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Why Today Is the Best Time to Book That Vacation
The more time elapses between enjoyable experiences, the less likely we are to plan one.
- By
- December 09, 2025
- CBR - Behavioral Science
When you return home from a vacation, you may want to immediately book another—and perhaps you should. The further we get from an enjoyable experience, the less likely we are to schedule the next one, according to research by Linda Hagen of the University of Illinois Chicago and Chicago Booth’s Ed O’Brien.
That may seem counterintuitive, considering that we don’t generally like having to wait for things we want, such as a vacation—and the longer we wait for it, the more we should want to have it. Yet the researchers find that long delays make people feel their return experience needs to be extra special, so they hold out for the “right” time later. The trap is that the right time never seems to come, creating a vicious cycle that gets in the way of happiness. Long awaiters never jump back into things they love doing.
Hagen and O’Brien conducted a series of experiments, one of which was carried out in spring 2021, when many venues were reopening after COVID-19 shutdowns. They asked about 500 participants recruited from an online research platform to rate how long it felt since they’d done something fun, such as eating out or traveling, and say whether they would likely do it again immediately—or delay further for a better, more special occasion. Some participants rated the gap since their most recent fun experience as shorter, and 22 percent of those respondents said they would likely delay an activity further. But other participants rated the gap as having felt longer, and 70 percent of those said they intended to delay it even more.
The results suggest that the perceived length of a time gap “significantly predicted delayed (not hastened) returns, with participants waiting even longer for better options later—even though this meant passing up immediately safe, available, and attractive options,” write Hagen and O’Brien.
To find out why, they asked participants to recall a friend with whom they’d had either short or long gaps in communication. Participants were then given the choice to text their friend a quick hello or to complete a dull, solo transcription task. (The team controlled for variables such as social anxiety.) Mirroring the earlier results, 63 percent of participants in the short-gap group chose to text their friend, while only 46 percent of those in the long-gap group did the same.
The right time never comes
In an experiment, the longer people felt it had been since they had participated in an activity they enjoyed, the more likely they were to wait even longer to return to it after pandemic shutdowns ended.
But this choice had a cost. In a similar setup, participants who chose to do a boring task scored significantly lower on a subsequent happiness questionnaire than those who had chosen to write a short note of gratitude to a friend.
In final experiments, Hagen and O’Brien looked into a possible explanation—and antidotes—for the tendency to make choices that work against happiness. They again asked participants about their time frame for eating out, traveling, or engaging in another cherished experience. And as before, participants in the long-gap group were more likely to say they’d further postpone doing it again. But the team also asked participants to rate some possible explanations for their choices. One stood out: Participants in the long-gap group were more likely to say the experience would need to be of “exceptionally high value” for them to do it again, which explained why they turned down chances to finally return to it. The present just never feels special enough, leading people to keep waiting for a right time that never comes.
“One reason for long awaiters’ delay behavior is self-imposed,” write Hagen and O’Brien. “People seek to make up for lost time not with speed or frequency per se, but with high value (‘After so much time, the return needs to be really great!’).”
Being reminded of the fact that any moment can feel special helped participants want to engage in experiences sooner and reduced their erroneous sense that waiting makes them better.
It takes effort to get out of the vicious cycle of postponement. “Motivating people to return to things that matter for their immediate happiness and well-being—things they want to have and are theirs to take—may be surprisingly difficult,” the researchers write. But intentional reminders that specialness can happen in the present “may be needed to help people less dramatically and more happily jump back in.” So take a moment to remember the thrill of your last trip, and then schedule your next one.
Linda Hagen and Ed O’Brien, “Lost Time Undermines Return Behavior,” PNAS Nexus, June 2025.
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