The Vacation Paradox or “Why are we the most productive when we’re off?“
The domino set was missing its double 5 as well as the 5/6. The remaining pieces were old, a bit tainted and the wooden box was definitely vintage, if not shabby, not closing properly with a big split on one side.
It was perfect.
“How much?”
“2€”
“Deal.”
“What a bargain,” I internally boasted.
“What a dumb dumb,” probably thought the seller.
“What the f*** are you gonna do with that??” asked my friend as soon as we left the booth.
The answer was so obvious I was surprised she would even ask me.
“Well, but a dataviz project!”
“Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?“
I was indeed.
It was the traditional midsummer yard sale in the village and instead of looking for lamps, kitchenware and other trivialities I needed for the new house, my mind and wallet had settled upon this discarded, incomplete old domino game, recluded at the bottom of a table—probably to be thrown away later by its negligent seller. I didn’t know exactly what I was gonna do with it but I knew I could make something out of it. I knew I wanted to make something out of it, something related to dataviz, because I was on holiday and the urge of creating some dataviz projects is never as strong as when I’m taking some time off.
That’s why every summer for the past several years now, I would throw myself into a new absurd and complex, often summer-related, dataviz project. There was the time I collected rocks from the beach to make a color analysis, the one where I took a picture of every jellyfish I stumbled upon for further survey. There also were the coral project, the pierced seashells one, the seventies-meet-covid one, the Agatha Christie covers but-make-it-dataviz one and so on, and so on.
The itch would usually appear a couple of days after this long sigh of relief we all breathe the minute we’re finally on vacation. It had probably grown silently in the background when I had enjoyed at first waking late in the morning, not having to check my mails or open my Illustrator until eventually, one day, while I was at the beach or lying on the garden couch, still and contented, a vintage crime novel on my lap, I’d open my eyes wide behind my sunglasses and the imperative urge of dataviz would be fully there.
Is it normal? Are we normal? I feel every data designer uses their time off to dive into some personal dataviz projects, usually more ambitious and strenuous than they already have during the rest of the year. You have to wonder—do accountants imagine the bookkeeping of the places they visit or surgeons dissect the shrimps they’re eating at the restaurants on the seashore? Are there a lot of firefighters out there, anxiously scrutinizing the landscape they’re hiking in, in hope of a fire to extinguish? Or is this bizarre occupational hazard extending during holiday a very datadesigner thing? And if so, why are we like this?
You can’t accuse me of endorsing the hustle culture. First, because I’m French. I’m legally required to disappear from the work radar during the entire month of August, otherwise I could lose my citizenship. And rest assured that I’d be the first one to protest, half naked on a Parisian barricade, carrying a flag, if our government tried to take off 20 minutes from our minimum five weeks of annual paid leave. But even more than that, it’s because there’s few things I believe in more than the necessary value of time off in the creative process.
I’m convinced that in order to create, your mind needs to linger first in some vacant space and time. At least, mine does. Facing a blank page at my desk, the spoiled child that I call my brain will suddenly want to scrub the bathtub or do the dishes I left undisturbed at the bottom of the sink from the past 2 days. Only when there’s no more left to clean in the house but the keyhole of the doors with a Q-tip, I would blankly stare at the ceiling and then, only then, would my mind start to furiously bubble with ideas. To the point that you can usually tell my current creativity by the state of my interior—the cleaner my house, the busier you bet I’m at work.
I guess creative thoughts need to arise from a vacuum (and from vacuuming apparently) like a natural drive to fill the void. After all, if you intend to erect a cathedral, you’d better find a large, empty space for it before. Could it be that our daily lives have become so intense, so busy and filled to the brim that we only unearth such spaces during our annual summer leave? If that’s so, how do you find plaza in the cluttered cities of our lives? How do you reintroduce backdrafts in the apnea of the rest of the year? Because in the end, that’s the ultimate question all designers dread—how long could you actually hold your breath before you fall into a state of creative unconsciousness?
Those are hard questions I leave for September, when the window of summer will need to be closed. For now, let me enjoy the airdraft. Working on a myriad of splashy projects as my peculiar way of spending the fleeting days of August, I still feel happy and content, undisturbed by the promise of work and autumn, nor the loud recriminations of my friends playing a domino game at my place and who’re weirdly accusing each other of cheating by concealing pieces of the set.
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Datacitron (aka Julie Brunet) is an independent data & information designer as well as the Creative Director of Nightingale, the journal of Datavisualization Society. She believes in the accessibility of information through design and storytelling, and the virtuous role data designers can play in our society
