Thinking about canceling your summer plans due to work overload? Think again.

If you’re thinking once again that this summer is not a “good time” to take a break from the grind, you’re in good company—nearly half of American workers don’t take their full paid vacation time off .

I get it. We want to do great work and we don’t want to drop the ball, burden our co-workers, come back to a mountain of catch-up work, or put our jobs in jeopardy. The pressure is real to relinquish any prayer of having an actual life outside the office.

I remember during my *grind era* going YEARS without taking a true break due to the dread of dealing with prepping to go and cleaning up after I got back. There was very little "back-up" support offered for folks taking time away and the work never stopped--it just piled up in increasingly overwhelming ways.

I know lots of companies with this kind of culture, where it is not an ingrained value to support people in caring for themselves by taking turns covering for each other and/or accepting that the freight train of productivity will slow from time to time (as it does in Europe for a whole month in summer)!

When we’re hustling and grinding to do it all, we can fall for the myth that if we keep working harder / faster / longer we can get to the bottom of our to-do list and meet all the demands of the world. But of course, we never do. The more we get done, the more gets added to our plate. A phenomenon I call The Efficiency Tax .

Instead, we become more and more exhausted, sick, and out of touch with what matters most. Even planning and taking a much-needed break can feel like too much effort as every brain cell is in survival mode. Once we’ve gotten to that point, we’re likely already beyond burned out and need rest and realignment more than ever.

Here are a few facts that might make you think twice about cancelling on yourself and your basic human needs to rest, recharge, and enjoy yourself this year. ?

• Workplace related stress claims an estimated 120,000 lives each year in the US alone .?
• It also accounts for up to $190 billion in health care costs (and this doesn’t even include lost work hours due to illness).
• The top two regrets of the dying are : “I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me” and “I wish I hadn't worked so hard.” Number five is: “I wish I had let myself be happier.” (emphasis mine - this is something we have say over!)

Nearly half of US employees are reluctant to take the paid time off they’ve earned to rest, recover, and recharge for fear of seeming uncommitted, but then they end up having to take those days off (and more) due to resulting (and inevitable) physical and mental health problems. Not to mention that a sick day to crawl out of exhaustion-induced illness is a pathetic replacement for a vacation day at the beach, with friends, or even binging movies and ice cream with your family on the couch.

Why don’t we take this time, even though research (and our intuition, if we would listen to it) show that cultivating a healthy lifestyle is essential? One reason is that it’s still deeply ingrained in American work culture that if you don’t give 100 percent ++ to your paid work (thereby abdicating responsibility for the rest of your life), you are not truly committed. It’s a chief explanation for the current epidemic of burnout, which 89% of US workers reported feeling in 2023.

Burnout is not a result of doing things “wrong.” It’s the result of hustling and grinding so freaking hard to do it all “right” (by societal standards) and still feeling like a failure. It is built over years of small self-betrayals in which we put our own needs, wishes, and joy last on our to-do list in an attempt to be everything to everyone (except ourselves). If we abandon ourselves long enough, the result is a terrifying state of misalignment with our core gifts and values, as well as soul-crushing disconnection from ourselves and others.

We’ve all heard the adage “can’t pour from an empty cup,” and it’s true. The bottom line is that it’s not possible to maintain a healthy lifestyle, relationships, or anything resembling a rich, joy-filled way of being when activities related to the other elements of your life are nowhere to be found on your schedule. Think about it—how creative, connected, and engaged can your work possibly be when you’re hanging on by a fried, zombie-like, ash-covered thread?

The highest performers (in all realms of life) I know take setting boundaries and establishing healthy expectations for their life-work balance (in that order) seriously. They care deeply about their work yet clearly understand that paid work is but one element of a vibrant, multidimensional life. They nourish themselves, their relationships, and their passions. For them, work is not primary, with everything else squeezing in around it where it can maybe-sort-of fit in. Life is primary, and the values, people, paid and unpaid work, healthy habits, and other interests they care about are given their due space and time within it.

Yes, our workplaces should get their acts together and realize that we all win when employees are well and whole and happy. And happily, some are! KUDOS to them BTW. But we also can't wait for the cargo ship of culture and policy to shift before we start really living.

We've got to take it upon ourselves to install healthy guardrails around our work, lest it gobble up every single minute of time and ounce of energy we have. I learned to do it, and you can too. This change is building as a grassroots movement of humans insisting on living rich, happy, meaningful lives.

After all, if we don’t decide that we and our loved ones matter and act accordingly, who will? And none of us are getting any younger, so each day we push away ourselves and our partners, kids, and dreams is one less day we’ll ever have to enjoy them.

You know the best part? When ordered properly, both the life and the work are so much better for it. When we’re centered and fulfilled in our lives, our work is more creative and higher quality, and we show up with the humanity needed to connect with others and lead our teams. We’re also so much more relaxed and fulfilled in our personal lives, showing up with more patience, care, and joy for those most important to us.

What a win-win.

This summer season I encourage you to not only disconnect from the grind, take some restorative time away, and make some happy memories with your favorite people, but also to reflect a bit. Take inventory of what’s most important to you, what lights you up, and ask yourself how these align with how you actually spend your time. If you feel some adjustments are needed, take the first step toward putting what you value most at the top of your priority list, so that at the end of the day, the things that fall off the list aren’t the ones that matter most in the end.

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Hi, I'm Cara Houser A.K.A. The Burnout Lady, a career transition coach, speaker, and author of Burned Out to Lit Up: Ditch the Grind and Reclaim Your Life, an award-winning guidebook for burnout recovery. I help mid-career women get their mojo back and build a life and career that lights them up.

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