Unplug and Recharge: Why Taking Time Off is Crucial for Your Health

When was your last vacation? If you don’t take much time off, you’re not alone. Our society places a lot of pressure on people to stay productive and keep working. In the United States, the average person takes off 20 days a year. Even if the time off is offered, many do not make taking time off a priority.

However, taking time off regularly is vital. It helps reduce stress and prevent burnout. It gives us a chance to reconnect with friends and family, engage in hobbies and activities we enjoy, and recharge our batteries. Not only does prioritizing time off help you, but in the long run, improves productivity and benefits your employer as well.

Here are some reasons why:

Mental Health Benefits

Time off improves your mental health in several ways:

1. Stress reduction. Time off has been shown to reduce levels of stress hormones, cleansing the body and brain and reducing overall stress levels. They do eventually creep back up, making regular time off important.
2. Improved focus and productivity. When you get back from vacation, you’re able to approach your job with a fresh mind. This improves productivity and focus. It also elevates creativity, making it easier to tackle tough challenges.
3. Mental reset. A break allows you to “reset” your brain, reducing the risk of burnout. Working for too long without a break can even decrease cognitive function, making it harder to do tasks and increasing the risk of mistakes.

Physical Health Benefits

Taking time off can also benefit your physical health. Here are some ways:

1. Better sleep. Most American adults don’t get enough sleep. In fact, 35% routinely get less than seven and a half hours. Even a single day off can allow you to get more and better sleep, recharging your batteries, although for optimal health you should aim to get enough sleep on work nights too.
2. Reduced risk of heart disease. Research links regular vacations to lowered risk of heart disease and heart attacks. Vacations help reduce stress, which then helps improve your cardiovascular system.
3. Boosted immune system. Taking breaks supports your immune system, meaning you are less likely to become sick. A strong immune system supports health and prevents illness, which can then reduce downtime in the long term.

Personal Well-Being

Time off can directly support your personal well-being, and has been shown to benefit it in several ways:

1. Reconnecting with interests. Spending time off doing something you enjoy outside of work helps you remember the value of your hobbies and engage in them more regularly. Vacations are also a chance to engage in interests that are hard to fit into normal life or to pursue something worthwhile that might be far from home.
2. Strengthening relationships. Time off allows you to spend more of it with your family, friends, and intimate partner. This improves your relationships and your social and emotional resilience. Time with the people you love elevates your mood and improves mental wellness.
3. Gaining perspective. When you spend time away from work, you start to reevaluate. You might see your career differently and perceive an opportunity or opportunities to advance it in new directions. You might also reassess life goals and priorities, and come up with new ways to move forward in every part of your life.

Time off helps people with every aspect of their life. People are less stressed and more productive if they take regular time off, and also less likely to get sick and need to take it off anyway.

Encourage Taking Time Off

If you are an employer, encouraging your people to take a reasonable amount of time off (and leading by example) can help your business thrive. Sworkit can help by providing tools to support your employee wellness program and access to our vast library of workouts and routines for all users.