Latest / All Figured Out with Andrea Barr: Figuring Out Work, Life and Parenting / 124. 4 vacation myths that are keeping working parents burned out - Jennica Day

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124. 4 vacation myths that are keeping working parents burned out - Jennica Day · All Figured Out with Andrea Barr: Figuring Out Work, Life and Parenting

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  This is all figured out. I'm Andrea Barr.
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  I'm a career coach for parents, a mom of two, and I absolutely
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  believe that you can continue to grow personally and
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  professionally while protecting family time.
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  We're about to figure out this work, life and parenting stuff
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  out together. Jennica Day, we've done it.
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  There was illness. There were five children between
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  us that we were trying to wrangle.
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  And we're here. Thank you so much for coming on
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  the All Figure Out podcast. Thank you for having me.
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  It is wonderful. We were talking before
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  Christmas, before the holiday season, and we were like, oh, we
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  should try to get this out before the Christmas season.
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  And you know what, I am so happy that for this particular topic,
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  we are going to be airing this. We'll get this out quickly
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  because we're doing this in January before March break or as
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  spring break as you call it here, which I think is going to
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  be phenomenal. Yeah, because spring break is
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  definitely a time where, yeah, it's just like this
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  quintessential one or two week period where you're like, oh,
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  great, OK, we've just sprinted for the first bit of the year,
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  Now we can take a pause. But before we get into
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  vacations, I have to tell you, I'm so excited about this.
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  Who doesn't love vacations? It's a yeah, it's, it's a great
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  topic. It really is.
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  It's the best, yeah. I want to go back.
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  You were a, I was going to say pro wrestler.
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  I want to say pro wrestler. You are varsity wrestler, Simon
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  Fraser University. Tell me more about that.
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  How did you get into wrestling? What was that experience like to
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  do that sport at that level? Tell me everything.
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  Yeah, so it was kind of random that I went into wrestling, I
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  played basketball, and our basketball team kind of like
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  folded one year. It's a whole other story.
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  I'm sorry. Yeah, it was fun.
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  And my friend's dad, who was also my soccer coach, he.
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  Told me. Sports.
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  Yeah, all the sports. I did all the sports.
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  He was the coach of the wrestling team and our school.
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  And he was like, you don't have basketball this semester, why
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  don't you come just try wrestling?
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  And I was like, OK, like I'll try it and we'll just see.
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  And then I just kept doing it in high school.
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  And then, um, I did like decently well at it.
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  And then the SFU coach offered me a scholarship and I was like,
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  oh, you're going to pay for my schooling.
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  OK, I'll take it. Wow, Was there a passion there
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  or did it feel like it was like a very enticed by the
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  scholarship like. Yeah, I wouldn't say there was a
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  passion. I feel like I just kind of like
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  fell into it and I just kept doing.
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  I didn't hate it. I didn't love it.
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  OK. I feel, yeah, I feel like it was
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  a good like run and it was a good time in my life.
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  But it definitely wasn't like my passion for sure.
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  There were other people who were like, going to make the Olympic
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  team, like I'm gonna get a gold medal, like all those things.
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  And it just wasn't wasn't me so. Yeah.
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  Now did the basketball team ever come back?
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  As a former basketball player myself, I'm like invested in
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  that piece of this part. No, it was kind of drama because
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  there was it was like a new coach that came in and everyone
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  on like the Grade 10 team had to try out for the senior team
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  because they wanted to win the like provincials in X year and
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  all that. So it was drama.
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  And then a bunch of the girls on our team just we were all like,
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  we're not going to play type of thing.
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  So we'll lock out a little bit of a walk out.
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  Yeah, yeah. Quite the history.
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  Yeah. Now Fast forward, you have three
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  boys. And before we hit recording, I
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  was like, Jennica, I cannot believe you're a wrestler.
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  How cool is that? You said it just has prepared
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  you for motherhood with three boys.
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  How has it prepared you for this very physical stage of life?
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  Yeah, well, I mean, I just with three boys, you notice that
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  wrestling is just like a natural thing that they want to do.
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  They're like little bear Cubs rolling around all day.
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  Like even my youngest, he's 2 and he gets in there now, like
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  he's on top of them. He, like, wants to be part of
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  the crew. So yeah, I just feel like having
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  three boys was like my calling. It was like somebody was saying,
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  like, this girl was a wrestler and now she's going to have
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  three boys. Now the girls couldn't do it
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  either. I would love to have girls too,
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  but yes, they're just, yeah, it was like my calling to come in
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  and teach them how to, you know, wrestle properly.
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  Yeah, wrestle property. I love that.
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  OK, now tell me about I want to, I'm going to stay on this
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  wrestling for a bit because I just think it's so I think it's
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  so cool. And also I'm so interested in
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  things like this. My husband, I was telling you,
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  did Taekwondo, and he really credits the discipline that's
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  created and also like the appreciation for the art form
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  that is some of these sports or, you know, that is the the
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  athleticism behind wrestling, Taekwondo, martial arts.
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  But then for those of us who are listening who didn't grow up
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  with this, how do you reconcile the physical side of it that
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  feels like it might be promoting that type of physicality and,
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  like fighting. Yeah.
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  And how do you teach it so that it's like, no, no, this is safe
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  in this space, done in a right way.
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  So how do you incorporate something like wrestling in a
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  way that feels safe for your kids?
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  Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that's one
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  of the cool things about it is that I notice them wrestling and
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  I can step in and say, OK, there's no hitting, there's no
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  punching, there's no kicking. This is a sport.
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  And so we use our physical ability and our intelligence to
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  beat the other person. It's not punching or kicking or
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  hurting. So it's, I just think that it's
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  such a great way to teach kids how to be physical, like with
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  kind of their natural instincts, but teach them how to keep it
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  safe. And it's still, you know, like
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  intelligence is behind, like how you win that.
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  Is really, really cool. And I guess same for some of
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  these mixed martial arts that are actually more physical,
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  where there is kicking, there is hitting.
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  I guess there is. There's got to be a way that
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  probably in your training they're like, yeah, yeah, this
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  is all good here because this is a sport.
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  It's like you're not gonna take a baseball bat on the street and
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  just start like whacking people with balls.
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  Like there's a time and a place for these things.
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  Is that kind of what's instilled when you're learning?
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  It, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's, yeah, like I said, it's
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  intelligent. Like you really have to outsmart
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  your obviously you have to be strong too, but you have to
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  outsmart them. You have to get them pinned on
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  their back. That's the whole point.
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  So it's doing that without hurting them.
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  I mean, sometimes you get hurt. Yeah, Oh my gosh.
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  Now, have you ever taken on your husband and do you think you
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  would win? So my husband and I are
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  different weight classes. I like to think if we were the
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  same weight class that I would win.
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  OK. But just to sheer size alone, I
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  think would yeah, he would. He would.
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  He would win. He would definitely win, yeah.
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  But you have the intelligence side of things.
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  Yes, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. And he's got maybe brute force,
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  just with weight. Yeah, I mean, he could just like
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  lie on top of me and I wouldn't be able to get out.
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  So Oh my God, that. OK.
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  So the genesis of your vacation story and how you have become
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  such a niche expert in such a fabulous space, which is
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  vacationing, and I know there's so much more to it.
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  You told me that you went to Cancun.
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  You moved to Cancun for a few years because you're like
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  permanent vacation. Tell us, tell us about that move
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  before you had children, before you were married.
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  What was the impetus for that? Yeah, so after I graduated
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  university, I became a teacher and I really wanted to travel.
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  I knew a couple of friends who did international teaching and
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  international schools all around the world, and I wanted to go to
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  Latin America because I traveled there a lot and I just kind of
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  randomly found the school in Cancun and applied while I was
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  down there on vacation, actually, yeah.
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  Like the people who buy houses while they're on vacation.
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  Yeah, it was so random. And yeah, went into the school
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  and, like interviewed and they were like, you can come back in
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  September and you have a job. So yeah, just move down there.
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  I taught chemistry and biology in an International School.
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  There was an American school and yeah, just had like 3 years
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  there in Cancun. Um, the crazy part was though,
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  is that I went down there thinking, you know, I'm going to
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  live in Cancun, I'm going to be on a permanent vacation.
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  This is going to be like the best ever.
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  I'm going to be so happy and healthy and all these things.
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  And then the reality was when I got down there, I was busy
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  because I had things to do. I wanted to be fluent in
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  Spanish, so I had a tutor. I wanted to learn salsa dancing.
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  I wanted to travel to all these cool places on the weekends.
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  And so my schedule filled up and I ended up a couple years in
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  feeling completely burned out. So yeah, the reality of that
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  move was different than I expected.
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  So it sounds like there was there's that grass is greener or
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  that, oh, if I were to just change where I live, everything
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  changes or but you know, that happens in life.
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  Like if I just change this one thing, everything in my life
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  will change. Like if I move to Cancun, yeah,
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  everything will just be I'll be tanned and happy, you know, but
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  sun safe. I'll be like running on the
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  beach. There'll be no seasonal affect.
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  But it's so interesting because I forgot who said it, but
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  there's like that you can go like anywhere, but they are used
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  to are like you yourself that like innate.
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  It sounds like high performing, high performer ability for of
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  yours is like it's going to follow you.
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  So you were like filling the space, it sounds like.
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  So, you know, what did you, first of all, I've got to ask,
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  what was it like to live in Cancun to like be there as
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  someone who that's a long time, three years, Yeah.
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  What was it like to just, you know, integrate?
