Vacations can Save your Life

Not hypothetically. In reality.

I am a strong advocate of working hard, and playing hard. Quite often, these two can mix and cause damage. Or great success if the timing is right. Now we all work hard, right? Grinding away, making sure things get done, people get paid, and our business grows well. Long hours, extra tasks, extra stress, it's all in the name of creating a better life and business. No time to rest- the business isn't waiting. It needs to be constantly fed, constantly maintained! Well. I've got news for you.

Not taking a vacation can actually kill you.

Not immediately of course. But it can. The article included above, written by an actual doctor opposed to some random blogger like myself, states that a study comprised of 12 thousand men was conducted over the course of 14 years. It found that “…taking multiple vacations, up to five a year, resulted in a 32% lower chance of death from all causes, compared to the men who didn't take vacations.” That's pretty powerful.

In a different view, this blogger (I had to include one) takes a more philosophical approach to a vacation saving your life. His views are simple: we work too much, and we forget that there is more to life than your next work shift. Vacations aren't the thing that's important. It's the break, the ability to unwind, the ability to let your guard down. That's what really matters. You don't have to go anywhere to do whatever you want, to be honest.

And let's not forget about one of the most insidious killers in the United States. Stress. Chronic stress has a LOT of health problems associated with it. I mean, you name it. Heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke. But here's the funny thing.

What I find the most alarming is the contradictory nature of the “more work is better” model. We work hard. Forever. Never taking vacations, always mired in responsibility and stress, and then? We wind up dead for all our trouble. So…work has to cease when you're dead, correct? So how is this model helping anyone? It's not, that's how.

Vacations are not excuses to be lazy. Rather, they are rewards for a lot of hard work that we all do. If we cannot reward ourselves, how will we even know when we get the carrot attached to the stick that we've been following for so long?