Food for Thought for PIOs 6-18-2025
The vacation edition
PIOs—
As I mentioned last week, I'm pretty much beyond signal this week, and I’m not checking email or the news. That's what vacations are for. So, on that note, I’m resending an updated Food for Thought post from 2021 regarding vacations and why they're important, vacation humor, and a poem about vacations, of course.
And remember, Friday, June 20, is the summer solstice when the sun reaches its northernmost point of the year. Enjoy your longest day of sunlight—winter is coming.
David David Vossbrink, APR, Fellow PRSA Communications Counsel dvossbrink@yahoo.com | 408-368-5637
1. The right way to unplug when you’re on vacation.
https://hbr.org/2014/07/the-right-way-to-unplug-when-youre-on-vacation
“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.
“That takes a combination of planning, tech tricks, and self-discipline. In an ideal world, you’d work-proof your devices and online activities so that you could use the phone, computer or internet without coming into contact with any work-related stuff.
“The biggest obstacle to disconnecting isn’t technology: it’s your own level of commitment or compulsion when it comes to work. If you work 80 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you may find it pretty hard to get your head out of the office—and even harder to break the Pavlovian association between hearing the ping of an incoming email and immediately shifting into work brain.
“That association is exactly why it’s so useful to develop strategies that put your devices in vacation mode. You probably don’t leave Oreos in the cupboard when you’re dieting; for the same reason, it’s best to put work out of arm’s reach when you’re on vacation. Instead of relying on sheer willpower to keep you from checking in on work, you can use your vacation tech setup—and a little up-front planning—to support your efforts to minimize work time.”
• Thinking of skipping vacation? Don’t!
https://hbr.org/2020/08/thinking-of-skipping-vacation-dont
“Several studies indicate that performance nose-dives when we work for extended periods without a break. In addition, the benefits of taking a vacation are clear: It results in improved productivity, lower stress and better overall mental health. It also spurs greater creativity”
2. Funny out-of-office messages.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/hilarious-out-of-office-message/
“Leaving for vacation? Heading to a work conference? Beset with the flu? You’re taking a break from email correspondence, which means it’s time to set up the dreaded “out of office” message. Not only is it a bore to write, most people will be less than delighted to read it when they were expecting a real response from you.
“But what if you could turn this necessary evil into a way of engaging with people that’s informative, memorable, and even fun? Maybe they wouldn’t be as disappointed to get your away message instead of getting you.”
3. Where was the birthplace of the American vacation? First in rustic tents and later in elaborate resorts, city dwellers took to the Adirondacks to explore the joys of the wilderness.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/where-was-the-birthplace-of-the-american-vacation-5520155/?all
“This radical notion [of a vacation in the wilderness] had gained currency among Europeans since the Romantic age, but America was still building its leisured classes and the idea had not yet caught on with the general public. In 1869, after the horrors of the Civil War and amid the country’s rapid industrialization, [William H. H.] Murray’s book became a surprise best seller.
“Readers were enthralled by his vision of a pure, Edenic world in the Adirondacks, where hundreds of forest-swathed lakes were gleaming ‘like gems...amid the folds of emerald-colored velvet.’
“Murray argued that American cities were disease-ridden and filled with pressures that created ‘an intense, unnatural and often fatal tension’ in their unhappy denizens. The wilderness, by contrast, restored both the spirit and body.
“‘No axe has sounded along its mountainsides, or echoed across its peaceful waters,’ Murray enthused, so ‘the spruce, hemlock, balsam and pine...yield upon the air, and especially at night, all their curative qualities.’
“What’s more, Murray pointed out, a new train line that had opened the year before meant this magical world was only 36 hours’ travel from New York City or Boston. The vision struck a deep chord, and his book ran into ten editions within four months.
“The Adirondacks were soon booming. By 1875, some 200 hotels and camps were operating in the mountains, with new stagecoach services rattling from the train stations and steamboats plying the lakes. By 1900, the Adirondacks’ summer population had risen to around 25,000 from 3,000 in 1869.”
4. The five types of summer vacation. Each of them has a distinctive structure and a complex history.
https://daily.jstor.org/the-five-types-of-summer-vacation/
“Scholarship on tourism and vacation suggests that there are actually five distinct kinds of vacations that people these days tend to take: The Paradise; The Wild; The Ruin; The Living Culture; and The Playground.
“If a list of types makes vacations sound about as prepackaged and mass produced as airplane food, it’s because they are. Scholars who study tourism have found that there’s actually a surprisingly narrow range of ways that people can go on holiday.”
5. We’re offering unlimited vacation in a totally chill, non-guilt-inducing way! [McSweeney’s]
“Studies have shown that an environment free of strict rules is beneficial for its members. We’ve already tested this type of environment in toddler control groups, so we are going to extrapolate this culture and apply it to our work fam.
“We’re hoping this creates more of an ‘adult work environment’ where you quantify your value as an employee here and take off as much as you think you’re worthy of taking. We also understand you all have demands and interests beyond work that can’t always be scheduled in advance, so just a quick heads-up email before you bounce would be much appresh’d.”
6. Vacation quotes.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/vacation
“After all, the best part of a holiday is perhaps not so much to be resting yourself, as to see all the other fellows busy working.” —Kenneth Grahame, “The Wind in thecWillows”
7. Take a vacation inside an oversized sweatshirt.
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/daily-shouts/take-a-vacation-inside-an-oversized-sweatshirt
“What would you say if I told you of a place where you can get away from it all that’s warm, luxurious, and affordable?
“Retreat yourself at inside an oversized sweatshirt!
“At inside an oversized sweatshirt, the temperature is always somewhere between 98.6 degrees and the temperature of the outside world!
“Whether you’re looking for something short- or long-term, inside an oversized sweatshirt is the place to vacation during these interminable months before spring actually feels like spring.
“Also available for election season and the flu! See you there!”
8. The Vacation, by Wendell Berry.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/56192/the-vacation-56d238779b2aa
Once there was a man who filmed his vacation. He went flying down the river in his boat with his video camera to his eye, making a moving picture of the moving river upon which his sleek boat moved swiftly toward the end of his vacation. He showed his vacation to his camera, which pictured it, preserving it forever: the river, the trees, the sky, the light, the bow of his rushing boat behind which he stood with his camera preserving his vacation even as he was having it so that after he had had it he would still have it. It would be there. With a flick of a switch, there it would be. But he would not be in it. He would never be in it.