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  Was there an integration or did you feel like you were part of
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  an expat community? How did that all go?
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  Um, it was both so I lived with two other girls, women, and so I
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  kind of integrated into having friends there, like local
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  friends. And then I also had kind of the
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  expat community, the other teachers at the school.
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  Yeah. So it was, I mean, it was
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  amazing. Like, I look back on it and it
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  was such a good experience. And the kids that I thought were
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  amazing. You, like, learned so much from
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  the kids as well. And then I traveled all over and
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  it was, yeah. Like, even now, I still have
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  friends. They were going back for spring
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  break. We go back every year.
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  And I visit my friends there. And my husband, although he's
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  from Mexico City, he's got family there, so we visit them,
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  too. So it really now feels like it's
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  like my second home, which is nice.
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  And then the kids are kids also feel like they're connected to
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  Mexico. Which is nice, Yeah.
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  Which is part of them, yeah, as well.
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  And part of you. Which is so neat, Yeah.
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  Now, did you meet your husband while you were down?
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  There I did. Yeah, this is another big reason
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  why the universe sent you. Yeah.
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  Amazing. It's so Did you teach together?
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  No, we met on Tinder. Oh my God, it was around then.
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  Crazy. It was weird.
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  It was like the time when Tinder had just come out.
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  Like it was the first people were like, what is this app?
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  This is interesting. And yeah, I downloaded it one of
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  like, within the first couple months, I think that it was out.
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  And it was so random that we met like we're always like, how did
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  we now create this life together?
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  Like if one tiny decision was different, we wouldn't be here.
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  Like, it's so strange to think about those things.
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  But he's from Mexico City and I was in Cancun and my roommate,
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  who's Mexican, she asked me to go to Mexico City with her
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  because she was going for a wedding.
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  And she, I think she asked me on like a Wednesday.
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  And she's like, do you want to come this Friday to go to a
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  wedding? And so I was like, I don't know,
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  OK, I'll go. And I just like, booked my
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  ticket. And so I went like Friday to
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  Sunday with her and she went to the wedding, but I couldn't go
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  because it was very, very inclusive for exclusive, I
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  should say very exclusive. And um, and so I was actually
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  going to meet up with this other guy that I had dated a little
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  bit. Love.
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  This story, I love the love story, but he, he kind of stood
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  me up that night. And I, it's a, it's a long
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  story, but I went out with another friend, a Mexican friend
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  that was also in Mexico City. And I was showing her Tinder
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  because she had just broken up with her boyfriend.
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  And so we were swiping, not really intentionally to meet
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  anybody, but I swiped on Daniel, my husband.
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  And he wrote me right away. Was just like, me and my friends
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  are going to this karaoke bar. Do you want to come with your
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  girlfriends? And I was like, OK, So we met up
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  at the karaoke bar and then hung out that night.
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  And then I went back to Cancun. He was in Mexico City.
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  And we did long distance for a little bit.
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  And then I ended up moving to Mexico City.
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  So I lived in Mexico City for one year after Cancun.
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  Yeah. And then we.
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  Yeah. And then I dragged him here
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  because I was like, we're having kids in Vancouver.
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  We're not staying Mexico. Ohe my gosh.
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  Wow, talk about stars aligning and just even the through line.
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  I just love a good through line, but the through line of being in
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  a tropical vacation destination, vacation destination for us.
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  And then now doing the work that you do and being passionate
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  about rest and vacationing. I think it's just so
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  unbelievable the fact that you just happened to meet him there.
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  Like, it just how cool. You have three boys.
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  You're teaching them wrestling. Like I just.
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  Yeah, God, isn't that so interesting when life, just life
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  for everybody, just works out the way it does?
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  Yeah. And yeah, like I said, sometimes
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  just like 1 little decision will like change the whole trajectory
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  of your life. It's kind of crazy.
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  If you could tell yourself when you were living in Cancun,
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  knowing what you know now about vacationing and like what it
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  means to vacation, like the location doesn't really matter,
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  is what it sounds like. And now you've said to me, what
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  would you tell yourself to avoid the burnout that you experienced
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  when you were in Cancun? Yeah.
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  Oh, there's so many things. Like when I came back from
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  Cancun, I actually did an MBA at SFU and I transitioned into this
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  career in ecommerce, which is like a fast-paced, you know, you
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  kind of have to be up at night sometimes, like watching the
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  websites. And so I went from having ten
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  weeks of vacation in Cancun and I came back and worked in this
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  job where I had two weeks of vacation and I was like, I was
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  burned out with 10 weeks of vacation.
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  Like how am I going to do 2 weeks of vacation?
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  Like this isn't gonna work. And so I ended up like just kind
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  of diving into the research and thinking like, OK, how do I make
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  this work? Like, how can I take better time
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  off? What is the research say about
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  restaurant recovery? You know, I kind of studied like
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  physical recovery. What does it mean with like
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  mental recovery? And I found all this really
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  interesting information, and that was kind of like what
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  brought me here now, like writing in the book.
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  It was kind of all this information that I discovered on
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  my own about rest and recovery. And then I started tweaking how
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  I took time off at work and kind of figured out kind of a method
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  to do that and what I should do on vacations, how often I should
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  take them and all those things. And then it kind of culminated
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  into this book. Um, yeah.
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  Circling back, what would I tell myself about burnout?
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  That a lot. I mean, I wrote an entire book.
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  Yes. So it's like, yeah.
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  There's, I mean, there's so much, but I think the main thing
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  was, is that I was, I mean, I wasn't vacationing properly.
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  I was busy. So with my time off, I felt like
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  I had to have a schedule. I had to travel.
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  I had to do all these things. I had to accomplish goals.
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  I had to, you know, there wasn't a lot of just sitting on the
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  beach, which is what you think when you go to Cancun you would
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  do, right. I mean, there were there were
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  times, you know, of course, when like a beautiful place, but I
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  think it was feeling the need to fill my schedule in my time off.
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  Which is what all of us do week after week, which is why, oh,
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  there's I, Oh my gosh, Jennica, how am I going to rain this in?
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  I say this every single time I record an episode.
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  But I just have so many questions because and we're
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  going to get into the idea of like the staycation or
• 16:19
  vacationing like in your own home and things like that.
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  But it sounds like it, I can imagine it's because there's
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  still responsibilities. Like you were living in an
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  apartment or a house. You still had, you know, to like
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  get groceries prepared for the week you were filling.
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  You said you're filling your schedule too much to not allow
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  for the spontaneity. Is that the piece that's missing
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  like the OR just doing what you please in that moment?
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  Like what is it? Yeah, I mean, I think I just
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  being down there, I really, I love travel.
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  So like very often on long weekends or when I had time off
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  from school, I would go, you know, I went to Guatemala, I
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  went to, I traveled within Mexico.
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  I went, I did the Galapagos Islands on the spring break.
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  Like I. Chill.
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  How chill. Yeah, which like, I mean, it's,
• 17:04
  it sounds like, oh, she's complaining about like because
• 17:07
  islands like. But it's it's like.
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  You know, it was this business. Yeah.
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  It was still busy. Yes.
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  And there wasn't a lot of downtime.
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  And same thing with, like, learning Spanish.
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  Like, I really wanted to learn Spanish, which is great.
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  I'm so glad that I did, but it was, you know, filling my
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  schedule with like a tutor and yeah, salsa dancing and all
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  those things, so. So what is downtime?
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  So if we wanna talk about like the research.
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  Get nerdy on me jacket. Nerdy.
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  Get nerdy. What the research says we should
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  do with our time off or our vacation time is the three main
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  things. So relax is one of them.
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  Yeah. And it's like, OK, relax, I can
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  do that. But it's also like, easier said
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  than done. I.
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  Can't do that. You can do that.
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  Who knows what Mom knows how to do?
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  That I know it's like even when I go get a massage, I'm like
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  thinking about like, oh, don't forget to change the laundry
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  when you get home. Like, oh, book this appointment.
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  Do that, you know, like so it's like, but it's truly like relax,
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  you know, turn off your brain, turn off your body and relax.
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  And that is a skill that we all need to practice, right?
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  So that's a big one. Another one which I would say
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  comes up the most in the research as the most important
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  thing to do is detach. So that means detaching from
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  work mentally and physically, so not being in the office, but
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  also not thinking about work when you're off, which is very
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  difficult nowadays. Emails in our hands, you know,
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  instant messaging, all those things.
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  So detaching is very, very important.
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  There's another aspect of detaching, which is detaching
• 18:50
  from something I call life work, which is all the other things
• 18:53
  that you do outside of regular office work that you need to do
• 18:58
  in order to keep your life afloat, childcare, finances,
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  anything in that bucket. And we need to detach from that
• 19:06
  as well. So it makes it difficult as a
• 19:08
  parent to vacation, right when we have to detach from
• 19:11
  childcare. Yes.
• 19:13
  And the last thing is control. So that means doing something
• 19:16
  that you truly want to do with your time.
• 19:19
  And sometimes we have a difficult time asking ourselves
• 19:22
  that question, what do I want to do?
• 19:24
  Sometimes I'll get time off like my husband will be like, OK, you
• 19:27
  go for four hours, you get a little micro vacation and I'm
• 19:30
  like, wait a minute, what do I want to do?
• 19:32
  Yes, wait a minute, I have free time, what am I going to do?
