Most people spend a significant part of their lives at work. A busy work schedule and a lack of adequate rest often lead to emotional burnout and exhaustion.
It is generally accepted that everyone has a certain reserve of energy, which is gradually exhausted.
As a result, a person not only does not feel the strength to perform official duties, but also loses interest in life in general.
To protect yourself from unwanted diseases, you should learn to rest properly. At the same time, we are not only talking about a week lying on the beach, it can be anything. Any activity that brings you pleasure and promotes relaxation will be useful, starting from a walk in the forest and ending with online entertainment on Bettilt India.
What does the lack of vacation do to us?
For many people, the idea of leaving their office for a full week is even scary: they say that during their absence there will be such a pile of work that it will only get worse.
Scientists say that you need to say goodbye to this fear and quickly, because you can lose not only your health, but also your family.
Thus, the researchers were able to discover that women who rarely took vacations were more likely to suffer from heart attacks than those who took regular vacations.
In another study, scientists followed 12,000 men at high risk of cardiovascular disease for 9 years and found that those who took annual vacations had fewer heart attacks.
Research also shows that employees who don’t take time off are often emotionally drained from work and don’t feel fully fulfilled in their work.
Burnout can also provoke marital and family problems, contribute to depression, malaise, and even suicide.
So how should you rest?
Long, leisurely and in a certain sense “lazy” vacations are considered the best therapy for restoring strength and mental energy.
However, is the duration of the vacation really the main guarantee of a real vacation?
German sociologist Sabina Sonnentag has been searching for an answer to this question for the past twenty years.
The researcher and her colleagues believe that there are four factors that contribute to rest and recovery: relaxation, control, a successful hobby, and detachment from work.
Of the four factors, relaxation is the easiest to understand. According to Sabine Sonnentag and her colleague Charlotte Fritz, rest should not be completely passive, but activity should not be reduced to hard work that requires a lot of effort.
The second factor is control. In the context of recovery, this means that you can decide how to spend your time, energy, and attention. For people who cannot spend enough time in their everyday life, for example, family, the opportunity to spend time with relatives will be a restorative rest.
The third factor is the exciting, interesting things you do well. For example, playing chess can be an exciting pastime, and thus relaxing. Having a hobby that you are good at is especially important if you don’t have a very interesting job.
The importance of psychological disengagement from work, the fourth factor, was first observed in a study by Israeli sociologists Dali Etzion, Dov Eden, and Yael Lapidot.
They interviewed conscripts before and after their annual reserve service in the Israeli army. Respondents who returned to work after service were noted to be significantly more engaged and energized at work.
However, in reality, their results looked the same as those of people who were on vacation. That is, despite the fact that army service was a physically and mentally difficult task, it provided rest from work tasks.
Researchers also emphasize that the effect of “alienation from work” cannot be achieved if you have to maintain constant communication with the office and use work gadgets during non-working hours.
The researchers measured cortisol levels in workers who were at work and those who were resting but constantly in touch. And, unfortunately, it is not significantly different.
That is, the level of stress and anxiety in these groups is similar, which means that a person “on the phone” does not recover normally.
How long should the vacation last?
Research by psychologists shows that the emotional boost in mood, energy and happiness from a vacation lasts for three or four weeks (for perfectionists and workaholics, new exhaustion may occur faster).
This raises another question: at what point during vacation is happiness at its peak?
Psychologists claim that from the first day, the level of satisfaction with the vacation increases gradually, and the peak can be observed on about the 8th day, and then there is a plateau effect or the satisfaction slowly falls.
Thus, long vacations, although they provide more opportunities, for example, for travel, do not necessarily lead to greater happiness.
So maybe instead of taking one big vacation, it’s worth taking a short vacation every few months that can allow for a greater level of recovery.