If you are not interested in the Expansion-Compression theory of vacations and related new findings, don’t read this.
Everyone knows that a short week is always longer than a regular week. This is known as the Expansion Effect or “stretch effect.” Getting from Monday to Wednesday evening, before Thanksgiving, takes about three weeks. Working folks enter Thanksgiving exhausted.
The Compression Effect intensifies the problem. Getting ready, cooking, or traveling makes Thanksgiving morning a total loss. Time speeds up, and the four-day weekend compresses into about one and a half days.
The real fatigue occurs during the week following Thanksgiving. The loooong three-day pre-Thanksgiving week, followed by the compressed holiday, confuses our biorhythms. This post-Thanksgiving regular week expands beyond proportion, and workers enter the new workweek exhausted. The standing record for expansion was set in 2011 when it took three days to get from 8 AM to 10 AM on the Monday after Thanksgiving.
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