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How to Minimize Stress Before, During, and After Your Vacation - Harvard Business Review
It’s a Catch-22 millions of workers face: You plan a vacation to relax, rejuvenate, and forget all about the stresses of work. But being out of the office means cramming in extra work up until you leave — and making up for lost time once you return. So perhaps it’s little surprise that a study in the Netherlands found vacationers are no happier than non-vacationers after a break.
But this problem can be particularly acute in the United States, where the culture often pressures people not to take vacations at all: more than half (52%) of American workers leave at least some vacation time unused. Pre- and post-vacation stress is a major contributor to this problem. In a survey, 40% of men, and 46% of women said that just thinking about the “mountain of work” they’d return to was a major reason they hadn’t used their vacation days.
It’s a Catch-22 millions of workers face: You plan a vacation to relax, rejuvenate, and forget all about the stresses of work. But being out of the office means cramming in extra work up until you leave — and making up for lost time once you return. So perhaps it’s little surprise that a study in the Netherlands found vacationers are no happier than non-vacationers after a break.
But this problem can be particularly acute in the United States, where the culture often pressures people not to take vacations at all: more than half (52%) of American workers leave at least some vacation time unused. Pre- and post-vacation stress is a major contributor to this problem. In a survey, 40% of men, and 46% of women said that just thinking about the “mountain of work” they’d return to was a major reason they hadn’t used their vacation days.