Realistic Holiday Habits For Burnt-Out Brits (That Don’t Involve A 4am Airport Run)

Realistic holiday habits: I’ll be honest, I used to be the world’s worst holiday planner. Spreadsheets, colour coded itineraries, a “must do” list longer than my actual packing list. I once tried to see four countries in eight days and came home needing a holiday from my holiday. If that sounds familiar, keep reading, because I think a lot of us have quietly given up on that way of doing things and nobody’s really talking about it yet.

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about burnout: it doesn’t clock off just because you’ve booked flights. You can be sat on a beach with a cocktail and still be mentally ticking off your inbox. So somewhere over the last year or two, without really announcing it to anyone, I stopped trying to “make the most” of every single day away and started asking a much simpler question. What would actually make me feel rested?

For me, that turned into a lot more weekends chasing spa hotels rather than city breaks. Nothing fancy, just somewhere with a decent pool, a robe that isn’t scratchy, and absolutely nothing planned beyond breakfast. Turns out two nights of doing very little does more for my nervous system than a week of sightseeing ever managed. I came home from my last one and my partner actually asked if I’d had Botox. I hadn’t. I’d just slept properly for the first time in months.

It’s not just the short breaks either. I used to roll my eyes at package holidays, imagining endless buffet queues and someone hogging the good sun loungers at 6am. But my mate booked one last summer purely because she couldn’t face planning a single thing after a rough year at work, and she wouldn’t stop going on about it. No decisions, no research, no fifteen tabs open comparing car hire. Just turn up, get handed a key, and switch your brain off for a week. She’s already rebooked for next year.

I think what’s actually changed isn’t where we’re going, it’s what we expect from getting there. A “good” holiday used to mean coming home with a memory card full of photos and a list of things ticked off. Now it feels more like success if you come home and genuinely can’t remember what day it is. Nobody’s applauding you for your itinerary anymore. They’re asking if you actually relaxed.

There’s also a slightly rebellious feeling to admitting this out loud, which I wasn’t expecting. Saying “we didn’t really do anything” used to feel like an admission of failure, like you’d wasted the annual leave. Now it feels closer to bragging rights. My favourite conversation this year was with a friend who spent four days in one spot with a book and came back looking about a decade younger. Meanwhile I know people who “did” three cities in a long weekend and looked like they needed intensive care by Monday.

If you’re the kind of person who used to feel guilty booking a holiday with literally nothing on the agenda, I promise you’re not alone, and I promise it’s not lazy. It’s actually harder than it sounds to sit still for four days and not fill the silence with plans. The instinct to “make the most of it” runs deep, especially if, like me, you grew up thinking a good trip meant exhausting yourself in the name of fun.

What’s helped me most is being honest about what I’m actually craving before I book anything. Am I after adventure, or am I after quiet? Do I want stories to tell, or do I want to come home actually feeling different? Some trips are still about ticking off bucket list places, obviously, I’m not becoming a hermit. But increasingly, the trips that stick with me are the ones where the biggest decision of the day was whether to have a second coffee before the pool opened.

I’ve started asking friends the same question when they mention booking something, and the answers are getting more honest too. Nobody’s pretending they want a packed schedule anymore. One friend admitted she’d cried with relief the moment she realised her only job for the week was to reapply sun cream. Another said the best bit of her trip was falling asleep on a sun lounger at 3pm on a Tuesday and nobody needing anything from her. That’s not a low bar, by the way. That’s the actual goal now, and I think we’ve spent years pretending otherwise because rest doesn’t photograph as well as a landmark does.

So if you’re staring down a bank holiday weekend or eyeing up next year’s annual leave and feeling that old pressure to plan something impressive, maybe don’t. Book the thing with the spa. Book the package deal that hands you the key and asks nothing of you. Nobody looks back on their life wishing they’d crammed in one more museum. Plenty of us wish we’d let ourselves properly switch off a bit sooner.

Turns out doing nothing might be the most productive thing you do all year.