Why a holiday is good for you—even before you take time off

You have spent the past few days on a cloud over your forthcoming, well-deserved holidays, and will go back to daydreaming about them as soon as you finish this article. And the truth is that the benefits of a good holiday can be felt even before the trip begins. Scientific studies show that merely looking forward to a future reward can be even more rewarding than the reward itself. This is so thanks to a small molecule called dopamine, which we will talk about later.