For a number of people, the summer holidays represent the mental equivalent of an oasis in a desert: a perfect opportunity to temporarily escape their daily grind and the stress of their work.
Although holidays are a fairly new invention in the history of mankind, and actually only a privilege for a, largely Western Europe-based, minority of the workforce, we ascribe almost magical powers to them. The most important ‘super’ power is the one that suggests that if we take one or more weeks off and label this ‘a holiday’, we are fully relaxed and ready to face our challenges in the workplace again.
Switching off?
However, many people find it hard to mentally switch off from their work during their holidays. Usually, they spend the first days of the holidays decompressing from their work, and they switch back on a couple of days before their work starts again.
I firmly belonged to this category as well.
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Dirk Verburg 