“If a vacation is done well, it gives your ego all this extra time to refuel, by not trying to manage your brain, not trying to be on task, not trying to maintain the sort of memory trails that you maintain when you’re at work,” says [Amanda] Crowell. “The problem is that people go on vacation and they feel guilty about it. They don’t seem to recognize that the vacation is serving their business, and their productivity, and their success at their work. So they’ll check their email once a day, or they’ll take a quick call, or they’ll be thinking about work.”