards without leaving town or taking extended time off. In a recent study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers divided 441 full-time workers into two groups and told the first group to treat their weekend like a vacation and the second to treat it like a typical weekend. Participants reported their happiness on a scale of one to seven on Friday and again on Monday, accounting for enjoyment, stress, worry, and satisfaction. The results? The participants in vacation mode not only enjoyed their weekends more, but also felt happier, less stressed, and more satisfied at work on Monday.
SELF spoke to one of the study’s co-authors, Cassie Holmes, PhD, a time and happiness researcher at UCLA and the author of the new book Happier Hour: How to Beat Distraction, Expand Your Time, and Focus on What Matters Most, to get some of her best tips for truly refreshing weekends (or days off, if you don’t have a Monday to Friday gig). Yep, even if you have a bunch of stuff to do.
Make slight tweaks to your schedule to shift out of the daily grind.
If you can escape to Maui and get paid for your time away, by all means, board that plane. But Dr. Holmes’s research suggests that you can still experience a vacation-like lift at home without getting scuba certified or spending a full day at the spa. The key to a more restful weekend, according to the behavior changes Dr. Holmes and her colleagues observed in the study’s participants, is making small tweaks to your schedule that make it feel more leisurely. “The ‘vacation’ group spent a little less time on housework, a little less time on work work, and a little more time savoring their meals,” Dr. Holmes says. That means you can still have time to check off your important to-dos while adopting a vacation mindset.
Why did these minor shifts lead to major wellness improvements? What seemed to matter most was how present people felt, Dr. Holmes explains. And while the link between engagement in the moment and happiness is well-documented, in this experiment, no one needed intensive mindfulness training to get results. “We didn’t tell people to be more engaged,” says Dr. Holmes. “But there’s something about a vacation mindset, a sort of respite from that constant running of the to-do list, that was related to a greater sense of presence and well-being.”
To put these findings to use in your own life, Dr. Holmes says to try reframing the time you have off from work as a vacation in your mind. That might look like turning off your alarm, lingering in bed with your partner—even just for a few extra minutes—or sitting down and savoring your favorite breakfast instead of shoving a protein bar in your mouth as you run out the door to start errands.
Relegate chores (and work) to a single block of time.
Most of us would love to treat our weekends like a vacation but also have a long list of chores to catch up on during our days off—which, ugh. In a 2004 study Dr. Holmes cites in Happier Hour, researchers asked 900 working women to track how they spent their time, as well as how they felt in those moments. The data from that study categorized household chores among the participants’ least enjoyable hours (alongside work and commuting).
“Dreading those chores, we often put them off and tell ourselves we have to get to them at some point, and then we wait until the Sunday scaries hit and our chores are still looming,” Dr. Holmes says. The problem with that approach is that the anticipation of what you have to do can make you anxious, take you out of the moment, and just be a real downer overall.
To minimize the buzzkill, Dr. Holmes says to try lumping housework into one chunk of the weekend and schedule it, so you’re not anticipating it in the back (or front) of your mind. For example, if you designate Saturday morning as your chore time, then you know starting Saturday at noon, the rest of the weekend is your time off. Or even if you plan to do laundry and dusting on Sunday afternoon, knowing it’s going to get done then can help you focus on more enjoyable things beforehand. That small mindset shift could prevent you from feeling like your days off are littered with pesky to-dos, according to Dr. Holmes.
Thinking about work in your free time can also taint otherwise good hours, especially if your preoccupation bleeds into your self-care activities or interactions with loved ones. If you can unplug completely from work on your days off, that’s a great way to invest in your happiness, Dr. Holmes says. But if you can’t, try isolating it to one block of time—as with chores—rather than peppering every hour with a quick email check.
Aim for awe when you can.
Have you ever floated in the ocean, hiked a mountainous pass, or gazed into a baby’s eyes and felt like your heart might explode? Like time stands still and suddenly everything feels possible? There’s a word for that. “Awe is a feeling that’s elicited when you’re exposed to something so perceptually vast that it alters your understanding of the world, at least for the moment,” writes Dr. Holmes in Happier Hour. And weekends can offer the biggest awe bang for your buck since you have time away from the workweek chaos.
“In moments of awe, nothing feels limiting—certainly not the minutiae of your day’s schedule,” says Dr. Holmes. Even better, when you experience and reflect on awe, you can alter how you perceive time. In one 2012 study in the journal Psychological Science, researchers compared how people felt when reflecting on a happy event versus a truly awe-inspiring one from their own lives. They found that those who recalled the awe said they felt less hurried, and as if they had more time.
Next time you’re off from work, seek out awe-inspiring activities, if you can: Find a nearby scenic trail you can hike, set your alarm to watch the sunrise (but go to bed earlier the night before so you’re not infringing on your sleep), or schedule a visit to a local garden or art exhibit that speaks to you. You might just emerge from your time off a little more satisfied with life in general.
Keep yourself honest with “commitment devices.”
Most activities that bring us joy, awe, and mental rejuvenation are optional, which is why they’re easy to skip (you don’t NEED to meditate or make those peanut-butter-banana pancakes your favorite food blogger posted last week). To prevent yourself from missing out on opportunities that would meaningfully help you recharge, Dr. Holmes suggests employing what behavioral economists call “commitment devices,” or ways to lock yourself into following through on a goal. In terms of prioritizing restful weekend activities, that might mean booking a nonrefundable yoga class, making a coffee date with a friend, or picking up the ingredients for those pillowy pancakes on Friday afternoon. The idea is that you’re more likely to stick to your vacation-like plans if you have a little incentive.
Try not to take the people and things that bring you joy for granted.
Days off are ripe with opportunities to savor ordinary life, and you may be more inclined to do so if you’re aware of time’s fleeting nature, says Dr. Holmes. It’s easy to assume you’ll have plenty of opportunities to have dinner with your aging parents, say, or jog with your dog. But if you think about it, those experiences are finite in number, and you may be able to enjoy them more fully by turning to what Dr. Holmes calls the “times left exercise.”
To get started, think back over the last couple of weeks and identify the moments in which you felt the most joy. These will likely be mundane things involving someone or something you love, Dr. Holmes says, like debating the merits of watching Ted Lasso vs. Schitt’s Creek (again) with your partner or taking the long drive to the pond so your furry friend can take a dip.
Now, count how many times you've done that thing, making sure to consider how circumstances change over time. (The Oscars happen every year, but you and your bestie rarely get to watch them together anymore since you don’t share a dorm room; your parents might invite you to dinner every Sunday, but they’re approaching their 70s and might not have decades left.) After you’ve counted roughly how many times you’ve done the beloved thing and approximately how many times you have left, you’ll see, for example, that you’ve experienced 87% of your walks to preschool; you’re 52% done soaking in autumn sunsets; you’ve had 95% of your life’s morning coffees at Grandma’s house.
This exercise isn’t as grim as it may sound. You know that feeling when you look back on a particularly fond memory and wish you realized what you had when you had it? That’s what you’re going for: Cultivating an appreciation for the good things right now, in order to make the weekend—and the rest of your days—more satisfying. “The point isn’t to make us sad,” Dr. Holmes says. “It’s to ensure that we make time for experiences that bring us joy.”
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