Most of you would agree to the summer being the most beautiful and exciting time of the year. A time for vacations, parties, and just a fun summer life. However, many of you do not take the time out to recharge your brain. Instead, you worry about your work even when you’re not in the office! Your brain is constantly working with the worries of your office life. Even if you do go on vacation, you take your office work along with you. You work on your laptop from your hotel room while your family soaks in the sun. The only reason you do so is the fear of lagging behind, desire for promotion, or the concern of losing your job. You believe being away from work will keep you from achieving your professional goals. However by not taking time for yourself, you lose something even more essential.
Be willing to take time off from work, school, or just a busy life as it directly relates to achieving brain health. Making your brain work hard daily leads to diminishing your ability to think creatively and tackle problems efficiently. Your brain will be able to think well if you take the time off from all your professional obligations to relax and rejuvenate. You will notice that creative ideas suddenly occur to you when your mind does not ponder over work-related issues. To set your mind free, you need to take yourself to an environment other than your work environment. Only then will you produce excellent work quality and come up with creative ideas.
Scientific reason for the need of a break
Your frontal lobe brain networks create reasoning, planning, decision-making, and judgement. Creative solutions seem to come in when your brain is calm and not when it tries hard to find a solution. When the brain is quiet, it connects random ideas to prior knowledge and brings creative, potential solutions.
Why are vacations necessary?
Vacations give your brain and body an opportunity to experience calm. You must know that your brain and body are not very well equipped to juggle the chronic stresses of the modern, 21st century life. Your body releases a stress hormone cortisol when you are under chronic stress. If you think it is not a significant issue, think again! The high levels of damage to the cortisol damages the hippocampus. The hippocampus is the area of your brain that is responsible for learning and memory. Thus, if you only reduce stress by taking a vacation, you will maximize your brain’s performance. Besides taking a vacation you can also exercise, get the required hours of sleep, spend quality time with others, and experience new adventures to relieve yourself from stress.
Disconnect yourself from technology
The modern age makes it impossible for you to go out of your house without a device. Either your work would get delayed or you will get delayed. However, it is critical you disconnect from technology for truly taking a break. Your brain requires you to take a break from your devices as well. As these devices lead to you focusing on your work again. For instance, you will be checking your mail, replying to queries while trying to write a report. It does not mean you are productive but instead you are slowing down. Humanly it is not possible to complete two tasks simultaneously. Making your brains switch from one task to another makes your frontal lobe experience fatigue. Multi-tasking makes your brain lesser efficient and decreases its performance. If you spend too much time online, you will end up feeling alone, depressed and anxious.
The solution!
The power to decide whether to work or not is with you. You can rightly choose to slow down and let your devices consume only a little of your time. In a day, you can take a few minutes break every hour to help you work efficiently. Spend an evening or an afternoon away from any technological disturbances. You can also limit your child’s cellphone use to save them from stress.
Now, that you realize the importance of taking a break, go on a vacation! And by vacation we mean no phones, no laptop, and no internet. Be just by yourself and your loved ones, enjoying a peaceful time. It will not only benefit your work life, but also your health and personal life. You will go back to work with a highly motivated spirit and a rejuvenated mind that will tackle difficult problems with an original perspective and diligence.