• 19:34
  So you really have to ask yourself that question, what is
• 19:37
  it that I want to do with my time even in those small
• 19:41
  moments? So those three things are the
• 19:44
  big ones for what really makes a vacation restful, and what
• 19:49
  really is going to give you the space to come back to work
• 19:51
  feeling better than before you left.
• 19:53
  OK, save them again. Relax.
• 19:56
  Ah yeah, that one. OK, relax.
• 19:59
  I notice you have a hard time with that one.
• 20:02
  Time with that one. OK, we'll get back to that.
• 20:05
  OK, Relax. Relax.
• 20:06
  OK, Detach. Detach.
• 20:09
  Yes, physically and spiritually and emotionally, from work all
• 20:13
  the way. And control.
• 20:17
  I liked that one too, as somebody whose family and
• 20:20
  similar to your husband as whose family lives away.
• 20:23
  So my family is all in Ontario and I'm like, I talk to my mom
• 20:26
  about this all the time. She's and my whole family are
• 20:28
  back in Ontario. We talk about like really having
• 20:31
  to balance and find that balance of going back and doing the
• 20:36
  visiting and not seeing that as a vacation, not seeing that as
• 20:41
  the piece that I feel actually in control of, which sounds
• 20:44
  crazy. And I freaking love my family
• 20:46
  and we have the best time And it's I don't want to use the
• 20:51
  word obligation. I don't want to use the word
• 20:54
  obligation. But it's just what we do.
• 20:57
  It's kind of part of our just like that's just, that's just
• 20:59
  what we do. It's not extra, extra, extra
• 21:03
  special or different. And for me, like I've also, I
• 21:06
  don't know, I don't know why I'm sharing this with you, but I
• 21:08
  also have have started to notice and I've mentioned this on the
• 21:11
  podcast that for me like variety, spontaneity, these are
• 21:14
  really important things to me. And so in my locus of control,
• 21:18
  things like spontaneity or let's try a different, I've talked
• 21:22
  about like just trying a different restaurant.
• 21:23
  Like for me, that's a vacation is not going to the same
• 21:27
  neighborhood pub every novelty novel.
• 21:30
  That's the word novelty is so huge for me.
• 21:33
  And it doesn't like we went to a new hotel and had a staycation,
• 21:36
  my husband and I, so we didn't break the bank.
• 21:38
  We spent, you know, good money. But the novelty of that
• 21:42
  staycation, I was saying to him every, I'm not kidding, every 10
• 21:46
  minutes, I'm having the best time.
• 21:49
  Yeah. I I had the best time and there
• 21:52
  wasn't. This is very privileged to say,
• 21:54
  but there really wasn't anything that's special about it apart
• 21:57
  from the fact that we were disconnected, removed.
• 22:00
  There was no life admin to be done.
• 22:02
  There was no headache of getting there was Vancouver.
• 22:05
  We went across 1 Bridge, so OK, so using that as the case, like
• 22:11
  as an example like what is it about that that felt so special?
• 22:16
  Yeah, I mean, I talk about it in my book.
• 22:18
  Novelty is it just it's doing something new that people feel.
• 22:24
  It's special, it's different, it's exciting.
• 22:27
  It's something out of your own routine.
• 22:30
  And that's what a vacation should be.
• 22:32
  It should. And it should be some.
• 22:34
  Yeah, something out of your own routine.
• 22:36
  Yes, yeah. OK, let's I wanna break down
• 22:40
  vacations from big to small. So let's go crazy.
• 22:45
  Tell me about why and when and what benefits one might get from
• 22:50
  like, the big vacation that you save up for for five years,
• 22:53
  like, say, like the European trip of your dreams.
• 22:57
  What what do we know about, you know, big vacations?
• 23:00
  Like, what are good about them? What's maybe not so good about
• 23:02
  them? OK, so the research says that I
• 23:07
  think when I hear big vacations, I think long vacations.
• 23:10
  Long and maybe expensive. Maybe.
• 23:12
  Yeah, OK, OK. O The research says that there's
• 23:15
  actually no benefit to taking longer vacations than taking
• 23:19
  shorter vacations. Oh, come on.
• 23:21
  Yeah, so you can take a vacation.
• 23:24
  One study did a meta analysis and they found that vacations as
• 23:28
  long as 17 days to two days. There's actually really no real
• 23:32
  health and Wellness happiness benefit to taking longer
• 23:36
  vacations and taking shorter vacations.
• 23:38
  Jennica. Yes.
• 23:40
  No, yes. My mind is blown.
• 23:44
  Yeah, I can't process this. Yeah.
• 23:46
  However, what I do want to say is, and I like to think about it
• 23:53
  from like my Physiology background.
• 23:55
  If you, if you're a runner and you're training for a marathon,
• 24:00
  you run a marathon, the rest that you take after a marathon
• 24:05
  is going to be longer than say the rest you take after you run
• 24:09
  2K. So if you are stressed, you're
• 24:13
  very stressed, you have a high stress job, you're on the brink
• 24:16
  of burnout, you will probably need a longer time to recover
• 24:20
  away from work. If you are not, say you have
• 24:23
  regular stress, you know you're working a job that's not very
• 24:27
  stressful, you really relax on the weekends, that type of
• 24:31
  thing. You probably don't need as long
• 24:33
  a time to recover as somebody who is running a marathon in the
• 24:36
  office. So there's no health and
• 24:39
  Wellness benefit in terms of like, oh, somebody who takes a
• 24:41
  17 day vacation is way happier and healthier than somebody who
• 24:44
  takes 2 day vacation. However, if you are experiencing
• 24:48
  more stress then the recommendation would be to take
• 24:51
  a longer vacation but. That makes sense.
• 24:54
  Yeah. The thing is, though, is that
• 24:57
  how we should be looking at vacations is how we should be
• 24:59
  looking at hydration. If you are, you should be
• 25:02
  drinking water before you get thirsty.
• 25:05
  You should be drinking water consistently before you're like,
• 25:08
  oh, I'm so parched. I need to drink water.
• 25:10
  I'm dehydrated, right. And we should be looking at
• 25:12
  vacations the same way in that we should be taking them
• 25:15
  frequently, which means we're probably going to take shorter
• 25:17
  vacations more often so that we're not pushing ourselves like
• 25:22
  a year without vacations and then we're like on the brink of
• 25:24
  burnout. And then we need to take like a
• 25:26
  month off from work to like, reset, right.
• 25:30
  The idea is that take short, frequent vacations and that's
• 25:33
  going to sustain us, reset our stress cycle so that we're not
• 25:37
  waiting that long time and we're not pushing ourselves into
• 25:40
  burnout. So scientists, Jennica was like,
• 25:45
  shit, I have two weeks of vacation, how can I hack this so
• 25:48
  that I'm getting the most out of it?
• 25:50
  And this was the research you were pouring into and what you
• 25:53
  discovered? Yeah.
• 25:54
  How fascinating is that? Yeah.
• 25:56
  And I used to be one of those people that's like, OK, I'll
• 25:59
  take five days off Monday to Friday, but I'll leave, you know
• 26:02
  what, I'll leave Friday right after work.
• 26:04
  I'll get a flight Friday right after work and I'll come back
• 26:07
  Sunday night so that I can have as much time as possible in this
• 26:10
  location that I'm going to go to.
• 26:11
  That's going to make me feel awesome.
• 26:13
  And that's great. Like if you really do need a lot
• 26:18
  of time, like sometimes we still do that if we need, you know, we
• 26:21
  need a lot of time in a certain place or we have to be somewhere
• 26:23
  to a certain time. But you don't have to do that.
• 26:25
  You're not, you're actually not going to be happier and
• 26:27
  healthier. If you like squeeze as much time
• 26:29
  as you can out of a place, just go.
• 26:31
  You can go to Cancun for four days and you're probably going
• 26:34
  to be just as happy. You know, you have to balance it
• 26:36
  with the amount of travel that you have and all that stuff.
• 26:38
  There's other things going on, but like, you don't have to
• 26:41
  squeeze every last minute out of a vacation.
• 26:43
  You just have to make your time on vacation beneficial.
• 26:47
  And that's, you know, the relaxing, the detaching, the
• 26:50
  controlling. Part.
• 26:51
  So there is an element of like the preparation you're doing
• 26:54
  before because I think a lot of us who have been in the
• 26:57
  corporate world like you have been in really high stress jobs
• 27:00
  and that corporate side or entrepreneurs whomever.
• 27:03
  When you are preparing for a vacation, that can almost feel
• 27:08
  like it sends the stress triggers into such OverDrive
• 27:13
  that you're actually like, is this vacation worth it?
• 27:17
  What? Like, what is that about?
• 27:19
  Especially now with kids. And we're going to get into
• 27:22
  kids, actually. Now with.
• 27:23
  Kids, you're packing not for yourself.
• 27:26
  You're not even packing yourself till the morning of, you're
• 27:28
  packing everyone else. And you probably forget all of
• 27:31
  your things and all every the kids have like double of what
• 27:34
  they need. They have beautiful outfits,
• 27:36
  perfectly pressed. Whatever.
• 27:37
  Yeah. So the lead up to vacations
• 27:42
  thing to make it so that you can unplug, but then burning
• 27:46
  yourself out at that weak leading up.
• 27:49
  How do we avoid that? What does the research say on
• 27:51
  that, if you know? So I call those those two weeks
• 27:54
  leading up to vacation, I call it pre vacation syndrome, PBS,
• 27:58
  just like PMS because it happens everybody in those two
• 28:02
  especially, you know, if you're taking a vacation at home, it's
• 28:04
  a lot different. It's way less stress.
