Productive vacations

I used to dislike long vacations. Long vacations drive me crazy.

Some people wonder how I maintain my voice with the rigorous schedule of speaking and training I do almost every day, but what many do not know is that I actually lose my voice after a long vacation. The vocal cord muscles seem to be stretched so much that they contract when days pass without me using them.

There are two major reasons why I dislike long vacations. First, it disrupts my usual pattern of activities, and secondly, it whets my appetite and I eat more when I’m idle.

This is why I have learned to constantly find things to do during long vacations. I have spent time for reflection, read books, wrote books and prepared lessons. Not that I am “working” during vacations, but strangely when well rested and when routine is broken it raises an enormous amount of creativity and ideas for me to work on. And so vacations can be a productive time for me.

And it is very nice to know that there have been breakthrough inventions from very prominent figures and personalities during their vacations too. These are stories collected through the years and it will amaze you as to how vacations or taking a break can result in major accomplishments.

After World War II, a Russian doctor in frozen Siberia saw lots of patients with horrid compound gunshot fractures – the kind that, at the time, often led to amputations. So, the coolly creative doctor, Gavriel Abramovich Ilizarov, devised a frame using metal rings and taut wires to pull bones into alignment and hold them together while they healed. Once, Dr. Ilizarov was called upon to use his unnamed device to help an amputee lengthen a short stump. He cut the stumped bone in half, intending to graft more bone between the two parts, and used his device to gradually pull the bone fragments, not together, but apart. Then, he went on vacation for a month and absent-mindedly forgot about his patient!

Uh oh. Malpractice? No, something was about to happen!

When he returned, Dr. Ilizarov was astounded to find that new bone had grown to fill the gap. It took years for the medical establishment to stop calling him a quack, but Ilizarov prevailed. Doctors use both of his technique and apparatus to heal and lengthen bones today, growing one millimeter per day. We can thank a doctor’s vacation for penicillin, too. In

1928, Dr. Alexander Fleming was researching ways to combat staph infections at St. Mary’s Hospital in London when he had a momentous idea: that he really needed a break!

So he went away for a few days, refreshed himself, and returned – only to find that some green mold had grown on one of his culture plates and that all the nasty staph bacteria were keeping their distance from it. Fleming had discovered penicillin – or, at least, penicillin had discovered Fleming. But that isn’t the end of the story. It took two biochemists, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, and the pressure of World War II to turn the mold into a usable antibiotic. Fleming, Florey, and Chain shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in medicine for their work.

Here is another story: In 1684, Edmond Halley (the English astronomer of comet-finding fame) paid a visit to Isaac Newton. Halley had a running bet with Robert Hooke and Christopher Wren about who could first figure out why planets follow elliptical orbits. Newton boldly said he knew; he had calculated it before. Unfortunately, he couldn’t find the paper he had used.

Newton’s brief loss proved to be the world’s great gain. Rather than simply leaving Halley to his bet, Newton spent the next two years writing a book – his Principia, arguably the greatest single work in the history of science – that included his three laws of motion and his law of universal gravitation. Forget about an apple hitting Newton on the head (falling fruit inspiring thought, yes; knocking his noggin, no). But, rest assured, God was at work. And He uses vacation days for people to achieve these.

So whatever you call it… coincidence, accidents or serendipity? I call it, God’s grace at work.

So take a vacation. Enjoy your family. Be renewed and rested. Who knows? Maybe a breakthrough idea may just come your way.

Vacations are not wasted time. It may be an opportunity to discover new ideas. We need rest. We need to reflect and renew. Trust me. You need it.

(Experience two inspiring days of leadership training with Francis Kong in his highly acclaimed Level Up Leadership on May 17-18 at Makati, Shangri-La Hotel. For registration or inquiries contact April at +63928-559-1798.)