Somewhere between a business meeting and a holiday, I began wondering whether we ever truly switch off.

In past 22 years of working as a professional, as per my diary, I would have travelled 2220 (approx) days for work and would have travelled approx 220 days for leisure, sometimes to the very same cities where I have spent long days in meetings, negotiated deals, attended conferences, or rushed from one appointment to another.

And yet, I have often wondered about something rather strange. Why does travelling for work and travelling for leisure sometimes feel so similar to me?

The purpose is different, of course. When I travel for work, I know what I have to do. My calendar tells me where I need to be, whom I need to meet, and what I need to accomplish. When I travel for leisure, I am supposed to be free. No deadlines, no meetings, no targets, just me, a new place, and the luxury of having time to myself.

But somewhere between checking into a hotel and waking up in a new city, I find that my mind has not necessarily travelled with me. A part of it is still back home, thinking about something that needs attention, a conversation I need to have, or a decision that can probably wait until I return.

I have experienced this so often that it almost feels normal. I travel nearly every month, and I have caught myself behaving much the same way whether I am travelling for work or taking a break.

One day, I wondered if I was the only one who felt this way.

So, I picked up my phone and started calling a few friends. There was no particular plan, no research questionnaire, and certainly no intention of writing an article. I was just curious to know if people who travelled as much as I did experienced the same thing.

Those conversations made me think about something I had perhaps never stopped to examine properly.

The first person I called was Arush, an entrepreneur and a senior business leader with offices across the world. If you know entrepreneurs, you will probably understand what I mean when I say that their businesses rarely have an official closing time. Even when they leave their offices, their minds often remain there.

I asked him, almost casually, “Arush, tell me something. When you travel for work and when you go on holiday, do you actually feel different?”

He laughed.

“Of course! When I travel for work, there is a purpose. Meetings, people, decisions. When I travel for leisure, I want to relax. I want to enjoy myself.”

“That sounds good,” I said. “But do you actually relax?”

There was a little pause before he answered.

And that pause interested me more than the answer itself.

Think about Arush for a moment. He has built a business that operates across countries. There are people whose livelihoods depend on the business, clients who expect things to work, and decisions that sometimes cannot wait for him to return from a holiday.

I imagined him sitting at a beautiful restaurant somewhere in Europe, perhaps enjoying a leisurely lunch, when his phone lights up with a message from another part of the world.

He looks at it, and he tells himself he will deal with it later. Then he starts wondering what might happen if he does not respond. Perhaps he knows the answer to the problem immediately. Perhaps it will take him only five minutes to resolve it.

And five minutes later, he is back in business mode.

The restaurant is still beautiful. The food is still wonderful. The people sitting with him are still waiting for his attention. But a part of him has already left the table.

I asked him, “Do you ever feel that you owe yourself a proper holiday?”

He spoke about responsibility, about how difficult it can be to disconnect when so many things depend on you.

And I understood.

Sometimes, nobody is forcing us to check our phones. Nobody is standing over us demanding that we respond immediately. We do it ourselves because we know we can help, because we feel accountable, or simply because we have become used to being the person who sorts things out.

I wondered whether being needed becomes so much a part of our identity that we eventually stop knowing how to feel when nobody needs us for a while.

For Arush, switching off may not be as simple as putting his phone on silent. It may mean trusting others enough to let them handle things in his absence. It may mean accepting that not every problem requires his immediate involvement.

And perhaps the hardest part is learning that being a good entrepreneur does not mean being available every minute of every day.

I did not have the heart to turn the conversation into a lecture about work-life balance. After all, I was calling a friend, not interviewing him for a management seminar.

But after we hung up, I kept thinking about that little pause before his answer.

I wondered how many of us have forgotten what it feels like to be completely away.

My next call was to a friend who holds a doctorate and has spent almost twenty years teaching sciences in academia.

Her world is very different from Arush’s. She is not running an international business, but her professional life carries its own responsibilities. There are students, classes, academic commitments, preparation, and the constant expectation of being someone who knows, explains, guides, and helps others understand.

I asked her the same question.

“When you travel for leisure, can you really leave your work behind?”

She thought about it for a moment.

“I don’t think the mind works that way,” she said. “Even when I travel for leisure, I keep observing things, I notice details, I start thinking about things I read or teach. Sometimes, an experience reminds me of something I want to explore further.”

I smiled because I could relate to that feeling.

Some people cannot walk past a beautiful building without wondering about its history. Others cannot visit a science museum without wanting to understand how everything works. For someone who has spent two decades teaching, curiosity may not be something she switches on when she enters a classroom. It may simply be the way she sees the world.

