If you want to age well, you need to take vacations

*** Beauty Match in London (U.K.)***

Ahhhhhh! North Americans are such slaves to their work. We work far too much and for far too many hours every single day. Our dreams and desire of a better life pushes us to cram in as much work as possible. Some of us even double up or triple up on the amount of work we can cram in a week by holding 2, 3 or 4 jobs. With all that work, you’d think that Canadians and Americans would actually take numerous weeks of vacation per year to recharge. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Europeans get far more vacation time than we do. It’s always such a shock to so many North Americans visiting Europe for the first time that shops would close for two to four weeks without batting an eyelash and without losing their clientele.

Most countries around the world are obliged to give their employee time off: Workers in the U.K and the Netherlands get 20 days, those in Germany gets 24 days, in Sweden and France they get 25 days and Italian managers get a whopping 35 days…now that’s la dolce vita (the sweet life)!

In Canada, the minimum time off is 10 days (management positions often start at 15 days), while American employers are not obliged by law to offer time off.

Recently, ‘The American Institute of Stress’ published a study on the health benefits of taking a vacation showing why time off from the office will have considerable positive effects on reducing your stress level.

In this new millennium a vacation is essential because we not only have to deal with countless calls (from mobile phones and land lines) and emails, but we also now have the luxury of taking our office on the road via our PDA or home-office. Our stress levels are higher than ever and our sleep time is the shortest is has been in decades. A vacation should be the time to turn off PDAs, mobiles, emails and display the following message: I’ll be away for the next few weeks and will not have access to email or my voicemail; I’ll get back to you upon my return.

Many will argue on the ideal length of a vacation, but if you talk to people around you, you’ll quickly find out that three weeks seem to be the ideal length: you will still be very much connected to the office during the first week of your vacation (your mind will still be racing with things to do); by the second week, your brain starts getting the message; by the third week you are fully enjoying your time off.

Being a workaholic may get you major points when it comes to a promotion or even a raise, but it does little to helping you age well. Don’t forget that stress has a negative effect on both your health and your skin!

It’s like the saying: A person on their death bed will never have as a last thought that they should have spent more time at the office answering emails.