We’re a few months into the year now, and you might be thinking about what your holiday plans might look like for the remainder of 2023. Are you planning on taking one juicy, long holiday at some point? Or are you leaning towards spreading out your annual leave across the year and taking a number of short breaks?
There is no correct answer when it comes to annual leave preferences, but a recent piece from the ABC did explore the benefits and drawbacks of different approaches to holiday-taking. It considered the mental health aspect of taking breaks from work and the kinds of holidays that tend to be the most restorative.
We decided to take a peek at the main takeaways from that article, as well as a few other related studies, to see what appears to be most effective when it comes to taking annual leave at work.
Annual leave tips: What works best?
The ABC spoke with a handful of mental health experts about the benefits of both long periods of time off and multiple short breaks, and the main theme appeared to be the question of ‘switching off’.
Dr Claire Kelly from Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) shared that taking a small amount of annual leave usually means that your work will be waiting for you when you return.
On the other hand, if you take a sizeable chunk of time off, you will likely have someone else step in to take over your projects for you.
If you’re able to let go of all responsibilities, you’re more inclined to feel much more relaxed. Taking a day off and thinking about work the entire time does not a restful experience make.
In saying all that, however, there’s no benefit if you hoard all of your leave and never take actually any time off.
Back in November 2022, we wrote about data from SEEK that indicated nearly half (46%) of Australians had more than 20 days of annual leave owing. The most common reasons for this were saving leave for a yet-to-be-planned holiday and people feeling like they haven’t had the opportunity to take annual leave.
So, yeah. If you find you switch off more when on a longer holiday, by all means, save up that annual leave. But make sure you try and do something with it each year. That doesn’t necessarily mean spending a bomb on travel, either. Just prioritise taking some time to rest. Otherwise, you’re probably going to wind up very burnt out.
As the University of Berkley writes, Sabine Sonnentag, a professor of organisational psychology at the University of Mannheim in Germany, has found in her work that “psychological detachment” can help people manage their relationship with stressors at work.
Studies indicate that while even a weekend away can help folks recover from work stress, longer trips tend to offer a better opportunity for people to unwind effectively.
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