June 22, 2006 1:52 PM

Learning to chill
Posted by Douglas Eisenhartat 1:52 PM

Following on my recent post on vacation time (and Americans' ambivalent attitude toward it), here's a link to Po Bronson's essay, "Just Sit Back and Relax," from the latest TIME magazine:

Americans are allotted few vacation days (14 days, on average) compared with other industrialized countries, but ironically, we don't even use them. The average American will leave four vacation days on the table this year, which adds up to a whopping 574 million days of untaken vacation, collectively. Our relationship to relaxation seems contradictory. We spend more money than anyone else in the world on leisure--fully one-third of our income--and yet we are simultaneously No. 1 in the world at not taking vacations.