Executives Learn to Tune Out on Vacation
Here’s an encouraging article you don’t see to often: a piece on how savvy executives are booking vacations to places that are out of Blackberry and cell phone range. Many are coming to understand what most creative people have known all along, that you can’t come up with great ideas and come back truly relaxed if you’re still connected to home.
This communication overload may be why travel companies that specialize in rugged adventure journeys to the most remote locations around the globe are reporting substantial increases in business. “We’re seeing a lot more people in high-stress jobs really trying to go places where they can’t easily be connected,” says Steve Cox, executive director of the nature-travel company International Expeditions, which conducts trips throughout the world, everywhere from the Galápagos Islands to Uganda. “In some cases, they feel that they’ve been so driven in their professions that they’ve neglected their families, and so they want to travel together someplace where they can’t be distracted.”
I just spent a week in Honduras and didn’t spot a Blackberry until my last day and that was at the airport. People were blissfully diving, snorkeling, eating seafood, birdwatching, and checking out the ruins of Copan. Maybe they even forgot about work for a while. Yet something tells me their companies survived…