What is No Vacation Required?
We’re Kent and Caanan, the duo behind all of this. Nearly two decades ago, we walked away from conventional success to design a life rooted in self-discovery and fulfillment. We didn’t have a blueprint – just a shared desire for more meaning, more connection, and more time for what mattered most to us: exploration, giving back, and doing work that lifted people up.
Now – 75 countries, all 50 states, 54 National Parks, and thousands of client conversations later – our work still centers on helping people know themselves, trust themselves, and build their version of a No Vacation Required life.
What started as a personal quest to reclaim our lives became No Vacation Required, which is:
A philosophy for fulfillment, centered on the idea that you can build a life you don’t need a break from.
Inspiration and advice to motivate you to create a No Vacation Required life.
A thriving change consultancy (under our services arm, The Change Laboratory) focused on helping people get to know themselves better and build more fulfilling lives.
Hyperbole! Even fulfilled people appreciate vacations.
Here on Substack, we share fresh, real-world-tested tools and perspectives to help you do just that.
What will I find on this Substack?
Posts — Thoughtful, real-world tools for building a more fulfilling life. Through personal stories, grounded insights, and a proven framework for self-discovery and change, we help you reconnect with what matters and take action that aligns with your strengths, values, and vision.
Podcast – The No Vacation Required podcast is where we ask the question, "why are we still doing that?" – all to challenge tired traditions and outdated thinking that stand in the way of our fulfillment and a life we don't need a break from.
Everyday Fulfillment – Big, sweeping change isn’t the only path to a No Vacation Required life. Everyday Fulfillment is about the small shifts that make a big difference – practical guidance and everyday tools to help you pause, prioritize, and practice what matters most (with a with Personality insights based on Type for paid subscribers).
Tell me more about what’s in it for me.
To put it simply, we want you to have a No Vacation Required life. In order to build a life you don’t need a break from, we’ll work to inspire you to:
Know yourself better
Make fulfillment-forward decisions and be more fulfilled
Let go of outdated, limiting ways of thinking
Use self-knowledge to navigate the world more easily
Have a vision and mission for your life (and understand why that matters)
Who are we?
We’re Kent and Caanan. We started our No Vacation Required life way back during The Great Recession. We understood relatively early that life has an expiration date (and no guarantees), so we transformed our lives with the primary goal to live for now. Long story short, we front-loaded all our “later in life” goals and never looked back.
We founded The Change Laboratory as a virtual consulting business back when working remotely was novel (and still called teleconferencing 😂). That enabled us to travel the world and volunteer, all while doing work we’re passionate about. Now, 15+ years later, we’ve helped thousands of clients know themselves better, make more fulfillment forward decisions, and get better at change.
Again, we love the work we do; it’s a manifestation of our personal No Vacation Required life. We created our consulting business and this Substack because we want more people to feel fulfilled and build their own No Vacation Required life.
What’s the deal with the photos?
We’ve been fortunate to see and experience a lot of the world since we started our No Vacation Required life. So why not share them?! We’re not trying to pick photos that relate directly to the content, we just want to fill this Substack with pictures that bring us (and hopefully you) some joy.
