Do you need evidence to convince yourself, about the importance of time-off and its impact on your mental and physical health? You shouldn’t but if you do here are five reasons to make taking time-off from work a priority and especially after the long 15 months of the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact it has brought on your daily life.

• Mental Clarity

When you push yourself to work too many days and hours in a row, eventually your brain will start to push back. Your thinking becomes clouded and your levels of creativity will shrink. Over time it’s becomes harder to deal with stress and the daily hustle. If your brain doesn’t rest, for some time, the side effects will continue to multiply. Luckily, even a single day off can bring you back to a state of mental clarity.

• Improved Productivity

When you start to feel burned out at work, even the most simple task becomes a challenge. Your passion starts to shrink and you lose your drive to deliver. If you’ve have ever felt refreshed after stepping away from your desk for a short time and taking a walk around the block, you understand how a break can improve your productivity. Take off a week or a couple of weeks off and you’ll come back feeling revitalized and ready to take on any new challenge that may arise.

• Better Balance

It’s hard to maintain a positive work-life balance in even the best of circumstances, especially for the last 15 months where your daily routines have been drastically altered due to remote working, lockdowns or being temporarily laid off. Thus, when you are constantly overworked, you start to lose your sense of self and well-being. Personal interests and hobbies take a sidecar seat in your daily routine as you focus all of your energy on the daily hustle. Taking time-off from work gives you a chance to revitalize yourself and help you remember what life is really like before you became too busy.

• Improved Focus

Regardless of the love and passion for what you do, doing the same thing day in and day out will wear you down, eventually.  Taking time-off gives you the chance to refocus on your goals and look at things from a fresh perspective. You will be surprised how many great ideas come up when you step away from the daily routine for a week or two.

• Better Relationships

While it’s important for you to focus on your career development and your relevant aspirations, you also need to work on your personal and professional relationships. If you’re constantly logging in long hours at the  (remote) office or checking your phone and email all evening, the important people in your life will start feeling neglected and left out. Even a short vacation allows you to unplug from your job and spend quality time with your loved ones.

Although a two-week getaway on a remote beach on a far-away island might be the ideal time-off scenario for you, you don’t need a grandiose vacation to reap the benefits of taking time-off. If your budget is tight or your workload really is too high, you can be creative and coordinate your time-off with paid holidays to create a mini-vacation. Taking time-off during the slow months is also a good way to keep your boss happy while still giving you the much needed away time.

Your mental health is just as important as your physical health, so taking time-off when you need it will keep you feeling balanced and make you a better employee in the long run and also keep the boss happy.

Want to learn more on how-to-do, drop us an email and we will be happy to share our knowledge and insights with you!

For Hippocampus.io,

Christos Lytras – Managing Partner