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The travel industry loves to sell luxury retreats, but research shows even 24-hours in a hometown hotel can have profound benefits.
If you’re feeling a desperate need to disconnect from the craziness of the world and reset your brain this summer, the luxury travel industry is more than happy to oblige. An inn in rural England is selling retreats that combine forest bathing and cold plunges. An Icelandic adventure hotel pairs glacier walks with thermal baths. Bali touts jungle treks. An Omani resort offers desert meditation.
It all sounds so exotic, so relaxing… and so expensive. Who wouldn’t want to unwind next to a volcano or to a background of rainforest sounds? But if you lack either the time or money for a lengthy, elaborate escape from the world, I have good news for you.
Science suggests that a micro-retreat—just 24 hours in a random hotel room near home—can provide many of the same psychological benefits as far longer and more elaborate getaways designed to help you rest, refresh, and find clarity.
Discovering a 24-hour, low-cost brain reset
The idea comes from science writer Elizabeth Svoboda, author of the new book The Art of Pacing: A Guide to Balancing Short-Term Demands with Long-Term Thriving. In a recent Wall Street Journal article, she explains how she stumbled on the idea of the micro-retreat as a new mother.
“I felt utterly depleted,” she writes of that time in her life. “I was lucky if I got 20 minutes to focus before the next high-pitched interruption.”
Many of us can relate to the feeling. And we can also relate to the fact that the times when we need a break most are also often the times when it’s hardest to swing one, both financially and logistically. But Svoboda and her husband came up with a clever solution: a micro-retreat.
Paying with credit card points, Svoboda checked into a hotel in her hometown for 24 hours. There, she alternated between sessions of creative focus and rest. She found the experience so energizing that she now repeats it a few times a year. Despite their short length and lack of Instagram-ready glamor, these breaks “can renew enthusiasm and relieve mental exhaustion in potent ways.” she claims.
The science of micro-retreats
This might just sound like one burnt-out mom finding a workaround that serves her well. But Svoboda is also a science writer, so she dug into the research on why such a modest intervention can produce such profound effects.
A couple of ideas from psychology are key. The first is research showing that context switching, or rapidly toggling between tasks, is hugely tiring for our brain, reducing our cognitive performance and eating up time as we struggle to regain focus. Screen-filled contemporary life, as we all know, forces us into endless context switching. A click of a hotel room door behind you shuts out a huge number of brain-taxing distractions, leaving you with far more mental resources to spend as you wish.
The quieting of so many interruptions has a downstream effect too: It makes it far easier to enter a flow state. Psychology tells us that this feeling of being so fully absorbed in a task that we lose track of time is, in Svoboda’s words, “simultaneously absorbing and rewarding.” Flow has a double benefit: It’s fun and you feel refreshed afterwards.
Finally, studies have shown that changing your physical surroundings subtly prompts your brain to think differently. Sitting down in your usual meditation spot instantly calms your mind, for instance. Or maybe you put on your game face and square your shoulders as soon as you walk into the boardroom.
A hotel room isn’t just a buffer to keep shrieking kids or demanding bosses at bay. It’s also a signal for your mind to approach problems and projects in a new way.
How to plan your own micro-retreat
All of which had me sold on the idea of taking a micro-retreat, so I asked Svoboda for her advice on how to best plan and execute one. She offered a few pointers:
- Leave home. No, you can’t just lock yourself in the spare bedroom. “People who travel on short breaks tend to ruminate less about work issues, compared to people who spend those breaks at home. There’s something about that physical and psychological distance from everyday life that helps instill calm,” Scoboda says. If you can’t afford a hotel, maybe a friend will put you up or you can take a house-sitting gig.
- Plan your time. Svoboda uses hers for writing, but “the great thing about micro-retreats is that you can customize them however you like,” she says. Meditate, strategize, even cultivate awe. But make sure you’re “very clear about what that objective is,” she adds. “That way, you’ll be much less tempted to spend the whole time scrolling your feeds (which research tells us is not much of a relaxing experience anyway).”
- Minimize distractions. If you’re just going to be taking calls and checking email constantly, you’ll miss out on most of the benefits of the micro-retreat. Svoboda uses internet blocking app Freedom. Another possibility: Maybe just don’t sign on to the hotel’s wi-fi.
How would you spend 24 free hours alone?
How would you use 24 hours completely on your own with no outside distractions?
Whatever your answer, maybe you should plan a micro-retreat this summer and see what it feels like. Science suggests the benefits to your psychology and productivity may be far larger than you expect.
This post originally appeared at inc.com.
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