Holidays and the Mind – Mind the holidays

It’s good to travel because it is good to be away for some time from your daily routines that dominate your life. You need to get away from them on a regular basis if you wish to avoid becoming their slaves. The reason is that a change of the environment also changes your mind: Things that bothered you become more distant, less urgent, and new points of reference are gradually emerging. You experience a change of perspectives. You sense that you are more creative and imaginative, also more reflective – and more productive. For me this process usually is initiated a week after I have left my routines: new ideas emerge, energy resumes, and, sooner or later, I feel a desire to return to work. You have reinvented yourself, at least for some time. But you need sufficient time to do so.

Going on holidays for several weeks, however, is not easy in Taiwan. Hardly any Taiwanese is in the position to do so unless you are a student or you quit the job for that very reason. Compared to Western countries employees here have considerably fewer days of paid leave. Besides, being an employee in the first year the number of days to travel around is more than minimal; it is close to zero. Under such circumstances vacationing especially for young people is quite limited: you just have enough time to visit the next village. It’s true, the number of holidays increases with the years you work at the same company. But each time you change the company – people here a frequent job hoppers – your entitlement for holidays begins from ground zero; there is no accumulation of years that would accumulate such entitlements. That is not nice.

Unfortunately, there are more limitations: Even if you are entitled to several weeks of paid leave per year it is very difficult to take them in one piece. The chance that you lose your working place if you stay away too long from it is rather high, despite legal guarantees. Bosses in Taiwan hardly care about the legal (and moral!) rights of their employees; the economic argument usually wins. Bosses don’t want you to leave your working place.

The practice of restricting (the duration of) holidays of employees in Taiwan is the result of a culture which typically favors the stronger vis-à-vis the weaker. Many employers here seem to think they have a right to determine the kind of holidays their employees take, and employees duly comply mainly because they are afraid to lose their jobs. Trade unions, established to protect the legal rights of the workers, are practically non-existent. The boss decides, and no one else: his interests alone count. There is no law which protects those in a company who try to invoke the law. Or, to be more precise: There is a law, but – who cares? Culture trumps the law, and the very same local culture tells you that you’d better listen to your boss. Too often, workers are afraid of their bosses.

Many workers here are exploited in the name of a culture that deliberately ignores legal provisions; unpaid overtime working is just another case in point. In this aspect culture generates accepted forms of intimidations because of their familiar faces. Only few people here are aware of the intrinsic violent core of this culture, which, by the way, expands beyond the realms of the labor environment. Responsible politicians with a sense of social justice should interfere and denounce this dirty side of their own culture. But: where are they?

One may wonder why things in this aspect work out better in many countries in Europe: why is more social justice possible there, but not here? Of course history can explain much. But governments from countries with a different history can nevertheless learn – and act accordingly. Just taking a look at some statistics should make politicians (and business people alike) think. Germany and The Netherlands for instance are among the nations in the world where people work the least in terms of working hours, about one third less than Taiwanese laborers. Moreover, they are also among the most generous countries regarding days of paid leave. Yet workers from both countries share the reputation to be more efficient and more productive than those of many other countries: Higher working (therefore living) standards do not seem to negatively affect competitiveness. But how are both factors – productivity and length of working time – related? Are they related?

Yes, says a new study, at least in terms of productivity and creativity, and in inverse proportionality: More frequent time-outs make people more imaginative, more innovative and more productive; taking brief ‘mental holidays’ during the day generates similar effects. In a New York Times article in August of this year, D. Levitin, cognitive scientist at McGill University, summarized the results of his latest research on the attentional system of the brain. He distinguishes between two different modes or networks of attention. One refers to our ability to concentrate on specific tasks and their implementation (our executive); the other one labelled the mind-wondering or daydreaming mode is responsible for the generation of creative ideas. An important finding is that only one mode can be activated at a time, depending on the situation and to be regulated through a kind of cerebral switchboard. Multitasking for instance activates the executive in us, but not our creativity. Multitaskers are, therefore, seldom creative – they get mentally exhausted because they are too busy with being busy. The permanent expectation of incoming information permanently absorbs limited brain resources, reducing thereby focus-abilities and leaving the creative mode switched off.

How can it be switched on? According to the study: by doing nothing, or nothing special. Interesting and innovative ideas often come when they are not expected and searched for – and when the focus-mode is off. That’s why it is important to take breaks, take walks, listen to music, drift mentally away, and, as the author also suggests, have regular vacation: “Taking breaks is biologically restorative.” And mentally as well.

I don’t see many mind-wondering people here in Taiwan. In busses or MRTs for instance single people are either sleeping or texting/browsing. I hardly observe people contemplating, mind-wondering, daydreaming when they are just with themselves. Can it be that this lack of ‘mental life’ is responsible for the lack of creativity when it comes to personal life designs, individual opinions or academic performances? I guess my impression would change once people here are encouraged to take more time – both, spare time and time to develop one’s own personality – to distance themselves from daily routines – and their own culture – as a result from being encouraged to productively do nothing.