"According to the U.S. Travel Association (2020), more than half of Americans don't use all their vacation days each year. Statistically, 23 percent of U.S. workers took zero vacation days last year, meaning, at least at last count, 768 million paid time-off days were wasted! To make matters worse, even when Americans do take their paid time off, multiple studies report that in many cases, individuals still work up to one hour per day when on vacation."
"Researchers label the feeling of avoiding relaxation as "rest intolerance" or "rest resistance." When relaxing, we may feel guilt, shame, and negative emotions (Wang et al., 2024). If you've ever felt worse about yourself while lying on the couch than while grinding through a deadline, you know exactly what I'm talking about. If you wake up in the middle of the night and immediately start thinking about what you need to do, you are clearly a rest-intolerance victim. Some of us just cannot chill!"
More than half of Americans leave vacation days unused, with 23% taking zero vacation days and roughly 768 million paid days off wasted. Many people still work while on vacation, sometimes up to an hour daily. Leisure acceptance often feels elusive because relaxation can trigger guilt, shame, anxiety, and obsessive thinking. Rest resistance involves social comparison and faulty logic about downtime, causing people to feel worse while resting than while working. Tying self-worth to constant productivity makes relaxation feel wrong instead of restorative. Rest functions as a self-regulation strategy countering the unsustainable "always give 100 percent" narrative.
Read at Psychology Today
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