Welcome to the Discover Your Wilderness podcast
This is our attempt to help others get as much as they can from their travel, adventures, or any aspect of life where you are trying something new.
Brett: I’m losing 4 days of PTO again this year.
Alicia: A while ago, Brett and I were trying to decide how we could create some content that would benefit some of our friends and family based on experiences that we have personally, experiences that we have cuz we both like to read a lot, but most importantly we both really like to improve on things. So what we’re doing right now is a bit of an experiment. An experiment that can help people make their adventures even more productive than they’ve been before.
Travel Studies
Brett: In recent decades and even in recent years the amount of time employees take off work is decreasing rapidly. We know there are many reasons for this, but according to an HBR article, one major reason is that vacations can be stressful.
Alicia: Do you ever find yourself taking an extra day or two after you’ve taken a vacation just to recover from your vacation? Or you hear people say things like “I need a vacation from my vacation” because they can be so exhausting?
Brett: Or even the concept of a staycation. To travel is too stressful. I’m going to stay here and get the work done, I’m taking time off work to get the work done that I’m not doing.
Alicia: I’m making special time for my real life. And it’s kind of disgusting that we have to have a word for that concept, in that we have to carve out time from our work schedules or from our other social obligations in order to even get that stuff done.
Brett: Well, and maybe even more sad than that is not taking PTO because it’s so much work when you get back. The article references that vacation days go unused because, you think “Well, if I take vacation then I’m going to have to do two days worth of work in one day, and that’s not worth it.”
Alicia: You know what? I bet we could do an entire podcast episode about that topic.
Brett: Teaser!
Culture Shift
Alicia: Also, fun fact: (I just realized we need to weave fun facts into these because you and I are both so known for fun facts). Fun fact: the US is the only developed country that does not legally require a single paid vacation day.
Brett: And when we’re talking developed countries those are going to be your France, and your England.
Alicia: Economically stable countries that could have people take vacation days. We have enough disposable income that you can take a day off work and still feed your family.
Brett: So according to a 2013 Expedia survey, Americans left half a billion vacation days unused last year – so 2012. It’s probably gone up even since then. So, four days of vacation per person. That’s almost a whole week. If you have a three-day weekend, that is a whole week. Then you throw in the weekend, that’s eight days off that you could have gotten, that you’ve just lost now because you chose not to take it.
Alicia: You could have flown somewhere, stayed there for several days, come back and been rested to be more productive at your job and your regular life. But Americans left them on the table for a variety of reasons, but one of them being sometimes vacations are more stressful than just not going on vacation. Whether that’s because it’s planning the vacation. Whether that’s because you know there’s going to be craziness. I’m sure we’re not the only family to ever deal with some drama on family vacations. And then PTO obviously is another issue. How do you wrangle your work-life to enable you to take PTO?
Brett: And what’s fascinating is how difficult it is to get someone to give up something like money. “Oh, well, why don’t you just give me the equivalent salary of those days off.” Most people would say, “No thank you.” And yet they’re giving up time, which is arguably more important than money and they’re essentially saying, “No, I want to voluntarily give that up.” And I’ll be honest I have lost PTO. Last year I lost PTO. So I try to use it. I try to use it effectively and plan it out. But I’m along the journey as well.
Alicia: And the irony about the reason you lost it, is partly because it’s hard to coordinate all the schedules in order to make a vacation happen. But I feel like you especially also struggled a little bit with scarcity that you would often want to save it for some big trip later. And then at the end of the year you would realize, “I can’t even use all of this PTO between now and the end of the year and still get my work done.”
Brett: Right! Right. So our goal is really to help you make the most of that time that you have. And maybe with better, less stressful adventures, so that you’ll take even more adventures.
Our goal is really to help you make the most of that time that you have. And maybe with better, less stressful adventures, so that you’ll take even more adventures.
