Alexandra Samuel - Harvard Business Review: Vacations are for unplugging: we all need to escape the daily grind from time to time, after all. But that doesn’t have to mean unplugging from the entire internet. In fact, you may have a more enjoyable and meaningful vacation by staying connected–as long as you’re staying connected to fun, friends, and family, rather than to work.
4 comments:
I am glad I found this article because this is what my family has a problem with because we are so use to now to traveling and not being in home. I think it is good that you can still be on vacation and be unplugged but not fully unplugged to life. The thing that people have to learn I think is how to be connected but know how to get away and still enjoy their vacation with their families. They say a plan can help balance everything but I think it would work at least works for us if nothing is planned and everything is just the spur of the moment things. I think that vacation should be fun and enjoyable and not have to worry about anything for that long that you are on vacation. Unplugging yourself from your work I think can make it more enjoyable then being stress and then making everyone else stress around you. Enjoy the vacation when it last.
Lyla Bartman
Vacations, or, should I say, va-cray-tions. My family and I go on vacations twice a year and every single time we head out on an adventure we attempt to make a plan to put the phones in the safe. After that plan inevitably fails due to my sister being fundamentally unable to keep the phone out of her face my mom has to resort to plans where kelly, my sister, can't use her phone because of cellular restrictions. Our family favorite is cruises, since the second we leave the docks all the phones fly into the safe. Although this has usually been a great success, it also prohibits us from having any contact with the folks at home. I’m sure there is has to be a happy medium for every family, be it making a plan and having a schedule detailing to when you can use a device, or, for families like mine, saying that if the phone is seen anywhere close to your hands it ends up stacked in the middle of the table along with everyone else who was brave enough to try to sneak a peak.
As an unemployed sixteen year old, I really don't have much experience with separating my work life from vacation time. However, I am familiar with separating my social media life with my life here at Carnegie Mellon. Back home, I will sadly admit to being hyper connected. I can say with certainty that about 80% of my waking time back home is spent messaging someone, waiting for someone to message back, consuming others' social media material, or producing my own social media material. However, here at pre-c, I have two things that occupy my time instead: work, and interaction with actual human beings. How do I stay in contact with my friends and followers, when I have shit to do here?
I found a happy medium in blogging. Instead of having to repeat to everyone every detail of my life here, I just write down my experiences and post it on my blogging site. Now, not only are my followers up to date on my life here, but I also have a log of memories from this summer. As for my friends who aren't on that particular website, I'm blatantly ignoring them.
Turning off the incessant emails and updates slows down life a lot, and enables you to really relax- but there’s a point in road trips where an audiobook beats singing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” for a stimulating 5th time. Then again, vacations are often meant for seeing and doing things you’ve always been interested in, and with one eye on a screen at any given point, fully appreciating your surroundings may be hard to do. So why is it that we need someone to tell us how to vacation, in a 16 step process? The amount of time it would take to make the suggested technological modifications recommended in this list may be a smidge lengthy, and monitoring what goes into your vacation email may not be a top priority when you’re trying to kick back and relax. Then when you get back from your vacation, re-connecting your work email may take away from the time you have to get your actual work done. While on vacation, everyone has the ability to make good decisions for themselves on how to pass the time in the most tranquil way possible, with or without technology in hand.
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