The story

I’m back from a Mexican vacation with my wife’s family of 14: 8 adults and 6 kids ages 3 to 12. 

I take a long time to settle into vacation mode. This time was even harder.

A successful interview in the chaos of the airport lounge that went well enough I was tasked with a "45-minute" assignment that took three hours (they always do). Client emails, content approvals, and a strategy call with a startup. I was in Mexico, yet still at my desk, albeit a warmer one.

But Thursday, 3.5 days into the vacation, I felt it. It’s like a fog that rolls in when a pattern breaks. My mind stills. I stare at nothing. It clicks. It’s a natural drug akin to a couple of drinks and maybe a few adult gummies.

Off the merry-go-round. I stumble, find my feet, step forward.

Here's what's actually happening in that moment: Our brains have a self-preservation trick called habituation. Repeat a pattern long enough, and it stops registering it entirely. 

The alarm. The commute. The inbox. The routine isn't just boring; it becomes invisible. Your brain simply stops paying attention. Ever drive a long straight road and forget what you’ve been doing for the last 20 minutes? How did I not crash?

Then, suddenly, a break. New stimuli:  a new place, a new rhythm, even a new sport, they all wake the brain back up, releasing dopamine, and slowing down time. That foggy feeling I felt, science says that's our nervous systems blinking back to life after a long, uninterrupted sleep.

The irony is we're told to want the opposite. 

Optimize the routine, refine it. Achieve peak efficiency where the cogs whir, well-greased, perfectly timed.

Sleep > Wake > Workout > Work > Repeat. Macro, micro nutrients. Anti-aging. Vitamins. Cold plunges. 

And there I was, on vacation, on my laptop, while my kids looked back at me, wondering where their dad was.

One week, in one year, in many. And I was laser-focused on the work.

After I hit send on that last assignment, something settled. Work shouldn't take up so much of a life, because when work isn't good, it creeps into my life, seeping into other areas. Yet, work is a small subset of a life well lived — we've written about it before, in the wheel of life and starting with the end in mind. Justin wrote about it

We spend just under 25% of our time working, but our identities, our lives,  are so much more.

It doesn't have to be a week in Mexico, just something new — something that interrupts the pattern, wakes the brain up, and hands you back the other 75%. Justin told us how to make magic happen at that time.

I played pickleball. I walked through poor neighbourhoods and rich tourist traps, and along the beach in the sand. I discovered these new moments because I was, my brain was, on vacation. 

Pebble: Take this to your boss

Roughly 66% of American workers want European-style extended PTO. In Canada, many would trade salary for more time off. The US remains the only advanced economy with no federal law mandating paid vacation, while the EU minimum is 20 days.

The usual argument against it: productivity tanks, GDP shrinks, civilization crumbles.

Not only is that nonsense — it's non-sense.

Unused vacation days already cost the US economy over $230 billion in lost consumer spending. More leisure time likely means more spent on leisure. Maybe people work longer, more willingly, instead of white-knuckling it to 65 so they can finally sit still in Florida, bored out of their minds.

The French are still productive on the rare occasions they're not on holiday. German cars are still everywhere, despite six weeks of annual leave.

The counter-argument assumes an economy runs like a machine: if it sits idle, it loses value. But an economy is a complex system, and complex systems don't work that way. As Rory Sutherland, creative strategist at Ogilvy, puts it: "Machines don't allow for magic. But complex systems do."

The challenge:

You don't need a flight. You don't need a week.

Pick one thing this week that isn't on your list, isn't optimized, and isn't something you've done in a while. Go to a museum you've driven past a hundred times. Walk into an art gallery with no agenda. Book a dinner with someone you've been meaning to call for two years (you know exactly who I'm talking about). See a movie by yourself, no compromises on what's playing.

Small counts. Weird counts. Solo counts.

Let your brain blink back to life.

That foggy, still, staring-into-nothing moment? That's not laziness. That's the 75% reminding you it exists.