How to make vacations seem longer

Vacations and weekend getaways often feel like they end as soon as they begin. But in the months and weeks leading up to a big trip, the opposite holds true. It’s like time is standing still and you’ll never make it to the date circled on your calendar. Finally, modern science has an explanation for this phenomenon.

It’s the waiting that shortens the vacation

Ironically, the study — from of a team at Ohio State University researchers — concludes that it’s the anticipation we feel for a particular event or vacation that ends up cutting it short within the mind’s eye. Put another way, excitement for a future occasion makes it feel like it will be over as soon as it gets started.

The work conducted at OSU produced two relevant findings. The first is that people tend to perceive future positive events as being farther away than they are in reality.

The second is that once those days finally arrive, the events feel much shorter than “neutral or negative events,” such as a regular workday. In combination, those two elements produce the near-universal perception that vacations and holidays fly by. “Time flies when you’re having fun” may need to be adjusted to “time flies when you’re having fun, but time also stops when you’re anticipating fun.” 

“The seemingly endless wait for the vacation to start combined with the feeling that the vacation will fly by leads people to feel like the beginning and the end of their time off as similarly far from the present,” says study co-author Selin Malkoc, associate professor of marketing at The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business. “In other words, in their mind’s eye, the vacation is over as soon as it begins. It has no duration.”

It’s also worth noting that looking ahead to a negative event, perhaps a trip to the dentist for a root canal, results in the opposite effect. Even if your scheduled dental appointment isn’t for another month, it feels like it’s coming up soon and you’ll be sitting in the dental chair for what will feel like forever.

This research project included four prior studies that had investigated this topic and came to similar conclusions. One of those experiments featured 451 online participants.

Each person was asked to think about their upcoming weekend, which was either expected to be fun, terrible, or just OK (business as usual). Next, participants reported how far away the beginning and the ending of the weekend felt at that moment via a 0-100 slider scale (0=very near, 100=very far).

Sure enough, an anticipated fun weekend felt farther away and shorter in duration, while a weekend expected to be terrible seemed closer to the present moment and longer in general. Weekends expected to be just OK fell firmly in the middle.

The phrase “it felt like it was over as soon as it began” is thrown around often. Well, when participants thought about an unpleasant weekend, Sunday night felt like an eternity away from Friday afternoon. When considering a pleasant weekend, however, slider scale ratings regarding how far away the beginning and the end seemed were nearly identical. 

Moreover, 46% of that study’s participants reported a positive weekend seemed to have no duration at all while thinking about both the weekend itself and the time leading up to it.

Why people spend more on hotels and luxuries

So, the next time you find yourself daydreaming about your next big trip or fun party, stop! You’re only going to end up shortening the experience in your mind.

“If a vacation seems like it is going to end as soon as it begins, it may make people less likely to plan specific events during their time off,” Malkoc concludes. “It may also lead people to spend more on hotels and other luxuries since it seems like the vacation is such a short time anyway.”

If you are looking for ways to maximize your vacation time, try booking non-stop flights, traveling at off-peak hours and tie the trip to a holiday so you get an extra day or two.

The full study can be found here, published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology.