Give Us a Break

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This article is one of several on reclaiming rest in all aspects of our lives. For more, read Get Radical. Get Some Rest., Breaking It to Your Boss, Want to Get Away, Stay Home, Sleep Tips: Age Matters, and The No Wake Zone.

Jack Torrance, Jack Nicholson’s character in the 1980 film The Shining, should get credit for popularizing (and making terrifying) a proverb that dates back to the 1600s: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.”

Nicholson’s character sure looked like he could have used a vacation before his psyche disintegrated and he went on a murderous rampage.

In the real world, the danger isn’t that we’ll start obsessively typing proverbs at the Overlook Hotel before taking an ax to the door, but that our country’s hardworking denizens will keep getting sicker, sadder, and less productive.

Medical and poll-based evidence indicates that we seriously need relief. Work-related stress can lead to heart attacks, obesity, anxiety, and depression. A 2004 World Health Organization and Harvard Medical School study put the United States at the top of the list of depressed countries, while the Gallup-Healthways Daily Happiness-Stress Index finds that the only consistent upswing in mood occurs when Americans get some time off on the weekends or holidays.

As John de Graaf, executive director of the Seattle-based advocacy group Take Back Your Time, puts it, Americans are “time-starved and vacation-starved.”

Americans put in more hours at work than the people of any other nation, surpassing even the Japanese. We average nine more weeks of labor per year than our working counterparts in Western Europe, many of whom get 20 paid days of vacation each year.

Finland tops the list of vacation-supporting industrialized nations with 30 paid vacation days a year after the first year of work, according to a May 2007 report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Canada and Japan are near the bottom of that list, with a legal minimum of 10 vacation days. The United States has the dubious distinction of being the only industrialized nation that does not have a mandatory minimum of vacation time. In fact, out of the 173 countries studied, 137 have some kind of vacation/annual leave legislation in place.

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