SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — According to recent studies, over half of Americans are still not using all their paid vacation days by the end of the year.

There’s also the company Microsoft in Japan, that tried out the four-day work week, and said their productivity boosted by 40%.

3 local professionals: Dr. David Mitchell, director of the Bureau of Economic Research at MSU, Dr. John Gambon, professor of industrial-organizational psychology at OTC, and Dr. Curtis Mattson, a licensed psychologist at CoxHealth, explained the reasons why people don’t want to use their vacation days:

People have an idea that the workplace is so competitive that if you take time off, it looks like you’re not interested in doing your job.

If the business is open and they’re not there working, they don’t look dedicated.

But what happens if you don’t use those vacation days?

You can get too stressed out, even to a “burnout” stage, where people end up working longer, but not longer to get more work done, but working longer to get the same amount of work done.

They say people do better when they take vacation days and time off, makes them mentally and physically more well-off in the long run.