3+7, how come it equals 8?

Review expert: Li Xianhong, national second-level psychological counselor

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday has begun! I don't know how many friends are like me, and I can't help but want to celebrate the birthday of our motherland.

The good news about this long holiday is that the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day are combined to give us 8 days off, but the bad news is that we have to work 7 days straight after the holiday...

In recent years, people have been arguing endlessly about adjusting holidays. First, the Qingming Festival holiday without adjusting holidays received unanimous praise from the majority of workers. Later, the college entrance examination candidates who called for the cancellation of the adjusted holidays were ridiculed by netizens, "Child, you deserve to be enshrined in the Imperial Temple."

Why is it that the joy brought by a "long vacation" created by adjusting work schedules is always not as strong as we imagine?

Today, I will talk to you about things related to adjusting holidays.

1History of Holidays

I wonder if you have had the same question as me when you were young: How did our current vacation system come about? In fact, the "vacation system" has a long history in China. As early as the Western Han Dynasty, there was a clear regulation that "officials should rest once every five days". After that, each dynasty also introduced its own vacation system.

The emergence of the modern vacation system can be traced back to the modern Western workers' movement.

In the 1880s, the capitalist economy in Europe and the United States was in a period of rapid development, but workers were faced with heavy workloads, low wages, long working hours and other problems. In order to fight for their rights, more than 216,000 workers in Chicago went on strike on May 1, 1886. After a difficult and bloody struggle, they finally succeeded in winning the implementation of the eight-hour work system. This is also the origin of May Day, International Labor Day.

After World War II, people paid more attention to the protection of human rights. In December 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which stipulates that "everyone has the right to rest and leisure, and in particular the right to reasonable working hours and periodic paid holidays." In 1949, the International Labor Organization further proposed that workers have at least 6 days of paid vacation each year. Since then, the employee vacation system in modern civilized society has been promoted in many countries.

2 Why does “adjusting leave” make people tired

Giving workers holidays is a good thing, so how did the "bad reputation" of adjusted holidays come about?

In 1999, in order to stimulate domestic demand, the State Council revised the holiday system, merging the short holiday with the weekend before and after, starting the "seven-day fun" model that many people born in the 1990s were familiar with in their childhood.

Later, the holiday model underwent a series of changes, but the original intention of stimulating consumption by adjusting holidays to allow everyone to have more consistent holidays has not changed.

What is puzzling is that the time between work days has not become longer after the adjustment, and to some extent it can satisfy everyone's psychological desire for "delayed gratification". So why do we feel more tired after all these operations?

In response to this issue, a netizen made a very vivid analogy: it's like not being allowed to eat for two days, and then on the third day you are asked to eat 9 meals a day. Of course, this will make people feel unbearable.

This statement certainly has some truth to it, but the impact of continuous overtime work on people may also have more complex physiological and psychological mechanisms.

First of all, working continuously for too long will prevent our physical and mental state, which has declined due to work, from recovering in time. Such fatigue will continue to accumulate and eventually cause irreversible damage to the human body.

Research data from the World Health Organization and the International Labor Organization show that people who work more than 55 hours a week have a 35% increased risk of stroke and a 17% increased risk of death from ischemic heart disease compared to those who work 35 to 40 hours a week. Even if there are no serious life-threatening consequences, overwork can lead to high blood pressure, tachycardia, chronic fatigue syndrome and other conditions.

People are not machines and cannot be measured by simple addition and subtraction. Working too long not only harms the body, but also disturbs the psychological state of workers. Contrary to what many people imagine, long working hours do not necessarily lead to high output. Excessive working hours can make people feel tired, lose their enthusiasm and motivation for work, and they can only relieve their tired spirit by "slacking off".

For each of us, control over our own behavior and psychological freedom is a basic psychological need - the need for autonomy. However, the adjustment of rest that disrupts the original work-rest rhythm will make people lose the sense of stability and control brought by a regular life, which will not only damage physical and mental health, but also lead to poor work attitude and work performance.

In addition, the pain caused by adjusting work schedules also stems from a psychological factor called loss aversion.

If your boss gives you a bonus of 10,000 yuan and then tells you that he accidentally gave you an extra 5,000 yuan and asks you to return it to the company immediately, even though from a rational point of view you still get a bonus of 5,000 yuan in the end, in this case, the joy of receiving the bonus has been completely replaced by the pain of losing 5,000 yuan.

Source: Weibo screenshot

This is why, even though we have a "long vacation", everyone's attention is still focused on the weekend that was "taken away".

3 How to alleviate the "aftereffects of rest adjustment"

Regardless of the past and present, the desire to rest may be the common wish of all mankind. For the majority of workers, it is not too much to want a period of leisure time that is not dominated by work. But in the face of the inevitable "adjustment of rest", what should we do to minimize the physical and psychological damage of the adjustment of rest?

First of all, whether it is a weekday or a holiday, try to maintain a regular schedule and ensure 7 to 9 hours of sleep a day, which can greatly reduce the fatigue after the holiday.

In addition, formulating a reasonable work plan and arranging reasonable rest time at work, even if it is just to get water or go to the bathroom, taking 10 to 15 minutes to get away from work, can help alleviate the sense of slackness that arises during the work process.

Finally, I hope that everyone can get a more reasonable rest plan in the near future, so that every day can be like Friday, full of energy!