One day, I decided to do nothing because I felt my attrition rate increase, especially in tasks requiring creativity. It is because I have been extremely busy with year-end audits, taxes, and other year activities. Although, it was not as bad as the prior year since my husband took over many household chores. I also have been working on improving my lifestyle to be healthier by getting adequate sleep, meditation, proper diet, and exercise. Yet, I noticed that I tend to be less focused. It was high time to relax and refresh my brain.
I wanted to take a week off from work; however, it was impossible to take a whole week off. So, I took two days off—a day for only reading, playing the piano, writing, and thinking. I did the exercise for one of the two days. I made a strict rule not to think about work at all during these two days. I intentionally created two days without a to-do list or appointments, which was surprisingly challenging.
In total, I had two days of vacation. I decided to do whatever I wanted to do that day. One rule I strictly enforced was not to think about my work at all. On the first day, I mostly spend my time reading and playing the piano on these days. I did approximately 90 minutes of exercise during the day. I was physically tired, so I slept so well. I scored 91 on my sleep quality score according to my Fitbit. On the second day, I was doing the same activities as the first day, but I did not exercise. I had too much energy to sleep that night. I am usually busy on my vacation days doing something, and I never noticed this problem. I need to test it again. It will be better for me physically active on my vacation days. Although, I thought two days were too short to be effective.
Sometimes, people purposely take days off from daily routines to be more creatives and focused. Bill Gates takes one week off from his busy life twice a year so that he does nothing but reading articles and books, studying and thinking about the bigger picture (McKeown, 2021). I do not remember when I took a week off for vacation the last time because I spent all my vacation and holidays doing projects. So, I decided to take to see what would happen from the day off.
Surprisingly, many Americans forfeit their vacation times. According to the Washington Post (August 28, 2019), 55% of Americans did not even use their vacation time, leaving 768 million days of unused paid time off. The average number of American’s paid days off is 17.4 days in 2018; however, this number includes paid holidays (para. 9-11). When I came to the United States, I was surprised by this. I am from Canada, and I worked in Germany, where we must provide paid statutory holidays.
Many Americans indeed chose not to use up their paid day off. Perhaps, many of us feel guilty about taking a vacation. Many of us fear we may be seen as more of a liability for the company to take time off. The question we must look into is – are those beliefs are correct? When I thought about this question, I realized that I do not know. I have heard about the benefit of taking breaks from problems or taking a vacation to affect people positively. I assumed that taking breaks allows us to get recharged. Since I was interested, I researched the benefits. Surprisingly, there is ample research about the effects of taking breaks.
Some consulting firms are discovering whether employees taking vacations benefits a company. According to Rook from JP Griff Group (June 3, 2019), the 2017 project study they conducted revealed that the employees who forfeit their vacation were 4 % less likely to receive raises and 6 % less likely to receive bonuses (para. 10). They found out that people who continue to work without a break or vacation; are less focused and less engaged. They are more likely to make mistakes because they are fatigued. It gets much harder to generate new ideas with an overused brain.
Taking days off improves our productivity has been empirically observed and is a generally accepted scientific theory. Some researchers observed the benefits from it; then, they further investigated how the benefits are created. Being away from work allows our brain to generate more ideas and solutions to the problem, which psychologists call the incubation effect. According to Ritter & Dijksterhuis (2014), the effects of incubation are generally accepted; however, there are two opposing theories of how the benefits are created, the Unconscious work theory and the conscious work theory. The Unconscious work theory suggests that our unconscious activity of solving the problem contributes to the effect. The Conscious work theory argues that the effect is caused by actively relaxing the brain by being away from the problem (pp.4-5).
A few days of incubating problems allows us to solve the problems, especially problems that require remote association. Researchers theorized that sleep has an essential role in the incubation effect. Scientists have found that REM sleep enhances our creativity. According to Wagner et al. (as cited in Ritter and Dijkstehuis, 2014), students who slept more than seven hours at least twice were more creative and solved problems faster than people who did not. Sleep enhances cognitive flexibility and the ability to find remote associations.
Furthermore, sleep allows students to find solutions to abstract problems (p. 4). This theory interested me because I had found that I could solve problems during dreaming when I was in high school. It tends to happen when I have been thinking about the same problem for at least three days. It happens a lot with me with math problems. The last time it occurred to me was a few months ago when I was building a query. Unfortunately, I cannot control this ability. I always speculated that my brain removes the limit of my creativity during sleep, which allowed me to solve the problem. So, sleeping has a vital role in the incubation effect. Then we should not be spending our days off partying all night.
People need days off because taking days off allows us to walk away from the problems at work. There will be no phones, tablets, or laptops. Stay away from the work because you want to be actively not thinking about the work. Another important part is we still need to get adequate sleep during days off. After struggling to solve a problem, try to walk away from it. Sometimes working away from the problems leads us to their solutions.
This little research made me view vacations differently. Perhaps, we need breaks to be more productive and creative. I thought people say it to sound and humanely compliant for a company. We, accountants, flags other accountants if they do not take breaks—accountants believe in taking vacations to prevent fraud. We gain benefits from taking days off. After my investigation, I realized that we should take days off to be more focused, creative, and productive. Getting adequate sleep is also important while doing so. Sometimes, walking away from problems leads you to the solutions. Although, this may not be economically feasible for some people. According to the Center for Economic and Research, The United States requires zero yearly time off, much lower than France, Austria, Spain, Germany, Canada, and Japan (as cited in Sampson, August 28, 2019, para. 3). In some cases, people do not get paid off at all. Although, many of us do have paid vacation. If you choose not to use up the paid days off, you may want to reconsider taking them. I will try to use up my vacation this year, and I will try to go somewhere next time and note any differences.
References
McKeown, Greg. (2021). Essentialism. [Kindle edition].
Ritter, S. M., &Dijksterhuis, A. (2014). Creativity—The unconscious foundations of the incubation period. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00215
Rook, David. (June 3, 2019). JP Griffin Group. The Importance of Paid Time Off (PTO). https://www.griffinbenefits.com/blog/the-importance-of-paid-time-off-as-an-employee-benefit
Sampson, Hannah. (August 28, 2019). What Does America Have Against Vacation?https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2019/08/28/what-does-america-have-against-vacation/