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Comment by solipsism | Hacker News Reader

I’ve been thinking about what it is about vacations that’s so relaxing since it’s clearly not the lack of work.

You live without a crap load of clothes that need to be washed. You have maids to clean your room. The kitchen staff washes the dishes

Huh? I think you're confused here. Washing clothes, cleaning your room, washing the dishes, and fixing leaks is work. Vacation is exactly having less work.

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Vacation is not about having less work. Vacation is about doing something different than you do usually, on a different schedule and probably with no big expectations to meet. Helping one's uncle to build a shed can be vacation to some people. Writing a program one wanted to write for a long time can be vacation, too. Spending three weeks in one's shop on woodworking can be a fulfilling vacation as well. So can be going on an international tour or doing nothing but reading seven different novels one after another.

Getting out of the daily routine, by either laying next to the pool in an all-inclusive hotel or being busy all day building something in the sun, changes your perspective and increases your stress resilience in my experience. Burnout is often the result of one's inability to put tasks aside for a few days.

Yeah the word "work" can be confused. What I meant by work was work where you are paid to do something for someone else. Maybe "job" is a better word. I don't have a job and I don't get paid but I do indeed still do a lot of work.

So does that resolve your confusion about the nature of vacation? :) Your statement "it's clearly not lack of work" should have been "it's clearly lack of job."

To me at least, vacation clearly is "lack of work" :)

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