What’s The Ideal Vacation Length for Peak Relaxation?

By Robert McGarvey

Just how long should a vacation be?

I ponder this because in the past three years I have enjoyed month long vacations in Spain twice – but I also very much am enjoying two night camping trips around the Southwest. Is one length better than another?

Note: I am pretty sure I am not ready for a month-long camping outing.  Would the back hold up doing 30 nights on hardback dirt?

But I’m intrigued by this question, as is WaPo which just ran a piece that explored exactly this question.  

Reporter Andrea Sachs pointed to research that claimed “H&W [health and well-being] increased quickly during vacation, peaked on the eighth vacation day and had rapidly returned to baseline level within the first week of work resumption.”

Your mileage may vary. 

Sachs added: “‘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.”

That’s the rub.  

And it gets more complicated still.  It may vary in one individual, at least I know it does in me.  I have done many cruises and, honestly, around about the 8th day  I am counting down to the voyage’s end.  I have enjoyed the first week but then I simply get bored with the routine on the ship and I want to escape regimentation.  Pronto.

But then there are my month long trips to Spain where I’ve walked hundreds of miles along the Camino de Santiago and, yeah, around about the time I’ve entered Santiago I am plotting my way home – but that’s after a month on the path.

There is one point on which vacation researchers agree: vacations increase life satisfaction.  Hard to argue with that, even if it seems a rather nebulous claim. 

I also will admit to going 10+ years without a vacation as such, in the years right after moving to Los Angeles. I had been I had been a northeast corridor guy – Boston to DC – my entire life until the move and LA and the nearby environs all seemed so different I kept myself busy locally. I also traveled a lot for business in that era and that alone filled my travel quota.

So do we know anything about the proper vacation length? Sachs added this from the research: “We should take several shorter vacations throughout the year instead of blowing all of our leave on one epic trip.”

Hmm. You must know multiple Europeans – Germans in particular – who every year take a month long vacation. The ones I’ve talked to, swear by the recuperative value of a long absence from work.  

My guess is that the answer to the what’s the ideal vacation length question is entirely individual – and, in my case at least, the ideal length varies with what I am doing on holiday.  In some cases a couple days is about right, just as in other cases I’m all in for a month.

Another, important variable – noted by Sachs – is how long it takes to get where you’re going.  If it’s a two hour drive to Sedona, as it is for me, two or three days on the ground (in my case, literally) is about right.

If it’s a full day going to Lisbon or Madrid, as it is for me, a lot longer on the ground is required before I begin to feel the trip has had an impact on me.

As I pull on this string I increasingly begin to believe that this is a case where research is done because it is done.

What can we positively conclude from the many threads of research:

Vacations are good for us

Vacation leave us refreshed.

But not all of us need a vacation every year and, as for the right length, it all depends on how long it took to get there, what we are doing, and what we will be returning to.

If it feels right to you, well, it is.