• 28:06
  I mean, if you're staying at a hotel, you might have to pack
• 28:09
  and all that stuff too. But generally, 2 weeks leading
• 28:12
  up to a vacation, our health and Wellness kind of dips because
• 28:16
  we're stressed out. And so that can really affect
• 28:21
  our recovery when we're on vacation.
• 28:23
  If we have all this stress building up before we go, it
• 28:25
  might take us longer to actually relax.
• 28:27
  It might take us longer to recover.
• 28:29
  And then, you know, we don't have very much time there and
• 28:32
  it's harder. So, yeah, so we really need to
• 28:35
  try not to be stressed in those two weeks.
• 28:37
  And it's obviously very difficult.
• 28:39
  Just be like, try not to be stressed.
• 28:40
  But I think one thing that's helped me is not leaving
• 28:44
  everything until the last minute by getting ahead of things like
• 28:48
  maybe a month before, especially at work.
• 28:51
  Like I know a lot of people will kind of on the last two days
• 28:54
  before they go on vacation, they're like, OK, I gotta e-mail
• 28:56
  this person. I have to write my out of
• 28:58
  office. I have to do this.
• 28:58
  I have to make sure that this thing gets done before I leave.
• 29:00
  And so I think if we plan properly and we plan more in
• 29:03
  advance, we can kind of stretch that stress over a little bit
• 29:06
  more time. So it's not all bucketed into
• 29:08
  those like last couple days or week or so before the vacation.
• 29:13
  Yeah. And then also another way to not
• 29:15
  be so stressed before vacation is do things that don't make you
• 29:18
  stressed. OHS geez Louise.
• 29:20
  Right. So air travel stresses you out
• 29:22
  if packing suitcase stresses you out, or only being able to pack
• 29:26
  one suitcase per person and it has to be under 50 lbs and
• 29:28
  you're like OK, maybe go on a road trip.
• 29:30
  Yeah, because you can throw everything in weird bags in the
• 29:33
  car. Yeah, and everyone's going to
• 29:35
  have a different level of stress that is fine to handle.
• 29:40
  You know, maybe it means not traveling.
• 29:42
  Maybe one thing that we did once we did a Alaskan, there was a
• 29:46
  Vancouver and it was so nice because we didn't have to hop on
• 29:48
  a plane. We just hop.
• 29:49
  We went down to Vancouver, we got on the boat, we came back
• 29:52
  and we came like we still had to pack and everything, but it just
• 29:55
  felt a lot easier not going through the airport.
• 29:59
  Yeah, not traveling. You can do Rd. trips.
• 30:02
  I know you still have to pack for a lot of these things, but
• 30:04
  you can leave the kids at home. That's also an option.
• 30:08
  I don't do that very often because, well, never because my
• 30:11
  kids are quite young still. But yeah, you just really have
• 30:15
  to ask yourself, like, how could I make a vacation as easy as
• 30:18
  possible on myself? Yeah.
• 30:20
  And I know it's difficult because we always want to please
• 30:22
  the kids. We want to like, what are they
• 30:24
  going to want to do? Are they gonna be excited about
• 30:25
  this is going to be memorable? We wanna make it great for them.
• 30:28
  But if it's a true vacation for us, we want to make sure that
• 30:32
  we're getting that rest and recovery and as well.
• 30:34
  And that means not being stressed before you go.
• 30:36
  Yeah, Yeah, I like that. I like that a lot.
• 30:40
  OK. If we take this funnel down, So
• 30:41
  we talked about big long, we understand that like it doesn't
• 30:45
  have to be super long. I think that's mind blowing that
• 30:48
  I've never heard that that the more stress you have, the longer
• 30:51
  you might need to recover. The analogy of the runner like
• 30:54
  genius, I'm not a runner, but this makes a lot of sense.
• 30:57
  And so if we if we go down the funnel into like this, you know,
• 31:01
  medium territory. So when you said like go to
• 31:03
  Cancun for for four days, for instance, it's a couple hour
• 31:06
  flight, right couple well. Almost 6.
• 31:11
  OK, so you go down to somewhere, I was going to say somewhere,
• 31:14
  but yes, yeah, a bit closer. And you're going down for four
• 31:19
  or five days. I think a lot of there's a
• 31:21
  perhaps a misconception I'm hearing that, oh, it's not worth
• 31:25
  it to even pack up and go for somewhere for four days, four
• 31:30
  nights. Tell me more about that, the
• 31:32
  benefits of going somewhere for a shorter amount of time.
• 31:35
  I mean, you spend less money, so huge benefit.
• 31:40
  So huge benefit, huge benefit. I mean, I think it's an
• 31:44
  individual preference too, right?
• 31:46
  Like if I my personal time travel rule is what I call it is
• 31:53
  I will spend the same amount of days in a destination as it
• 31:57
  takes to get there. OK, so if I'm flying six hours,
• 32:01
  I'll spend 6 days in the destination minimum?
• 32:04
  Hour to day ratio. Love that if I'm driving 2 hours
• 32:08
  then I'm going to Whistler. I spend 2 days there, minimum,
• 32:13
  minimum. And that's kind of, this is kind
• 32:15
  of like my own rule that I created because that's, I feel
• 32:18
  like that kind of balances my stress with the amount of time
• 32:21
  that I get there. You know, if you're in
• 32:23
  Vancouver, you can stay one day, you know, you can do like a one
• 32:26
  day thing. Yeah, Yeah.
• 32:28
  And I find that that's a good way to balance the amount of
• 32:30
  stress. But everyone needs to ask
• 32:32
  themselves, you know, like if you're going, if you're flying
• 32:34
  to Paris or something and you, you may never go there again.
• 32:38
  I know we always think that, oh, I may never come here again.
• 32:40
  I got to do all the things then. Yeah, maybe you want to be there
• 32:42
  a lot longer. It just, it depends.
• 32:45
  But my time travel rule that I always use is like the number of
• 32:48
  hours it takes to get there. I'm going to spend that number
• 32:50
  of days or longer while I'm there.
• 32:53
  You are so full of very cool negative information and just
• 32:58
  wisdom on this topic. God I love this.
• 33:01
  I just, I think it's phenomenal. OK.
• 33:05
  And now let's talk about the small.
• 33:07
  Let's go to like the staycation or the thing that I'm actually
• 33:11
  so highly skeptical of that you have been alluding to, which is
• 33:14
  just staying home, vacationing at home.
• 33:18
  Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if I buy it.
• 33:21
  Janica, convince me. I know.
• 33:23
  Convince. Me, I know it's hard.
• 33:24
  I mean, I love traveling. I've traveled a lot in my life.
• 33:28
  It's amazing. It's so great for experiences,
• 33:30
  memories, like all those things. Especially having kids now, like
• 33:34
  I wanna travel with them. The thing that we need to
• 33:38
  remember, though, is that we don't have to travel when we
• 33:41
  vacation. You can, but it's not a
• 33:43
  necessity. And we get caught up in the
• 33:48
  narrative that when we have time off, we have to go somewhere.
• 33:52
  And if we're not planning a trip somewhere, then we just don't
• 33:55
  take time off. And so we have to remember that
• 33:59
  from a work recovery perspective, time off should be
• 34:03
  used to recover from work and go back to work feeling better than
• 34:07
  when you left. We want to avoid stress.
• 34:10
  We want to decrease our stress. We want to avoid burnout and all
• 34:13
  those things we can do without traveling.
• 34:15
  So yes, you can travel, but do not skip vacations if you can't
• 34:21
  travel, if you don't have the money or you don't want to
• 34:22
  travel, you can still do something at home.
• 34:26
  And I think even for parents to as a parent, I wanna travel.
• 34:30
  But imagine the money that you would save just on flights
• 34:33
  alone. You could hire a nanny for like
• 34:35
  5 full days in Vancouver. You know, like if that's.
• 34:38
  What you need to be rested. And I know it's crazy because
• 34:40
  some people are probably like, well, I'm never going to do
• 34:42
  that. But like the amount of money
• 34:44
  that you spend on travel, What would, what could you get if you
• 34:48
  didn't travel in terms of rest and recovery?
• 34:52
  If you just stayed here? You could probably hire a nanny,
• 34:53
  go for a massage every single day with your partner.
• 34:55
  Like, you know, hang out in a hotel.
• 34:58
  Like there's just you don't, you don't have to travel.
• 35:02
  That's the thing. And I have a hard time with that
• 35:04
  too because I like traveling but there's ways to rest and recover
• 35:08
  from work without going anywhere or hopping on a plane.
• 35:12
  Isn't that interesting that we feel, myself included, that
• 35:15
  vacation and travel are synonymous.
• 35:18
  This whole is what I first chatted with you.
• 35:21
  I'm going to be honest, when we had an intro call, I was like,
• 35:24
  oh cool, she's going, she's going to teach us tips and
• 35:27
  tricks on how to like book cheap vacations for family.
• 35:29
  Like honestly, that's what I thought we were getting into.
• 35:32
  We started talking and I was like, oh this is even more in.
• 35:34
  This is way more. Interesting than like some
• 35:36
  Expedia. I don't know person which I
• 35:39
  didn't think you were, but I wasn't quite sure.
• 35:41
  Everyone does. Everyone, everyone.
• 35:43
  I tell them I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm a vacation expert,
• 35:45
  which is kind of strange to say. People are like, oh, I love
• 35:48
  travel. And I'm like OK, have some work
• 35:51
  to do. That is, yeah.
