Goals and holidays don’t sound like they go together. After all, holidays are all about relaxing and goals usually refer to work. But Harvard Business Review makes a valid point — setting goals for your vacation helps you prioritise what you want to get out of them.
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I’ve often taken holidays with certain expectations in mind — mostly to relax. Then I’ll forget all about that expectation by trying to cram a month’s worth of activities into a week. HBR suggests a better way:
It pays to know upfront what success looks like in a vacation, so you don’t end up frittering away limited time. Your goal may be to reconnect with your spouse, spend quality time with your kids, catch up on reading, kickstart a new fitness regimen, make progress on a novel you’re writing, or literally just vegetate. Any of those are worthy goals, but they should be articulated upfront so you can prioritise them.
It’s a goal, but it’s more like a goal for having fun. I do think it’s important to make sure this is a low-maintenance goal. It’s more of a priority, really. You don’t want to come back from holidays feeling like you’ve failed at something, and you certainly don’t want to come back feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation.
Hell, maybe your goal is to simply not worry about self-improvement or recharging or whatever — it’s perfectly fine to have a goal that’s simply “do nothing, just relax.” The idea is to create the goal so you can prioritise it.
HBR makes a good case for this, and you can read about it more at the link below.
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