Americans wasted a record-setting 658 million vacation days in 2015, left on the table by 55% of workers, according to Project: Time Off’s new report, The State of American Vacation. The group says Americans’ vacation habits are amid a decades-long decline in usage.
A pile of other past studies make this same point. The average American gives $500 of free labor to their employers every year; the average millennial works during vacation, with 1-in-4 working every single vacation day.
All this lack of sun isn’t really doing anyone any favors. Because the truth is summer slowdowns are real, and you probably aren’t getting much done anyway. Here are six reasons why you, and everyone else, really is less productive in summer.
1. The Weather (Duh!)
As a writer, I loved living in Seattle. Yes, because it rained all the time. It’s pretty easy to commit yourself to sticking your face in a computer at a coffee shop when it’s gray and misty outside. When it’s beautiful and sunny? Well, it’s darn near impossible.
That’s not made up. One study of the Census Bureau’s American Time Use Survey found that, on rainy days, men spent, on average, thirty more minutes at work than they did on similarly sunny days.
2. FOMO
It should be obvious that distraction is the enemy of productivity. And nothing is more distracting than looking outside a window to see sun you aren’t enjoying. Well, there might be one thing more distracting: Seeing pictures of other people enjoying the sun online.
We know that social media sites like Facebook can lead to a lot of wasted time at the office. But in summer, it can do lead to something potentially more problematic.
When the New Yorker covered why summer makes us lazy, it highlighted a Harvard study that found looking at pictures of people sailing or eating outside made them focus less at work.
“Instead of focusing on their work, they focused on what they’d rather be doing,” the New Yorker proclaimed. “The mere thought of pleasant alternatives made people concentrate less.”
And these were random pictures of people the subjects didn’t know. Imagine how much stronger the effect is when your old college buddy is at Folly Beach in North Carolina and you are sitting in front of Microsoft Outlook. (Thanks a lot, Tim.)