Do you find it difficult to take a break from your work? I can definitely sympathize with this feeling. When I was a student I was extremely reluctant to take breaks and vacations for fear that I would fall behind in my work. I remember feeling like I had so much to do and was constantly running behind schedule. So I actually started to bring my work with me on holidays. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

What I learned was that mixing my vacation time with the expectation to complete work is a recipe for disaster. Not only did I not complete any of the work that I had hoped to do, I also didn’t fully relax or enjoy myself when I was on holiday either because I was plagued by ‘work guilt.’ So there was no actual benefit to going on holiday and afterwards, I would return feeling even more stressed out than before I had left. Ironically then, it was after I came back from a vacation that I felt most in need of taking one!

Our willingness to take breaks says a lot about how we view ourselves in relation to our work. When we are reluctant to give ourselves a break it is often because we don’t feel like we deserve one. There may be a sense of enormity surrounding the tasks we face and a belief that we haven’t made sufficient progress to warrant taking time off. So it is actually our own judgments that prevent us from taking breaks.

The tendency to judge ourselves is especially strong whenever we encounter a stumbling block in our work. Although it may seem counterintuitive, it is precisely in those instances where we feel least deserving of a break that we would benefit most from taking one.