KEY POINTS:
The Kiwi tradition of taking most or all of our annual leave during one long summer holiday in December or January is detrimental to our health, says John Groom, director of the New Zealand Mentoring Centre.
"We are increasingly flagging through the year. There is plenty of evidence
that that's when our immune systems are compromised, we're more likely to get winter flues, have accidents, be irritable, drink more and take more risks. There are a whole lot of health indicators that start to stack up when we don't pace ourselves."
Groom says we need to take time off throughout the year so that we're not exhausting ourselves.
"I personally would be a great fan of the government introducing Matariki, the New Zealand winter holiday. It's silly for us to concentrate what holidays we have in summer. Why don't we claim our own Christmas for goodness sake."
The weather is not always flash all year round and it breaks with tradition but a statutory holiday in July would be a good signal for people to take a break during the winter, Groom says. One thing the government has introduced is the four-week holiday. As of April 1 employees are entitled to four weeks paid leave per year. Groom says we should use them wisely.
"One of the most wonderful, practical things people could do at the moment would be to take each of those four weeks as four separate one-week holidays every three months."
This requires discipline to structure the year and plan ahead.
"One of the simplest and best things that people can do with themselves with the extra week's holiday is to have a little routine where they don't finish one holiday before they plan the next. Work then becomes something you put in between holidays and not the other way around."
But New Zealanders aren't always very good at giving themselves time off. In fact, the International Labour Organisation survey showed 21.3 per cent of the workforce working more than 50 hours per week. Only in Japan do more workers work over 50 hours. Groom says studies have shown that this just isn't constructive.
"Work performance starts a gentle tail off after about 35 hours per week and then becomes fairly acute by the time you get up to 45 or 50 hours if you're looking at things like fatigue and error rates."
The fatigue takes its toll on our bodies as well. Especially for men, Groom recommends a health check for those not taking enough time off.
There are many reasons why people overwork themselves but Groom says one is quite glaring.
"A lot of people in employment appear to be quite insecure about their employment and are actually putting in hours outside of what they're strictly required to do."
People often don't realise the importance of time off until a crisis strikes, Groom says.
"It might be they've gone through a separation, or a business crisis or somebody in the family has gotten sick. Then the person asks themselves what really matters."
But even when they take a holiday, some people are still over-working. Groom says a do-nothing holiday with no internet access is often what's required to experience a total mind shift and recharge.
"Because we're working too hard, we've become addicted to excitement and stimulus. A holiday where you go bungee jumping and parachute jumping might seem very exciting but it actually doesn't give you the proper recuperation of actually learning just to lie around on the beach and read a book."
Michael O'Driscoll, professor of psychology at the University of Waikato says the unbalanced holiday structure in New Zealand is not helping and neither is modern technology.
"The ability to be able to disengage from one's work is important. One of the problems we face these days is the increasingly sophisticated and versatile technology that we have."
Technology often interferes with our ability to devote time to family, friends and self. O'Driscoll says you may have to actively manage your time away from technology.
"When I finish work at 5:00 that's it. I'm not going to go home and turn on my computer and read e-mails and do everything else that I would do at work. My personal strategy is to segregate my work life from my family life."
Some people constantly check e-mails or mobile messages outside work hours but O'Driscoll asks why.
"These matters that come up - are they so urgent or can they wait?
There is also a tendency for some people to just get addicted to technology - such as the Blackberry email device - irrespective of what it's doing for them. "They really feel as though they've got to have their technological hit so to speak. When I'm on a break I'm on a break - that's it. "
Some people are more driven with work and that's causing them to put in more hours or not take time off.
"The job can become all encompassing and for many people. I think that's starting to happen partly because of technology, partly because of the increasingly competitive working environments that we're in these days."
But O'Driscoll says working people to death is not a long-term solution.
"While you might think that it's great to have people working longer hours and being more productive, that's a rather short term view of things. Over a period of time increased pressures can lead to a reduction in a person's productivity."
O'Driscoll says there is not a set formula for the time a person needs to take off work. Holidays should be tailored for whatever works for the individual to allow them to focus on other things and promote their personal wellbeing.
"It's not necessarily the four weeks or whatever. I think people need time off more regularly obviously than that. It may be just a day or it may be just a half a day that they need every now and again."
But a proper holiday takes a little more time.
"The research on vacations and time off work suggests that it takes people a good two or three days to really unwind from the pressures they've been experiencing and get into holiday mode."
Particularly if you travel somewhere to holiday, O'Driscoll says taking three day weekends isn't generally going to cut it.
"If you only take a day or two every now and again then that's really not going to help a whole lot. You don't just want to take a few days because it's going to take a lot of that time to just get into the swing of it all. Probably a week is about the minimum time that you'd want to take."
But whatever the length of time we manage to take off, O'Driscoll says that holidays must be a required part of work.
"If people don't disengage to some extent from the problems at work then they're going to get this negative spill-over into their home life and family life which can have quite negative consequences in terms of their wellbeing and their satisfaction with their family life."
