There’s a scene in “Mad Men” where Don Draper is asked what he thought about Hawaii, and instead of talking about beaches, he talks about becoming someone else. Not a version of himself with better tan lines and a Mai Tai. A different person. One who, for a few days, didn’t miss anything about his regular life. Not the ad agency. Not the apartment. Not even the version of himself that exists back home.
I think about that scene every time I watch someone on vacation checking Slack by the pool.
We talk a lot about productivity hacks. Ways to work smarter, sleep better, optimise the morning routine. Nobody talks about vacation hacks, and I think that’s the real gap. Because if “work hard, play hard” used to mean something, it wasn’t just about intensity. It was about the switch. Full commitment to one mode, then full commitment to the other. Not a blend. Not a lighter version of work running quietly in the background while you technically sit on a beach.
If you bring your phone, you don’t leave. You just relocate the same person to a nicer view.
Becoming someone else for a week, the way Draper describes it, requires actually leaving. Not geographically. Mentally. And that’s harder now than it’s ever been, because the tool that would let you check in for “just a minute” is sitting in your pocket the entire time.
I’ll post the clip below, it’s worth the sixty seconds, full version in here.
When was the last time you came back from a vacation and realised you hadn’t missed anything?
Mad Men (season 6 episode 2)
