Why learning something new might be the most restful part of your holiday
Summary
Recovery from work comes from four experiences: switching off, relaxing, control over your time, and mastery
Relaxation leaves you calm; mastery (a challenge you improve at) leaves you energised and keeps your mind off work
In a study of 507 people, mastery was the only one that significantly predicted wellbeing a month after a holiday
Learning a skill on holiday is one way to get mastery, alongside time to slow down
I know a trip has worked when my phone congratulates me (yes, I do receive a message every Monday)
Every week, it sends me a little report on my screen time. Most weeks, I'd rather not take a look at it. But after the weeks I've spent learning something- a cooking class, a tasting, a dance lesson- the number goes down, and my phone tells me so, almost proudly (as much as I am about myself).
When you're trying to follow a recipe in a language you don't speak, or keep up with a teacher who's three steps ahead, there's no room left to scroll.
For a long time, I didn't think of those days as rest. They were busy, sometimes tiring. But I came home from them feeling better than from most beach or rest holidays.
There's more than one way to rest
Sabine Sonnentag, a psychologist who studies how people recover from work, describes four experiences that help us recharge.
| Experience | What it means | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Switching off from work | Mentally disconnecting from work: not thinking about tasks, problems or emails. It’s about your thoughts, not your location. | Turning off notifications, not checking emails, a trip where work doesn’t come up |
| Relaxing | Lowering your physical and mental activity: a calmer body, a slower pace, little effort. | A massage, a nap, an afternoon with a book |
| Control | Deciding for yourself how you spend your free time: what you do, when, and how. | Choosing when to wake up, picking your own activities, a day with no plan |
| Mastery | Taking on something challenging outside work that gives you a chance to learn and improve. It requires effort, but within your abilities. | Learning a language, cooking a new dish, taking up a sport |
Relaxation helps you calm down and unwind. Mastery gives you a sense of progress, and often a different kind of energy. You don't have to choose one. Sometimes you need both.
Sonnentag's advice is simple: match the rest to how you feel.
If you're wired and can't sleep, you probably need to slow down. If you feel flat, uninspired, or stuck, something challenging might help you more.
What the research says about holidays
A study of 507 Japanese adults examined wellbeing before, during, and after a winter holiday. People who travelled reported higher wellbeing than those who stayed home. But the more interesting finding came a month later: of the four recovery experiences, mastery was the only one that significantly predicted how people felt.
In other words, taking on a challenge and feeling yourself improve may be part of what makes a holiday's benefits last.
It's one study, not a universal rule. But it raises a question: what if the most memorable part of a holiday isn't where you went, but what you learned while you were there?
What a day of learning feels like
At the beginning, you're aware of everything you're getting wrong. You hold the glass awkwardly, miss the beat, or watch your carefully shaped bowl collapse. You wonder whether everyone else is getting it faster than you.
Then something shifts. You stop worrying about how you look and start noticing what you're doing. You recognise an aroma you couldn't name an hour earlier. You follow the rhythm for a few bars without counting. Your hands start to understand what the clay needs. You taste a sauce and know what it's missing.
You're still concentrating. You might even be tired. But your attention is somewhere completely different, and for a while, the usual noise of everyday life gets quieter.
Rest doesn't have to mean doing nothing
Wanderphi trips are built on this: small groups of women, one destination, one skill learned where it comes from. Wine in South Africa, salsa in Colombia, ceramics in Japan, cooking in Italy, art in France, coffee in Kenya. There's time to slow down, too, but learning shapes the days.
Rest doesn't have to mean doing nothing. Sometimes it means doing something so different from your normal life that the rest of it fades for a while. You might come home with a new skill, a better understanding of a place, or the satisfaction of having tried something you once thought wasn't for you.
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It can be, if every hour is filled. That’s why the rhythm matters: focused sessions, then real downtime. After a morning of practice, an afternoon off can feel especially satisfying: you’re still thinking about what you’ve learned, but there’s no pressure to keep going. The slower moments are often when the experience sinks in, over lunch, talking about what you got wrong, or noticing something you learned that morning in the place around you.
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No. Most skill-based trips are designed for beginners. Being bad at something at the start is part of the experience.
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A wellness holiday often puts relaxation and wellbeing at the centre of the experience. A skillcation puts learning something new at the heart of the trip, whether that's understanding wine, discovering a craft or trying a new dance. The two can overlap: a trip can offer both the satisfaction of learning and the space to slow down.
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