

Why Americans cannot enjoy holidays - MikeCapone
http://www.economist.com/node/16846330

======
elbenshira
I've never understood the "American dream": study hard to get a "good job"
(whatever that means) to work hard to save a lot of money for a nice house and
a nice family and work even harder for a nice retirement so that at the end of
your painful years, you can enjoy the rest of your life in blissful boredom
with your aging eyes and ears and enjoy Earth as it should have been enjoyed
in those long years that you toiled.

~~~
sliverstorm
No wonder you don't understand it. You've got it wrong.

The "American Dream" is not white picket fences, 2 and a half children and a
dog. It can be, but that is not the only thing it is.

The idea is simple- you can be anything, do anything, achieve anything. You
apparently see it manifest most often in the form of the desire to elevate
your family for your children- pull your family out of the lower classes and
solidly into the middle class so that your children have it easier.

Put succiently; it is the possibility of everything that is impossible in a
caste/class system.

(Not that I believe it exists in all it's shining glory etc, but before you
criticize it make sure you understand it)

~~~
groaner
_The "American Dream" is not white picket fences, 2 and a half children and a
dog. It can be, but that is not the only thing it is._

While you are absolutely right, there's no denying that there is intense
societal pressure against making anything other than that your "American
Dream." Ugh.

Everyone I know seems to think I'm crazy for not chasing after some promotion
so that I can buy a bigger house, a better car, find a spouse, etc. I have the
freedom to choose otherwise, but not the freedom to not be ridiculed for it.

~~~
nostrademons
Depends who you listen to. There is intense _media_ pressure about making
anything other than that your American dream. That's because the media seeks
the largest possible market, so their goal is to find the largest identifiable
subgroup of people and then make it even bigger. If people broke down into
subcultures of small groups, they'd never be able to target a demographic
efficiently, and they'd be out of business. Perhaps that's why they're so
vitriolic against Google and FaceBook and blogs and anything that empowers
people to seek out like-minded folk independently.

If you listen to actual _people_ , however, I can almost guarantee you that
you'll be able to find someone who shares your quirks. You might be separated
by 3000 miles and have to limit your interactions to the Internet, but there's
somebody out there. If your American dream is to write Battlestar Galactica
fanfiction, well, there's a fandom for you. If it's to play in a garage band
at night and live the struggling rock star life, there's a group waiting for
you (you might have to move to a city, though). If it's to work odd jobs
during the weekends so you can write the next great American musical, that's
possible too (thank you, Jonathan Larson). Heck, if you want to live in a log
cabin in Montana, you can do that too.

You can choose your friends, but you generally can't _change_ your friends.
Pick wisely. :-)

------
rtyuioiujhygf
I remember watching an American explain to a very confused German colleague
that Americans couldn't afford to take 6 weeks holiday because their economy
was so powerful.

Perplexed German engineers are so cute!

~~~
waterlesscloud
I remember the first time I met an Australian taking a year to wander around
the earth. That was a bit of an eye-opener. It wasn't the last one of them I
met, though. There seem to be a lot of them.

~~~
tjmc
Yes, it's a bit of a tradition both here and in New Zealand to travel for a
while. I remember when I was backpacking around Europe over 3 months in 1993
meeting a couple of Microsoft employees who explained that they only had 2
weeks to achieve the same goal.

They intended "to visit McDonald's in every country".

I think the key difference between Antipodeans and Americans regarding travel
is a very specific meme. A lot of Americans have told me that taking a year
off "looks bad" on your resume. That it indicates you don't take your career
seriously or you're having some sort of personal crisis.

Here (and in NZ) travel is seen as broadening your horizons and it certainly
doesn't count against you with employers. In fact, many see it as an
accomplishment - part of a "well rounded" education.

So I'd invite HNer's to consider "hacking" this meme for themselves. I don't
think it serves you very well. The vast majority of Aussies and Kiwis who take
a year to travel around the world aren't wealthy. They just do it on working
visas and save money between travels.

~~~
callahad
I imagine that could be a fringe benefit of a startup, even if you don't
intend to pursue self-sufficiency: it fills in gaps in your resume while
allowing you to dictate how you apply your time.

