Gen Z disrupts work again—by taking a vacation!

Issue 172: Why it's important to have the right mindset for a summer vacation

Have you ever “micro-retired”? This week, we learned that micro-retirements are all the rage among Gen Z. According to Fast Company:

Gen Z is using micro-retirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work, and enhance their overall well-being. However, it’s not just Gen-Z: according to a survey from Side Hustles, 10% of workers are considering taking a micro-retirement and 75% thought employers should offer micro-retirement policies such as unpaid sabbaticals.

But keep reading and you’ll discover the big disruption: micro-retirements are annual one week leaves. Or as, the Merriam Webster Dictionary account wryly pointed out—these are quite simply vacations.

As absurd as this article sounds, it captures a deeper problem with American life that expands well beyond Gen Z. Americans are quite literally, the worst at taking vacation time. According to Expedia, Americans not only receive the fewest vacation days each year, averaging just 11 days, but only half of them even plan to use all their allotted time off. France won the spot as the country that gets the most days off, at about a month.

It isn’t merely a matter of vacation days. Very few US employees even used their very limited earned time off! This suggests the difference between Americans and Europeans is less about policy, than it is about social norms. When your peers take time off, you do too. When they don’t, you feel compelled to stare at a computer screen rather than the beach.

Among academics, it gets even more ironic. Instead of unplugging, we humblebrag with beachside laptop selfies—“Look! I’m revising my article and enjoying the ocean breeze!” (Rest assured, the sand got everywhere and the Wi-Fi was terrible.)

These cultural differences are so stark that they have become a popular punch line on social media. Our favorite is this observation about the Out of Office messages:

We think the issue is not merely a matter of norms, but identity. It’s one thing to go on vacation, quite another to put away work and truly embrace it.

Of course, sometimes we don’t just take vacations, we perform them. These days, even rest is curated. Travel has become content, a way to signal status, taste, and a cosmopolitan self—one Instagram story at a time.