The 5 most important reasons to take a complete break

Last week I met up with Dr Christian Jessen and Geoff Rolls for a film shoot highlighting the importance of taking a break.

Having experienced burnout in a previous career, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved. Taking a complete break is essential to balancing work and life.

This follows on from research conducted by online travel company ebookers that shows that 40% of workers don’t take their full holiday entitlement. However taking a proper break is good for you, it’s good for business and it’s good for your work-life balance. Here are the 5 most important reasons that we highlight in the show:

Three pillars of health:

The three pillars of health are diet, exercise and rest. As Dr Christian says “You will never maximise the benefits of a good diet and an active exercise regime unless you give your body time to rest and recover.”

Make better business decisions

Going on holiday and taking a proper break is really good for your productivity. It gives you that opportunity to ‘declutter’ your brain so that when you get back to work you are more focused and make more effective business decisions.

Build stronger teams

The research tells us that when you get back from holiday, you get on better with your colleagues and you are much more willing to help. Which means you have a stronger more collaborative team.

Brings families closer together

As humans, we all need that social interaction and connection with our friends and family. Going on holiday creates happy memories and brings families closer together.

Colleagues learn to cope without you

Nowadays, it’s so easy to stay in touch with email and work remotely, but if you keep on responding to emails when you’re away, your team will never learn to cope without you. When you take a proper break and switch off completely, it’s not just good for you, it’s good for your colleagues too because they learn to cope without you.