Rutgers experts say there are reasons to give your mind and body a break
If you think taking a vacation is as simple as lifting your phone, making a reservation at a beach resort, and declaring yourself off limits to bosses and colleagues, you may be on vacation already – from reality.
In this first decade of the 21st century, three Rutgers professors who specialize in workplace issues say the summer get-away is careening towards extinction. And woe to society if that is allowed to happen, the scholars warn.
“People in this economy are being much more cautious about taking time off than they have been in the past,” said Gayle Porter, professor in the Rutgers School of Business–Camden. “Even if they haven’t lost their jobs, they still fear they may lose them in the near future. And so they’re extra careful about holding on to cash.”
In the last five years or so, Porter said, workers have become particularly wary of getting away from the office for fear that their jobs will vanish while they’re away.
For many employees in 2009, that fear is based on grim reality. The U.S. Department of Labor reported that during the week ending April 25, more than 6,351,000 Americans were receiving unemployment benefits, an increase of 56,000 over the previous week.
Moreover, the notion of an extended vacation, long a venerated tradition in Europe and other industrialized parts of the world, has never had the blessing of a workaholic America.
According to the World Tourism Organization, Italians enjoy the most abundant vacation time, with an average of 42 days off annually. They’re followed by workers in France (37 days), Germany (35 days), and Brazil (34 days), with the United States weighing in with a relatively paltry 13 days.
And even then, statistics bear out, Americans rank high in the number of days they “give back” to their employers. A survey conducted for the online travel agency Expedia.com estimates that employed adults in the United States will forfeit a total of 436 million vacation days in 2009.
They do so, the Rutgers researchers said, at their own risk.
“People are beginning to realize, through neurological and psychological studies, that working too hard has a very real impact on the brain,” said Carol Kaufman-Scarborough, like Porter a professor at the School of Business–Camden. “People who examine this phenomenon found increased illness, stress, and frustration about not being able to complete what might otherwise be a simple task. It’s almost as though people are being asked to process information faster than they’re able to, and that situation creates mental and physical stress.”
Recurring headaches, irritability, eyestrain, disorders of the digestive tract – these and other ailments often accompany a stressful lifestyle, Kaufman-Scarborough said. Couple these with impatience, panic attacks, and an overwhelming sense of not being able to meet one’s obligations, and soon you’re looking at a culture of employees performing at less than optimal levels. Way less.
Cary Cherniss, professor and director of the Organizational Psychology Program at Rutgers’ Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, specializes in the role of emotional intelligence in the workplace.
He said even modest levels of chronic stress – the day-in, day-out kind of worries workers lug around with them – take a toll on both performance and health.
“We have research showing that executives who work 10 to 12 hours a day tend to be less effective and less successful than those who work six [or] six-and-a-half hours a day,” Cherniss said. “Most effective executives, if you observe them closely minute by minute, take minivacations during the day, spending time sitting and looking out the window. It’s not that they’re idle; it’s that they’re giving their brains time to consolidate all the information they’re collecting.”
Cherniss said the compulsion to put in ever-longer hours on the job is part of America’s national character, but noted that hasn’t always been the case.
“As recently as the 1980s, we were being told the Japanese worked more hours than we did, that they were overtaking us economically,” the professor said. “That was like a wake-up call to American businesses. But now we’ve gone too far the other way – we may have internalized the message a little too well.”
Porter, who researches workaholism as an addictive behavior, acknowledged that today’s battered economy is forcing employees to re-evaluate their vacation options, in some cases jettisoning plans completely. Even those who do physically leave their desk behind often remain connected to the office electronically or digitally.
The prospect troubles her.
“People who study creativity have found you can sit and focus on something over and over and over, and come up empty,” she said. “But if you stop and go off and do something else, new ideas will come to you. You don’t have to go to some expensive resort – just let your mind move on to other things to give yourself a sense of perspective.”
Heeding her own counsel, Porter will spend five days in June motorcycling through the Swiss Alps. But even shorter, one-day respites from work demands can have a lasting impact, she said, advising the work-addicted to begin by carving out chunks of personal time sans laptop, BlackBerry®, and Twitter.
A veteran of 20 years in the financial and corporate world before switching to academia, Porter devotes Wednesday evenings to a class at the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts, where she’s learning the craft of trapeze performance.
“When I’m up in the air on a trapeze, hanging on with one hand and one foot, I guarantee you I’m not thinking of work,” Porter said, with a laugh.