Holidays should feel like a deep exhale – a break from the constant pinging, planning and pushing that fill the rest of the year. But if you’re more the ‘Type A’ than ‘Type B’ personality, you know the feeling: you take leave and travel somewhere beautiful, only to return home still tired. Proper vacation planning requires more than simply setting up an out-of-office email reply. It takes a bit of unlearning, a lot of intention and this small ritual that makes a big difference – the two-hour rule. Here’s how to actually rest on holiday and successfully ‘switch off.’
Once it becomes a ritual, your brain begins to recognise that rest isn’t just a reward – it’s productivity.
The Two-hour Rule
If you’re new to the two-hour rule, it’s simple: every day of your holiday, you intentionally block off two uninterrupted hours for yourself. No work emails. No WhatsApp groups arguing about Christmas plans or what to bring to the braai. No guilt about doing ‘nothing.’ Just two hours that belong entirely to you – to slow down, switch off and remind your nervous system that life doesn’t have to be lived at full volume.
Those two hours can anchor your whole day. They create contrast – the kind that helps you actually feel like you’re on holiday instead of just overthinking in a new destination. And once it becomes a ritual, your brain begins to recognise that rest isn’t just a reward – at its peak, it’s productivity. Here’s how to properly rest on holiday.
Start With a Soft Boundary
Your two hours don’t have to resemble a silent retreat, but try to carve out real downtime and digital quiet. Put your phone on Airplane Mode, leave it in another room or switch off notifications you don’t need. You’re not “going off the grid” – you’re just ditching doomscrolling, and stepping out of the noise long enough to hear yourself think again.
This boundary works because it removes the biggest threat to rest on holiday: the impulse to scroll. Once the constant micro-alerts disappear, so does that sense of urgency, and you’re free to settle into the day a lot more naturally.
Choose Your Rest Rituals
Two hours can feel long if you’re used to constant stimulation. Filling it with gentle, grounding rituals helps you stay present. Think morning swims before the beach crowds arrive, reading outside with a cup of something cold, journaling, stretching, napping or just lying under a fan doing nothing.
What matters is that the ritual feels like an exhale, releasing any tension. Once you repeat it a few times, your body falls into it willingly – and that’s where the real rest happens.
Make It a Non-Negotiable
Holidays are unpredictable – plans change, the weather turns, and kids wake up earlier than sunrise. So, instead of treating your two-hour window as a strict schedule, treat it as a promise. It can shift, stretch or move around, but it still happens.
The two-hour rule creates unstructured wandering – the kind that lightens the mind and shifts your perspective.
Some days it might be two hours in one go. Other days, it might be thirty minutes here, ninety minutes there. The structure should be flexible enough to support your rest, not stress you out.
Drop the Productivity Mindset
One of the biggest reasons holidays don’t feel restful is because we try to use the ‘free time’ wisely – reorganising cupboards, catching up on admin, deep-cleaning, finishing passion projects. The two-hour rule pushes back against that instinct and centres your needs.
For those two hours, productivity is not the priority. You’re not ‘optimising’ your downtime. You’re allowing yourself to be a person rather than a machine. Giving yourself permission to rest, mentally, is often what makes the holiday feel like one.
Rest or Recharge
Rest doesn’t always look like stillness. Sometimes, it means recharging in nature, taking a slow walk, hiking, exploring a new spot without rushing, driving with no destination or floating in the ocean until your fingers wrinkle. The two-hour rule creates a container for this unstructured wandering – the kind that lightens the mind and shifts your perspective.
When you give yourself time to play, meander and be curious again, you tap into a more spacious kind of rest that lasts long after the holiday ends.
End With a Reset Ritual
If you can, close your two hours with something that signals completion – a shower, some stretches, a cold drink, a few minutes of journaling or sunscreen reapplication before you head out again. A small ending helps your body register the experience as real rest instead of a stolen moment.
Really want to rest on holiday? Learn all about the importance of doing nothing.
