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Take A Vacation, Ya Joke.
One of the biggest train wrecks about Americans — or really any “first-worlders,” I guess — is their complete inability to understand the need to take a vacation. In a given year, Americana leaves about 430 million vacation days on the table. That’s insane. Another word would be “asinine.”
If you go talk to people in American businesses, either informally or via research, the №1 reason you always get is “Well, I simply can’t take the time away at work!” That, or some variation on: “If I take a vacation, my boss will think I’m not focused and I’ll lose a shot at a promotion!” Both of these are also asinine. Your boss could likely care less about your career development, and people take vacations all the time and still get promoted. Promotions are predominantly based on the relationships you’ve built and whether you can make money for the company (and/or tenure). If going away for a week or two is going to jeopardize that, you’re probably working at the wrong place.
Here’s some new research on the value of taking a vacation. It’s not super convincing, honestly — it was done in concert with the U.S. Travel Association, who obviously has a semi-vested interest in people traveling more, and most of the findings are in correlation range as opposed to causation range. So, yes, it’s a bit limited. But still:
