Tips for Keeping That Post-Vacation Feeling

A colleague recently returned from a trip to Europe with that unmistakable just-back-from-vacation glow. Striving to hold on to it for as long as possible, she deployed various strategies including placing her used boarding passes front and center on her desk, and leaving receipts from the TV Tower in Berlin and the Eiffel Tower in Paris on a bedroom chest of drawers that she passes each morning.

“It just surrounds me,” she said of the strategic placement of her vacation mementos. “It sustains that warm vibe.”

She also made a point of incorporating items that she bought during her trip into her daily life back in New York. In Berlin, for instance, she picked up a silver Bodum milk frother with the idea that when she returned home she would make her coffee the way a friend made it for her each morning in Berlin. (Yes, she could have bought a Bodum frother in New York, but hers is imbued with meaning because she purchased it in Berlin where her friend bought hers.) Wearing clothes acquired on vacation also helps, she said, especially if you first wore that new dress to a jazz club or while strolling from the Latin Quarter to the Marais.

“It brings back the memories,” she said, “because you’re wearing the memories.”

I liked her strategies and began wondering about other potential vacation-extending tactics.

A number of studies suggest that much pleasure can be derived from actively anticipating a vacation: looking at photos of the places you plan to visit, reading about the culture, making dinner reservations, or simply imagining yourself enjoying your time there.

Maintaining pleasure after a great vacation is more challenging.

Researchers have found that the glow, if achieved at all, fades quickly. Indeed, one such study, published in 2010 in Applied Research in Quality of Life, surveyed 1,530 Dutch individuals and noted that only vacationers who said they had a “very relaxed” trip benefited in terms of post-trip happiness. And even among that group, the post-vacation high lasted a mere two weeks or so.
Read More: www.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/travel/tips-for-keeping-that-post-vacation-feeling.html
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