All Work and No Play

All Work and No Play...

Taking your work along on vacation is catching on fast, and that can be unhealthy

By Linda Wasmer Andrews
HealthScoutNews Reporter

SUNDAY, June 16 (HealthScoutNews) -- The face of summer vacation is changing: For every flip-flop, there's a laptop. For every palm tree, there's a Palm Pilot.

In this era of portable computers and mobile phones, people are finding it harder to get away from work, even on vacation.

Two recently released surveys bear out this trend.

One survey of more than 1,300 randomly selected workers was conducted by CareerBuilder, a job search and recruitment firm. Just over half of those polled said they planned to stay in touch with work while on vacation, up from 40 percent last year.

A second survey of 645 business executives, conducted by the American Management Association (AMA), found that one-quarter of the executives planned to be in daily contact with the office while on vacation, and more than 60 percent planned to check in at least once a week.

What happens when your connection to work is not just 24/7, but 365?

"You're not going to gain all the benefit you could from time away from the office," says Arthur Brief, an organizational psychologist and professor at the Tulane University School of Business. Among the benefits you may miss out on, he says, are relief from stress and anxiety. Instead of feeling relaxed and rejuvenated, you could return home feeling pretty much like you did when you left.

In addition, you could pay a physical price for mixing pressure with pleasure.

Brooks Gump, an assistant professor of psychology at the State University of New York in Oswego, has researched the health benefits of vacationing.

Gump's study, part of a larger trial, included more than 12,000 middle-age men who were at high risk for heart disease. He found that the more often these men took annual vacations, the less likely they were to die from heart disease during a nine-year period.

Gump thinks that going on vacation may have given these men a chance to let down their guard. But when you pack a cell phone with your sunscreen, you bring along the threat that someone from work could call with a crisis.

Despite the drawbacks, taking work along on vacation is a new fact of life for many people. Some are required to check in by their bosses, while others choose to do so rather than risk having a project grind to a halt in their absence. Still others simply want reassurance that their jobs will still be waiting when they return.

Given this reality, how can you minimize the downside?

Leemor Amado, a practice consultant for the AMA, offers these tips:

Set limits on work time. Pick a period during the day, say between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., when you will check e-mail and make calls. Then confine work activities to those times, and keep the rest of the day free for R and R.
Let people at the office know what to expect. "Tell Betty back at XYZ Corporation that you're going to check in once a day, or twice a week, or whatever," says Amado. "Then stick to it -- nothing less, and nothing more."
Clue in your family and friends, too. Warn those who will be sharing your vacation that you need to work for a limited period every day or so, but promise not to let this take over the whole trip. Then keep your promise.

What To Do

For tips on how to reduce the stress in your life, visit the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, or the University of Texas Learning Center.

SOURCES: Arthur Brief, Ph.D., professor, School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans; Brooks Gump, Ph.D., M.P.H., assistant professor, department of psychology, State University of New York, Oswego; Leemor Amado, practice consultant, American Management Association, New York City; May 23, 2002, press release, CareerBuilder; May 20, 2002, press release, American Management Association; September-October 2000 Psychosomatic Medicine

Back

	Set limits on work time. Pick a period during the day, say between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m., when you will check e-mail and make calls. Then confine work activities to those times, and keep the rest of the day free for R and R.
	Let people at the office know what to expect. "Tell Betty back at XYZ Corporation that you're going to check in once a day, or twice a week, or whatever," says Amado. "Then stick to it -- nothing less, and nothing more."
	Clue in your family and friends, too. Warn those who will be sharing your vacation that you need to work for a limited period every day or so, but promise not to let this take over the whole trip. Then keep your promise.