I know you're busy with work, but you also need to take some time off to recharge those batteries. So, should you plan one big vacation for the year, or should you take multiple short vacations throughout? Quantity can sometimes beat quality. First and foremost, regardless of how you use your vacation days, you need to be using them, and soon. The longer you put off your time off, the worse you're making things for yourself.
One 9-year-long study published in Psychosomatic Medicine suggests not taking at least one vacation a year may increase your risk of mortality due to heart disease. So, not only are you killing your joy, you're possibly killing yourself. Give yourself a break, folks.
When you should take those breaks, however, depends on a few factors: how many days you have available to use, what activities bring you joy, whether you have a family or not, and other variables come into play. Because of that, there's no perfect formula that works for everyone, but there are still a few things everyone can try to shoot for. We know that in terms of maximizing relaxation, you should aim for vacations that range somewhere between 7 and 11 days long. That gives you enough time to let go of your stress at work, completely loosen up, and achieve full-on calm.
That above-mentioned study also recommends you space out your vacations evenly instead of using up all of your days at once. Eight days might sound like a lot for someone who only gets 10 days of vacation a year. But if you frame them with weekends, you can manage two evenly spaced 8-day vacations a year. If you have 14 days of paid leave, that's almost three separate 8-day vacations you can use to split your year into thirds.
As tempting as it might be to use all your days to take one long summer break, your overall goal should be to achieve the perfect balance between length plus joy and frequency. Vacation frequency is important because planning multiple breaks throughout the year means you always have something to look forward to. Planning things and the anticipation that comes with it tend to make us happier. If you only take one long vacation every year, the excitement builds much more slowly and seems so far off that it can actually lead to feelings of despair.