It’s no secret that Americans “like” to work, especially since we are now in the middle of an economic slump. But with more people working longer hours, vacations are becoming more than just a “break,” they’re becoming a necessity to ensure good health and harmony among employees.

In the last blog, we took a look at how America is one of the few countries to skimp out on giving its employees the vacation time that they not only deserve but need. The Framingham Heart Study has been around since 1948, and since its inception, the objective has been to identify common factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease. According to the Framingham Heart Study, researchers looked at questionnaires that women in the study had filled out over twenty years and discovered that those who took a vacation once every six years or less were approximately eight times more likely to develop heart disease or have a heart attack than those who took two vacations each year. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. Working long hours day in and day out without any end in sight leaves only a little time to yourself (we delicately refer to this as “the weekend”) while it leaves plenty of time for stress and anxiety.

How Too Much Work Can Hurt You

There is a difference between taking a vacation because you’re downright lazy at work versus taking one because it is necessary to prevent a total mental meltdown. Here are a few ways that work can hurt you if you’re not careful:

• Your Health: Working too much or for a boss, who demands a lot of productivity beyond the normal scope of a 40-hour workweek, can lead to fatigue, irritability, accidents and injuries. Too many work hours reduces the amount of time you have to yourself for exercise or other athletic-type activities and encourages bad eating habits (i.e. trips to fast food restaurants because you didn’t have the time and/or energy to go food shopping to make yourself a healthy meal).
• Employment: According to Take Back Your Time, working too many hours reduces employment as fewer people are hired and then required to work longer hours, or are hired for poor part-time jobs without benefits.
• Yourself: Too many work hours leaves us little to no time to ourselves for introspection, spiritual growth or mere self-development.
• Your Relationships: Working too many hours is a great way to ruin relationships with friends and family as well as other people we care about. It is often difficult to find the balance between knowing how and when to cut yourself off from work so that you can enjoy precious time with loved ones. One employee that I work with recounts how working too much ultimately led to the demise of his relationship with his fiancee:

I worked for an ad agency and was putting in like 70 hours a week. I was flying out for production meetings and filming commercials and was so focused on getting ahead that I kinda’ took things for granted. When I left work and went home, I was taking calls from clients, so even when I was at home, I was working…

So, the next time you accept a job somewhere, make sure you know what your priorities are and be sure to communicate those effectively to your boss. And whatever the case may be, don’t underestimate the fact that even though you may not feel it is necessary, you need to make sure that you take a vacation!

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Tags: Marketing, Work Related //