In our ever-busy lives, it can be hard to find time to relax. Most people have a lot of responsibilities to either their jobs, families, pets, etc. It seems like there are never enough hours in the day to do everything we need to do.

As much as we want to power through the day and go full-throttle, non-stop, we owe it to ourselves to take breaks and find activities that let us relax. When we’re going full speed 24/7, it can create a lot of stress and takes a toll on our health.

It’s important to take breaks during our busy schedules. It might be hard to understand why, but there are several good reasons for taking breaks.

Need time to reset

It helps to take a break and reset our minds. Moving from one activity to the next can be exhausting, so it helps to take some time in the day to focus on relaxing our minds.

Focus on doing something that you enjoy, no matter how brief it is. It could be taking a walk outside or reading an article from your favorite website. You could even take some time to call or message loved ones.

You might think you’re wasting time by not being productive, but studies have shown that taking breaks can help you recover from stress. In turn, you can restore your energy and even improve your work performance.

We start to get sloppy

The longer you dedicate time to an activity, the sloppier you tend to get. When you’re going twelve hours straight on a workday, or you’ve been up for hours trying to help your kids with their homework, you’re probably struggling to find the energy to stay awake. At that point, you’re probably spending more time just staring off into the distance versus doing anything productive.

You might find yourself making simple mistakes you wouldn’t have made otherwise. Say, for example, you start making a bunch of typos in emails. A few here and there won’t hurt, but the more you make, the worse it gets. Sometimes those mistakes start to build up and create even bigger problems, which doesn’t help anyone.

If you do end up working long hours, it helps to create a schedule and a priority list. You should focus on devoting enough time to the most important tasks. You’ll want to try to get the harder stuff early on in the day, so when fatigue does start to set in, the mistakes you might make won’t be as costly.

We miss out

It’s kind of sad to think about, but the more time we spend working, the less time we have to enjoy life and indulge in the simple things like going to watch a movie or traveling to another country.

While there are some responsibilities we absolutely can’t neglect, like our jobs, taking care of loved ones, or filing taxes, we can at least plan some time where we’re not giving it our all to something. Even if it’s for a day, it helps to spend time on activities we genuinely like engaging with.

Life is short, and we can only devote so much time to a given activity. You don’t want to wake up one day and agonize over all the things you missed because you were too busy.

Finding ways to relax

So you decided it’s actually worth taking a break, but you might find yourself struggling to figure out what to do with during this time off.

The easiest solution would be to try a bunch of different things and see what works. Part of a healthy lifestyle is finding activities you enjoy that can help reduce stress. Some people find getting a massage helps reduce stress and others find traveling helps. It really depends.

The important thing is you need to take breaks and relax. Your mind and body will thank you in the long run.