Why You Can’t Chill (Even When You Are Exhausted) |
According to the U.S. Travel Association (2020), more than half of Americans don’t use all their vacation days each year. Statistically, 23 percent of U.S. workers took zero vacation days last year, meaning, at least at last count, 768 million paid time-off days were wasted! To make matters worse, even when Americans do take their paid time off, multiple studies report that in many cases, individuals still work up to one hour per day when on vacation.
Despite union time-off campaigns and the quest for work-life balance, leisure acceptance is elusive. But why? Many people find time away from work stressful, even though overworking actually harms the very well-being and productivity they are trying to achieve.
Researchers label the feeling of avoiding relaxation as “rest intolerance” or “rest resistance.” When relaxing, we may feel guilt, shame, and negative emotions (Wang et al., 2024). If you’ve ever felt worse about yourself while lying on the couch than while grinding through a deadline, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you wake up in the middle of the night and immediately start thinking about what you need to do, you are clearly a rest-intolerance victim. Some of us just cannot chill!
The primary obstacle is the reality that some people connect their self-worth to constant productivity. When we connect our identity to productivity, relaxing feels wrong instead of restorative. Avci (2025) explained that rest often triggers feelings of guilt, shame, anxiety, and even worry........