Travel Qualifications
Alicia: So this could beg the question why are we talking about this? What makes us qualified to speak to this concept? And if we’re being completely honest, we’re not necessarily “qualified” any more than people who’ve gone to a place where they don’t speak the language, or they’ve endured cringey family trips, or bumpy adventures with friends, or they know the difference between a well-planned vacation and a spontaneous adventure. There are a lot of people out there who fit those criteria. And we’re in that category too, so we’re not necessarily special in that regard.
Brett: Now we each work full-time jobs. But we do a pretty good job leveraging the time off that we get, extended holidays and things like that, so we do travel a fair bit for working the amount that we do. We’ve both spent significant amounts of time in foreign countries. And we put a lot of miles on her cars here in North America. My car has gone both to Canada and to Mexico. So it has visited the coasts of the continental United States. So we do like traveling and we travel around the 40-hour workweeks, the full-time jobs that we have.
Alicia: Right, we’re pretty normal, middle class travelers.
Brett: We’re not, unfortunately, the Instagramers who get paid to travel.
Alicia: (Yeah, that’s the goal.) We also love our family, but no trip is complete without some sort of awkward photo or uncomfortable interaction. You know, there’s dredging of childhood grievances, and we are still a little bit upset that our mom and dad gave our dog away, and we remind them of that, and it always leads to a lengthy discussion about why they gave our dog away.
Brett: (RIP, Kiwi. I had to say that slow because her name is so weird that, “RIP, kiwi.” Yes, she was named Kiwi – don’t mind that.) Yeah, we’ve gone on long trips. We gone on short trips. We’ve gone on trips with a various assortment of friends. And you learn a lot about these people. And you also learn a lot about yourself. And you learn about how to travel with the different types of people.
Alicia: But probably the thing that qualifies us the most to be able to speak to this topic, is the fact that we both love improving processes, improving our practices, improving our lives really. We’ve both been unintentionally honing our ability to travel well, and to create memorable experiences for our friends for several years now. And we’d like to pass that on to anyone who’s interested in what we are calling “vacation therapy” – how to give more meaning to your trips.
Brett: So what kinds of things are we going to talk about? “Vacation therapy” can honestly come across as sounding a little hippie dippie, a little kumbaya-ish. But to be fair, we’re hoping that your adventures are more peaceful, they’re more happy after learning this content. We have thought a lot about it. We probably think more about how to improve vacations than anyone in your social sphere. So we hope that some of the things that we think about, some of the things that we talk about and share with you, will be able to help you devise or put together vacations that are less stressful, implementing some of the things that we’ve learned from some pretty cringey vacations.
Alicia: So we’re inviting you to learn from our experiences, the positive experiences, the not so positive experiences, the ones that you look back and laugh on, and the ones that you just wish never happened. And we’re going to start by doing a sort of an in-depth dive into expectations and the role that expectations play on you, and how you’re approaching your vacation personally, what happens when expectations are not met in a proactive way, and how to take a more proactive approach to setting expectations for your vacation.
What’s the Goal?
Brett: That’s a little taste. The next few episodes we’re going to talk about will be each of those principles in concept, in more depth: recognizing your expectations, recognizing those assumptions, and meetings those or learning how to meet those in proactive ways. We’ll get more in depth on. So join us on this journey if you find that this will be helpful to you. If you have learned anything and do find it helpful already, make sure to share it with your friends, because we all want to be able to travel well. We all are disheartened. I’d like to think that we’re all disheartened by all of this time off that’s left on the table. So let’s make it a goal: 2021, no PTO gone unused!
Alicia: That’s a great goal. I think we will be happier mentally, emotionally, socially, especially after 2020, and so much quarantine, so much time apart from each other, and so much time spent in our homes that we didn’t get to have both fulfilling experiences that come from connecting with other parts of the world around you. So yeah, that sounds like a great goal. Let’s work towards that.
Brett: We call this Discover Your Wilderness because your wilderness might be close, it might be far. But wherever your wilderness is, we want to help you discover what is on that edge of your comfort zone and your growth zone – where you want to be. So join us next week as we delve into some of these concepts. And between now and then, stay healthy and enjoy the journey.
Up Next:
Now that you have discovered the pilot, go listen to episode 2 which goes more into expectations and assumptions.