/tlnt/see-you-in-a-month-why-americans-need-to-get-serious-about-vacations/”>See you in a month (ERE Media)

For the seemingly dying breed of tenure-track, full-time academic professors, a sabbatical is a well-accepted and important part of the academic career. Taking six or twelve months off to travel, write, and generally just recharge from their work, with their job intact.

For most of us, however, the idea of extended vacations – or vacations at all – are out of the realm of what we usually consider possible. Either we fall into the 40% of people who cite high workloads as a reason to not take available vacation time, or we are part of the 40% or that simply cannot financially afford time off work.

Even when vacations are financially possible, actually taking them is a whole different matter. In both the United States and Europe, there are hundreds of millions of vacation days – sometimes paid – that go completely unused.

Yet there is significant value to time off – and especially a sabbatical. As we’ve talked about before, the human brain thrives on newness and novelty. Giving your brain a chance to experience things differently helps create new connections, refocus your energy, and combat burnout. It may seem frivolous at the time, but what is often called the grind is just that – a grind, that eventually wears us away unless we give ourselves the chance to do something different. It’s launched companies, or returned people’s careers that they thought they’d never go back to.