------
ryanwanger
I'll bet that Americans have to travel further to see family than most other
countries. The bigger the country and more mobile the population, the more
days are lost to family visits...making true vacation days even more scarce
than they might appear.

~~~
callahad
Ooh, I hadn't thought to quantify that, but as an only child living almost
2000 km from my family, it takes me around 7 hours of transit (3 hours on a
flight, 2.5 in a car, an hour or so for airport security, intermodal
transitions, and other miscellany). Essentially a full working day devoted to
travel each way. To make it worth while, I need to stay at my destination for
at least two subsequent days.

Thus, this year, I have to budget ~4 vacation days around Christmas, and ~3
around Thanksgiving. If I had the standard American budget of 10 working days
of vacation, I would be left with but 24 hours of paid time off for the entire
rest of the year.

------
InfinityX0
In Daniel Kahneman's talk "The riddle of experience vs memory", he details how
vacations are most important for the memories they create. When we go on a
three week vacation to the Bahamas, when we look back, it was just a vacation
to the Bahamas - the duration didn't matter. For our happiness' sake, we would
have been better off splitting that vacation in thirds, to three different
locales, because our vacations, when recited, dissolve the time spent at each
location.

[http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_exper...](http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html)

~~~
geden
Nice. I experienced that first hand earlier this month.

During a two week holiday I spent 2 days in a city hotel, then the rest of the
week in a campsite and then another week camping in another country.

On the penultimate day I remarked to my wife that I felt like I'd been away
for 2 months. Now I know why. Thank you.

------
gst
So all these US companies have this 10 (or something) days of paid vacation.
Is it usually possible to get longer (but unpaid) vactions, or is this not an
option?

~~~
adolph
Custom and economics make unpaid vacations an unattractive option. Most human
resource systems do have "unpaid leave" on the books for when workers have
some necessity to take more leave than currently accrued. Under some
circumstances a worker could go into a negative leave amount that will be
filled in by leave earned later.

One of the issues for a company is that leave is accounted for like an unpaid
bill. If employees have a large amount of leave built up it can look like the
company has an out-of-balance amount of liabilities.

How is leave accounted for in non-US companies?

------
jasonkester
One of the nice things about America is that you have the freedom to rearrange
your priorities however you want. Personally, I value travel enough to have
put myself in a position to do as much of it as I like.

The cool part is that as geeks, this is more true for us than for anybody
else.

Everybody here is capable of making 2-20x the standard American salary, and
most of us are capable of doing that remotely. That means that anybody here
can, if so inclined, take between 6 and 10 months off to travel every year and
still bring in the same salary (or more) than your typical office worker.

Better still, we can do our thing remotely for the most part, so there's
nothing to stop anybody here from setting up shop in the South of France and
writing code with a view of the Mediterranean and a bottle of wine close at
hand.

So yeah, if you want you can live the lifestyle described in the article. But
as IT folk, it's nice to know we don't have to.

More here:

[http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-
vaca...](http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vacation-is-
only.html)

------
sliverstorm
The thing that always kills vacations for me is, I suspect, directly related
to our lack of vacation time.

Vacations must be optimized and maximized, to get the 'most' out of the short
time you do have.

As a result of this, you get nothing out of it because you miss the point
entirely.

Holidays are great, because nobody is going anywhere and the only concern is
that the food is not burned.

------
johnnyg
I like maximizing and optimizing my vacation. I definitely want to have an
original, self improving experience on my vacation. I think I would last about
2 minutes just laying on a chair.

In all utter seriousness, is there some better way to spend a vacation? Can
you describe it?

~~~
sliverstorm
The vacations I enjoy the most typically have:

-A start date

-A end date

-A location/destination

-One or more good friends/family

-A vague idea of what we'd like to do

Any time a vacation is actually planned beyond what flight or road to take and
perhaps where to sleep, for me no fun is had at all. You spend all your time
stressing trying to meet deadlines and worrying about what comes next, instead
of living in the moment, which is what a vacation is all about.

I figure you know your vacation was done right when you wake up the last
morning and think, "man, I don't want to leave"

~~~
jasonkester
That's a good start, but you've got a couple steps there that can cause
problems. Here's my list:

\- a start date

\- a starting location

\- a vague idea of what you can do there

As you said, having concrete plans can mess things up, but I find that having
even a single date on the calendar is just too much of a constraint. Once you
hit the ground, you just don't know how long anything is going to take. If
you're due in a specific place at a specific time, you'll find yourself
compromising, rushing, and skipping things even if that date is two months
away.

Friends are nice to have along, but you need to plan your trip with the
assumption that they won't come. Because they wont. And if you're waiting to
book your flight until they decide on a good excuse, you could end up not
going either.