• 35:53
  So what was the Tell us about the book writing process?
• 35:56
  And like, how did you curate so much information?
• 35:59
  And you have a lot of lived experience that you were like,
• 36:01
  holy smokes, I need to put this into a book.
• 36:03
  Like, what was that moment for you?
• 36:05
  This is before after having kids.
• 36:07
  So it was before that I'd started thinking about all these
• 36:13
  things and, you know, like reworking my own vacations and
• 36:15
  doing all the research and stuff.
• 36:17
  And I never wanted to be an author.
• 36:19
  I was always like a science math person in school.
• 36:22
  Like if somebody had asked me to write like an essay, I'd be
• 36:25
  like, ah, OK, I'll write 1. Like, you know, like I was just
• 36:29
  never that person. I loved reading.
• 36:32
  I read like self help books and those like, I love, you know,
• 36:35
  business, self-help, psychology, all those types of books.
• 36:38
  I read lots and lots of books, but I never wanted to be an
• 36:41
  author O when I had all this information, I was like, where
• 36:44
  is this taking me? Like what is this path that I'm
• 36:47
  on? Like, because I really wanted to
• 36:48
  share the information and I wanted to talk to people about
• 36:50
  this and I, you know, I wanted to have conversations, but I
• 36:54
  really had no idea what all of this was.
• 36:56
  I was like, didn't know. And then I just started writing
• 36:59
  stuff down because I didn't know what else to do with
• 37:01
  information. And then I started just kind of
• 37:04
  like noticing like chapters for me.
• 37:06
  And I was like, is this like the universe is like telling me to
• 37:09
  write a book? I guess.
• 37:10
  I don't know, Like, it's strange.
• 37:12
  And then at one point I hired A ghostwriter because I had.
• 37:20
  So I started thinking about the book before I had kids.
• 37:22
  And then I kind of started getting more into it when I was
• 37:25
  on Matt leave and I was like, I don't have time.
• 37:28
  Like now I have babies like this should have been done before
• 37:31
  this and I just don't have the time.
• 37:32
  So I hired A ghostwriter just to do like the first like 4
• 37:35
  chapters or whatever. And it was terrible.
• 37:37
  I was like, this is so bad. Like maybe I just hired the
• 37:40
  wrong person. But I was like, you know what,
• 37:42
  this gate, it gave me the confidence to do it myself
• 37:44
  because I was like, I can do way better than this.
• 37:46
  I think. I think I can do this.
• 37:48
  And so then, yeah, it was like I'm, I guess I'm writing a book.
• 37:51
  And so it just, it came kind of out of nowhere, but it was also
• 37:56
  interesting because halfway through is when I had my kids.
• 38:00
  And so I had all of this kind of like figured out before I had
• 38:04
  kids. And then I had kids and I was
• 38:05
  like, wait a minute, how, how do people vacation with kids?
• 38:09
  It's like a whole new ball game, right?
• 38:11
  And a lot of the concepts all still applied, but it was like
• 38:14
  rethinking how I would take time off when I was also caring for
• 38:17
  children when I wasn't working. So.
• 38:19
  Yes. So what do we do now that we
• 38:24
  have children in this audience or parents?
• 38:27
  How it's this like after every holiday season, I would say our
• 38:32
  vacation season, whether someone's going away or not, we
• 38:36
  love our children so much. And it's that weird feeling of
• 38:39
  like, you hate to like complain that you're getting to spend
• 38:42
  time with your children and you're like, whoa, I'm really
• 38:46
  tired and I don't feel rested. I don't feel like I was on
• 38:49
  vacation, even if it was just at home and time was off and
• 38:53
  daycares were closed or school was closed.
• 38:55
  So how does this still apply? But also how is it different?
• 38:58
  So one thing that I really realized once I had kids was
• 39:02
  that there's two kind of ways to look at your time off as a
• 39:06
  parent. One is you can have an adventure
• 39:09
  with your time off and one is you you have a vacation with
• 39:11
  your time off. So an adventure would be things
• 39:15
  that you do that are like fun and memorable, you know, like
• 39:17
  going to Disneyland and a vacation would be like actual
• 39:20
  rest and recovery, which would include recovery from like kids
• 39:25
  and work and all those things. So there were, there's two ways
• 39:29
  that we look at it now. And so you can have adventures
• 39:32
  on your time off and you can also have vacations.
• 39:34
  Sometimes you can combine them, can be difficult, but you can
• 39:38
  combine them. And it's important that we
• 39:40
  still, even if we're having adventures with our children, we
• 39:42
  still get frequent vacations. We still need the rest,
• 39:45
  otherwise we're going to burn out as parents.
• 39:47
  So adventures, like I said, are kind of like Disneyland
• 39:51
  vacations or where you actually get time, like away from your
• 39:55
  kids, or even if maybe they're like a play place and they're
• 39:57
  playing for like 2 hours and you get 2 hours, you know, where you
• 40:01
  can rest and do something else. But we need to make sure that we
• 40:04
  can not just have adventures with our time off with kids.
• 40:08
  And I think that we get sucked up into always spending our time
• 40:11
  off with our kids and not actually resting or having
• 40:14
  vacations. There are so many mind-blowing
• 40:18
  moments in this short time we've been together.
• 40:20
  But that is mind blowing to differentiate it that way
• 40:23
  because that actually just. I actually feel a sense of
• 40:26
  relief. Yeah.
• 40:28
  That I'm. I feel validated, first of all,
• 40:31
  that I've had these feelings because you're like, yeah,
• 40:33
  adventures are not now synonymous with vacation and
• 40:38
  rest. Adventures are incredible and
• 40:40
  they're fun and they're what make life fun and spicy and
• 40:44
  exciting. However, we.
• 40:46
  I have always thought that the adventure and the time off and
• 40:50
  the time with kids like that, I was supposed to feel rested and
• 40:53
  I don't. And I felt a lot of shame around
• 40:56
  that. I'm going to be honest.
• 40:59
  And I never, ever, ever thought about the fact that like the
• 41:02
  staycation that my husband and I did a couple months ago that
• 41:05
  we're actually going to do again in a couple of weeks because
• 41:07
  we're like, we need to do this quarterly.
• 41:10
  This is so important for our marriage, for our we didn't know
• 41:14
  what we were doing, but it is that you were validating this
• 41:16
  feeling we had where we're like, we just need to like not do
• 41:19
  anything for 24 hours in Vancouver.
• 41:23
  And so that is vacation. And then when we go to Florida
• 41:27
  in March and we go down and see my family and it's going to be
• 41:30
  like wild and Beachy. And that's adventure.
• 41:33
  Even if it's in a restful place. Yeah, that's adventure.
• 41:38
  Yeah, and you can incorporate, you can incorporate like what we
• 41:45
  do often too is all incorporate vacations into our adventures.
• 41:49
  OK. So like for example, we're going
• 41:52
  to Cancun for three weeks at spring break this year.
• 41:54
  People are like, oh great, you're going on vacation for
• 41:56
  three weeks. I'm like, no, no, it's going to
• 41:59
  be an adventure. But we will have pockets of
• 42:02
  micro vacations, which I call micro vacations, I call like 4
• 42:06
  hours or more of a break. 4 hours is important because
• 42:09
  there's some research that shows that we need at least a three
• 42:12
  hour break to recover our stress hormones.
• 42:17
  So if you get anything less, I this is something that blew my
• 42:20
  mind when I was first a parent because I would ask people to
• 42:24
  look after my son for like, you know, like an hour so I could go
• 42:27
  to yoga and I'd come back and I'm like, I'm not rested.
• 42:30
  I'm still stressed out. And I found this research that
• 42:33
  said we need at least three hours or more before our stress
• 42:36
  hormones start decreasing. And So what I started doing was
• 42:40
  I'd take 4 hour breaks because I like to round up 4 hour break.
• 42:44
  I love you, which I call a micro vacation.
• 42:49
  And me and my husband switch off every weekend.
• 42:51
  So he gets 4 hours where he plays Paul all four hours and I
• 42:54
  take 4 hours and do whatever it is that I need to do without
• 42:57
  kids. And so that sustained us, but we
• 43:01
  also do these on our adventures. So when we go to Cancun, even if
• 43:05
  we're at like a resort, we're renting an Airbnb, but we're
• 43:07
  going to a couple of resorts as well.
• 43:09
  When we're there, it's like he'll watch the kids for four
• 43:11
  hours or we'll drop them off at the kids club and then we'll get
• 43:14
  like a four hour break where it's just like us.
• 43:16
  And it's like, OK, this is 4 hours vacation mode is on, like
• 43:19
  let's go, you know, 4 hours in our adventure.
• 43:23
  So you can, like, book those in there as well or take, like, you
• 43:26
  know, grandparents with you and they can watch the kids.
• 43:28
  So you guys go have your little time.
• 43:30
  Yeah. So incorporating those micro
• 43:33
  vacations into our adventures too made it feel like a bigger
• 43:37
  vacation as well. This is how Jenica, how are you
• 43:41
  not the most famous person in the entire world?
• 43:44
  I'm, I'm not kidding. I don't remember the last time
• 43:46
  I've been this mind blown. And I'm like you, I read the
• 43:50
  self help books, I read nonfiction.
• 43:52
  I like to study. I really like research like, you
• 43:54
  know, like high level research. I'm not as like maybe data as
• 43:57
  you anyways. I'm like how is this not being
• 44:01
  shouted from the rooftops of the friggin mommy and me meetups and
• 44:06
  like this is insane. 4 hours. I didn't know that so I put my
• 44:10
  kids to bed at 7730. I myself go to bed at 9:30.
