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Harris Interactive, an Internet-based market research firm showed reported recently that 57 percent of Americans ended the 2011 fiscal year with unused vacation time, opting out of taking, on average, 11 of their allotted days off. The Boston Globe asserts that other national surveys have calculated that as many as 66 percent of us keep working when we could be kicking back somewhere, leaving unused a total of 459 million vacation days.

the common excuse for not using our vacation days?

"I can't afford not to work;" monetarily or otherwise.

Well when it comes to your mental and physical health it would be costlier not to take those vacation days.

Though articles and statistics slam American's for being lax on education, Europeans have saddled the U.S with the titles such as, "no vacation nation" or "naycationers." We have become infamous as a nation of hard workers with little benefit.

"Anecdotally at least, you hear vacation deprivation is getting worse," says John de Graaf to Boston.com executive director of the Seattle-based organization Take Back Your Time. He co-wrote a 2009 bill mandating paid vacations for most American workers. (You can guess what happened to that bill when submitted to congress).

Even when vacation days are taken, polls show that majority of laborers work from their smartphones or labtops, cheating themselves out of their much needed and rightly earned R&R.

Boston University sociologist Juliet Schor, says that the pressure to stay working is felt both in boom times and bad ones. When business is going well, employers tend to increase individual workloads, hoping to keep the enterprise running smoothly. During downturns, employees worry their jobs will grow more difficult, or even disappear; decisions about taking time off often hinge on assessing individual risks and rewards.

It is logical to conclude that if "workaholic" behavior begins and continues based on the above reasoning, such habits are hard, or even impossible to break. Furthermore, study after study has shown that prolonged stress has a negative impact on health. Stress is implicated in everything from high blood pressure to infertility. Indigestion, allergies, migraine, diabetes, ulcers, skin disorders and depression and even hairless or premature graying are just some of the other conditions that have been linked to stress.

Do yourself a favor: Work hard so you can play even harder.