One of the most distinctive characteristics of stressed out, Type-A, personalities is that they don’t take a lot of time off and when they do take a vacation they usually spend that vacation working.  Ask yourself a couple of questions: what is the worst that could happen and what if it does happen?  When you define your fears of taking time off things are rarely as bad in real life as they were previously believed to be.  One of the overriding characteristics I’ve noticed in stressed-out, overworked, Type-A personalities is that they tend not to take time off. Trust me – I speak from personal experience!

If they do take vacations, it’s a “working vacation,” and it’s seldom for more than a few days.

Recently The New Yorker ran a cartoon of two people on a beach.

The woman is reading a book, and the man is working on a laptop. He says, “It’s not that I’m a workaholic. I just work to relax.”

(Here’s a link to Alex Gregory’s New Yorker cartoon).

If you found this funny because it reminded you of you, maybe it’s time to take a vacation and leave the laptop at home. If you take a vacation every 20 years whether you need one or not, maybe it’s time for a change.

Why not take a few days off? Ask yourself:

1A. What’s the worst that could happen?
1B. And what if it does?

Define your fears. Seldom are things as busy or bad as you’ve initially made them out to be. Once you do, the decision then becomes very clear.

Thanks to Working at Home on the Internet for including this post in the Working at Home Blog Carnival.