• 44:15
  That's not enough time. Like there's no reset there.
• 44:18
  Weekends, same thing. We're with them all day.
• 44:21
  Like, I actually don't know when I'm resting and which is maybe
• 44:26
  why I've been laughing the whole time, but the word relax because
• 44:28
  I'm like, I don't ever feel relaxed.
• 44:31
  Yeah. And I always find that to be
• 44:32
  like, oh, it's because I love what I do, but I don't know how
• 44:35
  healthy that is. This is like, this is blowing my
• 44:40
  mind. I want to go in a quick tangent
• 44:42
  because I was working at a camp in Ontario when I was younger
• 44:49
  for a summer with kids with special needs.
• 44:52
  They all had nerve neurological differences.
• 44:54
  And I remember, I think I've shared this maybe story on the
• 44:57
  podcast, but I remember this counselor, this counselor of
• 45:00
  mine, we had really, we had teenage boys who were all
• 45:03
  nonverbal and so was really physically demanding their
• 45:06
  amazing kids, but super physical.
• 45:08
  And you're with them for 12 hours, like basically all day.
• 45:11
  And I remember being like, whoa, yeah, like I just like, I'm
• 45:14
  going to go home and like, or go back to my cabin and just pass
• 45:16
  out right now. And the guy was like, oh, right,
• 45:18
  you're new here. And he said he's like, you
• 45:21
  really need to do something. Like I really encourage you to
• 45:24
  do something before you go to bed and even have a little bit
• 45:27
  of time in the morning. I was like, what?
• 45:29
  And he was like, because if you're going to bed, if you're
• 45:32
  spending like all this time and really giving, giving, giving
• 45:34
  during the day. And I wasn't a parent yet,
• 45:36
  obviously. And then you're going to bed
• 45:38
  right away and then you're waking up, rolling back into the
• 45:42
  cafeteria to meet the kids in the morning.
• 45:44
  It's, it's like consciously you've never actually been away.
• 45:48
  And I never really understood like I was like, wow, that's
• 45:51
  like that. It really blew my mind.
• 45:52
  It really stuck with me. And I feel like you're
• 45:54
  validating that with this 4 hour rule where we have to really
• 45:58
  think about like just the awake pause, right?
• 46:02
  Because it differs from sleep, Like rest is different than
• 46:05
  sleep, right? Yeah.
• 46:08
  In a certain way, yeah. Yeah.
• 46:11
  But then like nobody really talks about awake rest as like
• 46:15
  a, an imperative thing that we need to especially as parents
• 46:18
  really focus on and harness in some way.
• 46:22
  Yeah, yeah. Unbelievable.
• 46:24
  Yeah. I feel, I feel like it's such a
• 46:26
  good way to like, especially when you're parents of young,
• 46:29
  young kids, like babies where you like breastfeeding and you
• 46:32
  can't really be away for that much long.
• 46:34
  I mean, you could if you pumped or whatever, but I feel like
• 46:37
  those micro vacations that we took every weekend really
• 46:41
  sustained us because we never got the long break.
• 46:43
  So we had to take really short medications really, really
• 46:46
  frequently. Yes, because we never got 7 days
• 46:49
  away from our kids or we never got right three days away from
• 46:52
  our kids. So they sustained us through
• 46:55
  those like younger years. I mean, they're still sustaining
• 46:57
  us. But like now as your kids get
• 46:59
  older, you can take a little bit more time away from them.
• 47:01
  But when you have really, really young kids, I think it's
• 47:04
  important that you don't just take an hour here and there.
• 47:06
  You take a little bit longer and then you take them more
• 47:08
  frequently because you're probably not going to get a
• 47:10
  really long time away from your kids.
• 47:12
  That's really good. Can you tell us more about the
• 47:14
  mechanics of this 4 hour block? So every weekend you each get a
• 47:18
  a Saturday or Sunday or how does it work?
• 47:20
  Right now we do Saturdays, so my husband does like football in
• 47:23
  the mornings and then I do like my thing later on, usually go to
• 47:27
  like a yoga class and that type of thing.
• 47:29
  And then we always do like a Family Day on Sunday where we
• 47:32
  like hike and stuff. But we always, we always do
• 47:35
  those breaks unless you know, we have like a birthday party or
• 47:38
  something like that going on. But we always we really, we love
• 47:41
  it because my husband gets to play football with his friends
• 47:43
  and that's like his thing. He loves it.
• 47:46
  And then I get to just, you know, detach for four full
• 47:49
  hours, so. And then your kids see that.
• 47:52
  Tell me about like how how this has impacted you know, you
• 47:55
  learning more about vacationing and rest anti burnout culture.
• 48:00
  Like how do you think it's impacted your kids?
• 48:02
  What do they see? It's so interesting because
• 48:06
  we'll talk about two things. We don't teach our kids about
• 48:11
  rest. No, like, no.
• 48:14
  Nobody talks who talks to their children about rest and in?
• 48:18
  Fact. Only if you're sick.
• 48:19
  Only if you're sick, right? Yeah.
• 48:21
  Daniel Tiger rest his best. Yes, totally.
• 48:26
  Yeah. Um, we don't talk about rest
• 48:29
  with our kids. It's kind of like this thing
• 48:31
  that you do as an adult that like, oh, you know, like I'm, I
• 48:35
  go to yoga now or I'm, I'm meditating, you know, it's kind
• 48:37
  of this like more trendy, like I'm resting type of thing.
• 48:42
  But we don't talk about with kids.
• 48:43
  I definitely didn't have conversations with my parents
• 48:45
  about rest when I was a child. Like you.
• 48:47
  It's like, OK, get back to work, do your homework, you know,
• 48:50
  those things. And if you're taking a break,
• 48:52
  it's often is like a punishment. Oh, take a time out.
• 48:55
  Like that's a punishment, you know, so we're not teaching
• 48:59
  children that it's OK to just take a break.
• 49:02
  And so I think that there's just little things that we can do
• 49:05
  with our kids. You know, when they're having a
• 49:08
  hard time, my my sons are practicing piano and they're
• 49:10
  having a hard time. It's like, do you want to take a
• 49:12
  break? And then explaining to them, you
• 49:14
  know, when you take a break, sometimes you come back and you
• 49:17
  can see it a different way. You can be more creative, you
• 49:19
  can be more productive. You might feel happier when you
• 49:21
  come back. And those conversations never
• 49:23
  happen in my household. And I know that they don't
• 49:26
  happen a lot of people's households.
• 49:27
  So I think talking to them about that is really important.
• 49:31
  It's funny, I went to my oldest sons kindergarten class last
• 49:34
  year because they had like, bring your parent in and they
• 49:38
  can talk about what they do. And so I came in and I talked
• 49:41
  about, you know, I'm an author and I showed them my book and I
• 49:44
  thought it was really cool. And you know, I asked them, I'm
• 49:48
  like, oh, what, when, what was your favorite vacation or what,
• 49:52
  you know, And they all said, oh, I went to Disneyland or I went
• 49:55
  here, I went to Hawaii, blah, blah, blah.
• 49:58
  And so I was like, there's a lot of work we have to do because
• 50:02
  you guys, what does, what does a vacation really mean?
• 50:04
  You know, and they, they were kind of like, Oh, it's when you
• 50:08
  like travel somewhere. And I was like, you know, I
• 50:11
  explained to them that a vacation is really about
• 50:14
  resting. It's about taking a break and
• 50:16
  doing something you want to do, relaxing, maybe spending time
• 50:19
  with family, um, maybe doing some exercise, maybe going for a
• 50:23
  hike. And so explaining to young
• 50:25
  children who already think that a vacation is travel is just,
• 50:29
  it's so important to talk to them about rest because we're
• 50:33
  not talking about it in so many different aspects of our lives.
• 50:36
  Would have been in the kids camp like I was in the kids camp an
• 50:39
  hour ago. Yeah, however long ago when we
• 50:41
  started this conversation. Yeah.
• 50:43
  I think most of our listeners are going to be mind blown in
• 50:46
  this rewiring and I just love that you're like, but we love
• 50:50
  vacate. Like you're like, I still love
• 50:52
  to travel. Yeah, like we still love travel.
• 50:55
  This is not an anti travel. This is like just reframe how
• 50:58
  you're thinking about what a vacation is.
• 51:01
  What is travel adventure? What is REST recovery?
• 51:06
  Oh my gosh, that is so fascinating that Yeah, that like
• 51:09
  even just that breaks. Now, if you were to go and do a
• 51:14
  corporate speaking engagement to, you know, a former
• 51:17
  workplace, where did you use to work by the?
• 51:18
  Way I worked in retail, yeah, I worked at Best Buy, Lemon Sage.
• 51:23
  Oh my gosh. So all the comps, if you went to
• 51:25
  those places, especially knowing like the ends, I used to work at
• 51:28
  Aritzia in house. And what would you, how would
• 51:32
  you frame this discussion in a talk to one of those places so
• 51:37
  that it would actually be received and heard and like
• 51:42
  people would buy into it? It's interesting because when I
• 51:45
  was writing the book, I was like, how am I going to market
• 51:47
  this? Because nobody's like Google
• 51:50
  searching. How do I vacation better?
• 51:52
  Like, no, there's zero Google searches for that.
