Routine Is More Restful Than Vacation

I’ve realized over the last few years that vacation is not often a very restful time. Many wiser people than me have already made this observation, there are probably books about it.

It’s an odd paradigm, because though the whole idea of a vacation is often to rest from the work that you’re doing, how many people come back from a vacation and say “I need a vacation from my vacation”?

I’ve realized for myself the culprit. I am someone who loves change. I love exploring and going other places. Seeing something new. However, I am also a creature of habit. Unfortunately, my sinful nature tends to gravitate to the bad habits. It takes me weeks to implement new routines into my day. TO make sure that I actually do something. When it’s something I haven’t done for years of my life, it’s extremely hard for me to put something new in place.

Routines help me a ton. When I can work at a routine and be on a system for how I’m going to go about a day, I can become a productive worker. The routines help guide my day so that each thing that I do, my brain steps right in sync with it and cranks it out.

The probably with vacation is that for most of them, my brain goes into a mode where it says “I can shut off now from the regular routine. I’m not needed here.” Then I have this weird tug of war between what my body is trained by routine to do, and my brain saying that it’s done doing that. The mental battle is exhausting.

For some reason I can’t train my brain to just turn some routines in hibernation mode for a week or two. It’s either all in or all out, so then when I get back from the vacation, my brain has to start all over again on creating the routines, and it’s an exhausting thought. Not to mention, my brain is already worked from the new information it’s been receiving wherever I was and the constant need to suppress some of the old habits it had formed.

I have a tendency to treat routine like a ball and chain, but in reality, routine is one of the most freeing things you can do for yourself to enjoy your life to a greater degree.