I tried to imagine her walking through a new city, perhaps visiting a museum or sitting in a quiet café. She might be enjoying herself, but her mind would also be collecting little observations, connecting ideas, noticing details that others might overlook.

And then I asked her something that had been on my mind.

“Do you ever feel tired of thinking? Do you ever want to experience something without trying to understand it?”

This time, I found myself waiting for the answer.

Because behind every professional identity is a human being who sometimes wants to stop performing that identity.

Behind the teacher is someone who may want to be carefree for a day. Behind the person everyone turns to for knowledge is someone who may occasionally want to have no answers at all. Someone who does not have to prepare, explain, guide, or make sense of everything.

I wondered whether she ever wanted to sit somewhere beautiful, watch the world go by, and let an experience remain just an experience.

No lesson to take back to the classroom. No insight to write down. No need to make the time productive.

Just the simple pleasure of being there.

Perhaps her challenge is different from Arush’s. He may struggle to put down the phone; she may struggle to quiet the mind.

But both of them, in their own ways, may be carrying their professional selves into places where they had hoped to meet a different version of themselves.

And I found myself wondering if I was doing exactly the same thing.

When I began making these calls, I thought I was trying to understand other people’s experiences.

Somewhere along the way, I realised I was trying to understand my own.

I have travelled for work and leisure enough times to know that the difference is not in the itinerary. It is in what I allow myself to do with the time.

During a work trip, I understand why my attention is divided. There are meetings to attend, people to meet, decisions to make, and responsibilities to fulfil.

But when I travel for leisure, I sometimes catch myself doing exactly the same things in a different setting. I still check messages, I still think about work, I still mentally organise things that need to be done, I still tell myself I will deal with something quickly and then return to enjoying the day.

And sometimes, I do return to enjoying the day. But sometimes, my mind has already moved on to the next thing.

I have sat in beautiful places and thought about work that could easily have waited. I have had moments when I knew I should be enjoying where I was, yet found myself thinking about what was happening somewhere else.

Have you ever experienced that?

You are sitting with people you love, perhaps in a place you had been looking forward to visiting for months. The surroundings are beautiful. Nobody is asking you to do anything. You have, for once, given yourself permission to take a break.

And yet, your hand reaches for your phone, you check one message, then another.

You tell yourself it will take only a minute, but the real question is not how many minutes you have spent on your phone. It is whether you have allowed yourself to be present in the life that is unfolding right in front of you.

I have started wondering if those of us who carry significant responsibilities become so accustomed to anticipating the next demand that we find it difficult to simply receive the present moment.

We know how to plan. We know how to deliver. We know how to solve problems, take ownership, and keep things moving.

But do we know how to stop without feeling that we are neglecting something?

That question made me uncomfortable because I could not answer it with complete honesty. I like to believe I know how to take a break. Yet, perhaps I have been confusing the act of travelling somewhere with the ability to be mentally present once I arrive.

They are not necessarily the same thing : Perhaps we just need to let ourselves enjoy

I don’t think I have found all the answers. Perhaps I was never looking for any, those conversations simply made me realise how easily we carry our work, our worries, and our sense of responsibility everywhere we go.

Maybe unwinding doesn’t have to be something we plan or learn perfectly. Perhaps it begins when we stop expecting ourselves to switch off instantly. When we allow our minds a little time to settle, when we stop feeling guilty about not being available every moment, and when we remind ourselves that everything important will still be there when we return.

I think of Arush, my academic friend, and myself. We have all worked hard to build the lives we live today. Perhaps we deserve to enjoy them, too, without feeling that we must first finish every task, answer every message, or put every worry to rest.

Sometimes, I wonder if we have become so comfortable being responsible that we have forgotten how to be carefree.

And maybe that is all we need to rediscover. Not the ability to forget our responsibilities, but the comfort of knowing that we can set them aside for a while and still be the same people.

I may not always manage to do that. I know my mind will sometimes wander back to work, even when I am somewhere beautiful. But perhaps I can be a little kinder to myself when it does, gently returning to the moment instead of feeling guilty for not enjoying it enough.

After all, a holiday is not another task to get right. We don’t have to be perfectly relaxed to deserve a good time.

Perhaps the real luxury is not travelling to the most beautiful place in the world, but reaching a point where we can sit there, breathe, smile, and enjoy it without feeling that we ought to be doing something else.

“And as for the rest, let life happen to you.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, (Letters to a Young Poet)