• 51:54
  Nobody is looking for information on how to vacation
• 51:57
  better. Nobody thinks that they're bad
• 51:59
  at it, but there is we we need to do it better.
• 52:07
  And even though we don't believe that we can do it better, we
• 52:10
  have to think about it in terms of like, how can we get better
• 52:14
  at rest so that we can get better at our jobs and our lives
• 52:16
  and be, you know, better parents, better workers and all
• 52:19
  those things. So I don't know exactly how I
• 52:23
  would like frame it so that everyone buys in.
• 52:25
  But it's one thing that I often tell people is that you don't
• 52:29
  need more time off. You know, I see so many people
• 52:32
  who are like, oh, I would love to have a job where I could have
• 52:34
  unlimited time off, you know, where you can just take time off
• 52:36
  whenever you want, which actually doesn't really work
• 52:38
  because people who work in those jobs don't take more time off
• 52:41
  than the average employee. They.
• 52:42
  Take less, apparently. Right?
• 52:44
  Yeah. So we idolize this, like, oh, I
• 52:48
  would love to have unlimited time off.
• 52:49
  And I could just, you know, take time off.
• 52:51
  But there's all these like, cultural aspects at play in the
• 52:53
  workplace that prevent people from taking time.
• 52:56
  But what I say is you don't have to take more.
• 52:59
  You don't need more time off. You need to vacation better.
• 53:02
  And if we vacation better, you can take you.
• 53:05
  You can have two weeks of vacation.
• 53:06
  I didn't burn out in my first job when I had two weeks of
• 53:08
  vacation because I was actually doing, I think I was doing a
• 53:11
  very good job at like structuring my vacation time
• 53:14
  properly and I didn't burnout. So that's The thing is that, and
• 53:20
  I hope people will listen to that, is that you don't need
• 53:22
  more time off. You just need to vacation
• 53:24
  better. And if you vacation better, you
• 53:26
  can improve your health, well-being, productivity,
• 53:28
  creativity just by vacationing better there.
• 53:32
  I mean, there's there. I don't think it was a study.
• 53:35
  It was probably just a questionnaire, but they looked
• 53:37
  at people who had a vacation planned versus people who didn't
• 53:41
  have a vacation planned. And like, shocker, people who
• 53:45
  had a vacation planned were happier than the people who
• 53:47
  didn't have a vacation planned. And it's like, it is that simple
• 53:52
  to just walk around this planet and be happier if you just have
• 53:55
  a vacation on your calendar. That's so crazy.
• 53:59
  It's and it's like everyone's like, of course they'd be
• 54:01
  happier having a vacation plan, but then why doesn't everyone
• 54:03
  have a vacation planned at any given time, moment in time?
• 54:07
  I don't, OK. I guess it's like, yeah,
• 54:10
  obviously, I actually don't think it's that obvious.
• 54:12
  I really didn't think that having the vacation planned
• 54:16
  itself, like I love that the anticipation of a vacation.
• 54:20
  I did not correlate that with me feeling feelings of happiness,
• 54:24
  greater happiness because it's on the calendar.
• 54:27
  But I've brought up the fact that I'm going for another
• 54:29
  staycation. I probably brought that up to
• 54:30
  three times today already because I'm so fucking excited.
• 54:34
  It's in the back of your mind. It's always going to be in the
• 54:36
  back of your mind because, and I love the sports analogy because
• 54:40
  I was, I played so many sports, but like every athletic event, I
• 54:46
  mean, sports wise, like you look at like the NFL, they know
• 54:50
  exactly when their next break is right?
• 54:52
  And they, they like, if there's 5 seconds left, they change how
• 54:57
  they play and they work harder in those five seconds.
• 54:59
  Cause they're like, OK, let's do this last play.
• 55:01
  Let's make this great because we have a break coming up.
• 55:04
  And if they didn't, if you went into an NFL game and you were a
• 55:07
  player and you had no idea when your breaks were going to be,
• 55:10
  the game would be like complete chaos.
• 55:12
  Like it would be like how like the, it would just be it, it
• 55:16
  would be crazy. Yes.
• 55:17
  And so we should always know when our next break is coming
• 55:21
  because it helps us be more productive in our job.
• 55:24
  Like let's work really hard until we have this vacation
• 55:26
  coming up or like, I'm so excited for this vacation.
• 55:29
  I'm happier. I'm gonna work better and harder
• 55:31
  and more creative because I have this vacation coming up.
• 55:34
  If we don't know when our breaks are, we're working in this like
• 55:36
  kind of like chaotic environment of like, I don't know when I got
• 55:40
  time off next. But if we know what it is, we're
• 55:43
  always excited. We can work towards that and
• 55:46
  then like continue on until our next break.
• 55:49
  And we always know when they are.
• 55:51
  So This is why there's a spiral of problematic behavior when
• 55:56
  we're working around the clock, we're on our phones.
• 55:58
  I'm not saying that that's you and I have both been in those
• 56:03
  cultures. We've been in the really high
• 56:05
  stress, intense cultures of retail and corporate.
• 56:10
  And we know it's inevitable in some jobs.
• 56:14
  And I think that's just such a disservice to human beings to be
• 56:16
  like, you shouldn't have your work e-mail on your phone.
• 56:19
  Well, there's some jobs that are going to pay you a crap ton of
• 56:22
  money and it just works for your family or whatever.
• 56:25
  And that's just the nature of the job.
• 56:27
  But what I'm hearing from you is that, OK, if you're going to be
• 56:30
  going really hard at your job and as a parent and all these
• 56:34
  things, you better be sure you have that dedication planned and
• 56:38
  that it's going to be long enough to counteract the amount
• 56:41
  of stress you're putting on yourself.
• 56:42
  It's fine. People have stressful jobs.
• 56:44
  We need surgeons, we need lawyers, we need ecommerce
• 56:47
  professionals. Like we actually need all this
• 56:49
  stuff to go around. We've got to stop shaming people
• 56:51
  for hustling in their job when sometimes the hustle is needed.
• 56:55
  But you can't Sprint forever. So no one the Sprint when the
• 56:59
  end of the 100 meter is done. My God, As you're saying that
• 57:03
  sports analogy, I was thinking about when I used to play
• 57:04
  hockey, terrible. I was so bad.
• 57:07
  I was so bad. I still can't skate.
• 57:09
  I went skating down the weekend with my kids and I was like how
• 57:12
  did I play hockey for like 5 years and actually not learn how
• 57:15
  to skate? But it was fun, right?
• 57:18
  I had the best time. I played all sports
• 57:20
  recreationally. I played all the sports
• 57:22
  basketball with my thing. Oh my God, I had the best time.
• 57:24
  But anyways, I remember looking at that scoreboard being like
• 57:28
  counting the seconds until it would be like sufficient for me
• 57:31
  to like go hit the boards to like switch.
• 57:32
  Because the amount of cardiovascular energy you're
• 57:35
  expending when you're skating with full pads on is like
• 57:39
  actually crazy. And I would have dropped dead if
• 57:42
  I just kept going. If you didn't know, if I didn't
• 57:45
  know that I could get off the ice in 20 seconds, that is like,
• 57:49
  again, I'm actually mind blown. Yeah.
• 57:52
  OK, let's get into some debunking.
• 57:54
  Are you ready? This will be a great way to end.
• 57:57
  OK, 4 myths debunked. What are the four myths about
• 58:01
  vacation, especially as it pertains to families, that you
• 58:05
  need to debunk? For us right now, we've probably
• 58:07
  done some of some of it. But yes, we've generally done
• 58:10
  some of it. So the first one is you do not
• 58:13
  have to miss vacations to be successful.
• 58:16
  Say it. Again, you do not have to miss
• 58:19
  vacations to be successful. Oh.
• 58:23
  So in other words, don't leave vacation days on the table, OK,
• 58:26
  If you have them. Yeah, take them.
• 58:28
  It's for your rest. It's for your recovery.
• 58:31
  And we love this like narrative in the media of like, oh, this
• 58:36
  person worked so hard. You know, Kim Kardashian, she
• 58:39
  she worked so hard and well, controversial, but she works so
• 58:42
  hard and she, you know, she never took vacations and she
• 58:46
  built this billion dollar business and all that.
• 58:48
  We love those stories. We love those stories.
• 58:50
  We love hearing them, you know, We love him, we love him, we
• 58:53
  love him. We love how we built this.
• 58:55
  Yeah. And we're just sold this idea
• 58:57
  that if we hustle, we'll make money and we'll be successful.
• 59:01
  And there's all these other stories of people who are
• 59:03
  working hard, but they work 9:00 to 5:00 and they take vacations
• 59:06
  and they take their weekends off, and they're playing with
• 59:08
  their kids on the weekends. And they're also successful, and
• 59:10
  they're also doing well as well. We just don't hear them.
• 59:12
  Because it's not very interesting.
• 59:14
  It's not that interesting, yeah. So my God, they're just
• 59:17
  investing nicely and making a ton of money.
• 59:19
  They have, they're making all this money in stocks, you know,
• 59:21
  maybe they have renters and real estate.
• 59:23
  It's there's no story there. There's no story.
• 59:25
  It's not as fun. We want to hear the hustle
• 59:27
  story. So you have the hustle.
• 59:29
  You don't have to, you don't have to leave vacation days on
• 59:31
  the table. And in fact, if you're good at
• 59:33
  your job, you can take time off and come back and you'll get
• 59:36
  promoted just because you're good at your job.
• 59:38
  Another one is we already talked about this, but vacation
• 59:43
  duration. So longer vacations are no
• 59:45
  better than shorter vacation than in terms of health and
• 59:48
  Wellness. There is a bit there where if
• 59:50
  you're super stressed out, then maybe you want to take a longer
• 59:52
  vacation. But in terms of health and
• 59:53
  Wellness, there's no real benefit to taking a longer
• 59:55
  vacation distance. So you don't have to travel to
• 59:58
  vacation. We already talked about that
• 1:00:01
  one. And the last one is you don't
• 1:00:05
  have to spend a lot of money to vacation.
• 1:00:07
  Now, this is kind of tied to travel because of course, if
• 1:00:09
  you're traveling, you're probably be spending more money.
• 1:00:12
  You don't have to spend money to travel or to not to travel to
• 1:00:16
  vacation. And you can have a vacation at
• 1:00:18
  home that's just as restful. You can read a book on a pen on
• 1:00:22
  a bench like in the city. Well, you can read it.
• 1:00:26
  You can read a book on a bench in the city, a library book on a
• 1:00:29
  bench in the city. And that can be just as restful
• 1:00:33
  as going to Cancun and spending three weeks on a beach there.
• 1:00:37
  Of course one seems a little bit more nurse, but we can rest and
• 1:00:40
  recover at home or anywhere. It's just your mind frame.
• 1:00:44
  From a physiological mental health perspective, no
• 1:00:48
  difference. Yeah.
• 1:00:49
  I mean, we could just close our eyes right now and, like, sit in
• 1:00:51
  silence for 30 minutes and rest, right?
• 1:00:53
  And we're not spending any money.
• 1:00:56
  You don't have to take a photo of it.
• 1:00:57
  Yeah. We feel like we have to take
• 1:00:59
  photos of our rest. Yeah.
• 1:01:01
  And share with people that we've rested like, oh, why rested
• 1:01:03
  harder than you? Yeah.
• 1:01:04
  Why is it a competition? Can I add a fifth one in there?
• 1:01:06
  Yeah, of course. Maternity leave is not a
• 1:01:09
  vacation. Yeah, I think we already, we
• 1:01:12
  already busted that myth. Yeah.
• 1:01:14
  I think social media has done a good job of that.
• 1:01:16
  But we gotta throw that in. You have to throw it in there.
• 1:01:18
  We gotta throw. It's important.
• 1:01:20
  Wow, OK, I have to ask, you would be remiss if I didn't,
• 1:01:24
  what's the best? So if somebody does want to get
• 1:01:26
  away because they want a bit of heat, what are some tips you
• 1:01:30
  have for just like, OK, so say they do, I'm going against
• 1:01:34
  everything you've just said in the last hour, but say they do
• 1:01:36
  want to go a little bit of distance.
• 1:01:38
  They do want to spend a little bit of money.
• 1:01:40
  They want to go for, you know, maybe it's five hours, they're
• 1:01:43
  going for five days. They're taking their kids,
• 1:01:45
  they're going to do the micro vacations, they're going to
• 1:01:47
  switch out, maybe hire, do kids club or whatever.
• 1:01:49
  What are some places you've been that you're like, oh, that was
• 1:01:52
  really cool setup. That was a really fun way for us
• 1:01:55
  to rest, for the kid to have fun family adventure.
• 1:01:58
  Yeah. What tips have you got for us?
• 1:02:00
  So I used to be, I backpacked South America for six months
• 1:02:04
  when I was younger. And so I was like very into
• 1:02:06
  like, oh, let's do like off the beaten path and like, well, I
• 1:02:09
  mean, I did like Machu Picchu and stuff too, but I was like,
• 1:02:11
  ah, let's do all these like cool adventurous things.
• 1:02:15
  And it was, it was fun to do that.
• 1:02:17
  And now that I'm a parent, I'm like, how can I make my time off
• 1:02:21
  as easy as possible? And so I'm all about, you know,
• 1:02:25
  I know not everyone will agree with this, but I'm all about all
• 1:02:27
  inclusives in Cancun. Like I, I mean, I love Cancun
• 1:02:30
  because it's like my second home, but like an all inclusive
• 1:02:33
  in Cancun where I don't have to cook, I don't have to clean.
• 1:02:36
  Like if my kid drops macaroni on the floor, like I'll pick it up.
• 1:02:39
  I will, but I don't have to. You know, like I don't have to.
• 1:02:44
  It's like the fact that I don't have to.
• 1:02:46
  I'm going to because I'm a human, decent human being in
• 1:02:48
  this world. But like, I don't have to.
• 1:02:49
  Yeah, yuck. I love that.
• 1:02:51
  And like they lit like it's just everyone's there to help you.
• 1:02:55
  Like if you need like, oh, can you bring the crib up to our
• 1:02:58
  room? Like as a mum taking that load
• 1:03:03
  of cooking, cleaning, like the the mental load of planning
• 1:03:08
  activities to do, Like, oh, you wake up, you're like, mom, what
• 1:03:10
  are we going to do today? Like, OK, what are we going to
• 1:03:12
  do? Like what?
• 1:03:13
  Like just like you wake up, you put them in their bathing suits,
• 1:03:17
  one layer of clothing. Like of course, the sunscreen is
• 1:03:20
  like an added stress, but one layer of clothing.
• 1:03:24
  You can like drop them off at the kids club.
• 1:03:26
  You take them down to the pool. They'll have fun at the pool,
• 1:03:28
  they'll play at the beach and the sand by themselves.
• 1:03:30
  Will you read a book? Like it's just.
• 1:03:33
  It's so simple for me and it's just, it makes things so easy to
• 1:03:39
  be able to do that like to have that time on my own that that's
• 1:03:43
  just like my go to. And I said we did the cruise to
• 1:03:45
  Alaska to that same thing like no cooking, no cleaning, like no
• 1:03:49
  thinking of things to do. Like you just get off when they
• 1:03:51
  like dock and then you get back on and then you come back to
• 1:03:54
  Vancouver. Like I'm all about like the all
• 1:03:58
  inclusives and the cruises right now until the kids are older and
• 1:04:01
  it's like slightly easier. And coming from somebody who has
• 1:04:06
  traveled and traveled and really integrated with local cultures
• 1:04:10
  and things like that, that actually makes me feel better
• 1:04:13
  that I'm kind of craving a bit of all inclusive life these
• 1:04:15
  days. Haven't done it yet, but I'm
• 1:04:17
  like, oh, is that bad? You're not seeing it now.
• 1:04:20
  There's time for culture. There's time for that.
• 1:04:23
  There's time for rest. Oh, my gosh.
• 1:04:27
  I could talk about this all day. I think you're gonna have to be
• 1:04:30
  our resident vacation expert. Vacation and rest expert.
• 1:04:34
  Doctor Jennica will call. You.
• 1:04:37
  Thank you so very much for coming on the podcast.
• 1:04:41
  Where can everybody find you? Get your book.
• 1:04:44
  Give me, Give us all the things. Um, so I'm most active on
• 1:04:48
  Instagram, so at the Vacation Nerd, um, yeah.
• 1:04:52
  And then I'm also on a website, thevacationer.com.
• 1:04:56
  Those are the two easiest way to get in touch.
• 1:04:58
  Beautiful and local bookstore could order in your book.
• 1:05:04
  Book is available at the Book Warehouse on Main Street.
• 1:05:07
  I live really close to there. Yeah.
• 1:05:10
  And Indigo Granville as well. And then it's also at Armchair
• 1:05:14
  Books in Whistler. Cool.
• 1:05:15
  So it's those three locations. And then you can buy it on
• 1:05:17
  Amazon as well. If you go through my Instagram,
• 1:05:19
  it's there. OK, beautiful.
• 1:05:21
  Thank you so much. And I always ask everybody, what
• 1:05:25
  would you say you're still trying to figure out right now?
• 1:05:28
  Oh goodness. That's honestly the always help
• 1:05:32
  people start. It's like a sigh and it's.
• 1:05:35
  Like a sip of water while I think about this.
• 1:05:41
  What am I trying to figure out? Hmm.
• 1:05:47
  Yeah, maybe as it pertains to vacationing like you have three
• 1:05:51
  boys. Yeah.
• 1:05:52
  Littlest guys too. How old is your oldest?
• 1:05:55
  6. Yeah.
• 1:05:56
  So you've got little ones like what is this phase that you're
• 1:05:59
  trying to figure out as it pertains to vacationing?
• 1:06:03
  As it pertains to vacationing, um, I mean, I think I don't know
• 1:06:09
  if this pertains to vacationing, but it's balancing my time away
• 1:06:17
  like maybe my micro vacations with the time I get to spend
• 1:06:20
  with my family, with the time that I get to spend like
• 1:06:23
  one-on-one with my kids. Because especially I think
• 1:06:26
  because I have 3, even with two and one, it's difficult too.
• 1:06:29
  But like, one thing that me and my husband talked about recently
• 1:06:32
  is just like how valuable it is to have one-on-one time with
• 1:06:35
  each of the kids and develop like an individual relationship
• 1:06:38
  with each one of them. And so balancing time by myself
• 1:06:44
  so that I can, you know, be mentally stable, balancing time
• 1:06:48
  with my husband, making sure we have time together, balancing
• 1:06:50
  time with as a family, balancing time one-on-one with each of the
• 1:06:54
  kids. It's just like it's consuming
• 1:06:56
  and it's it's difficult. Yeah.
• 1:06:58
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06:59
  It's so honest and it's so real. Yeah.
• 1:07:03
  Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me.