Start decking the halls because the year is finally, almost, nearly over. We’re on the home stretch of the calendar now, with the finishing line within sight when the whole nation takes a collective deep breath over the Christmas holiday break.

For some lucky people, this break will extend into long and muggy January, right up to Australia Day. Others will keep working over the break, taking the bare minimum of public holidays off to try to rest and recharge, but these upcoming holidays are the only time of the year that you can feel the entire country slowing into a soft hum.

We’ve all earned it too. It’s been an intense year, and Australian workers have taken it especially hard. Recent research by Edelman Data and Intelligence, commissioned by retailer lululemon, showed that of the 15 markets they surveyed, Australia took out first place as the country with the highest levels of burnout when people were asked about their physical, mental and social wellbeing.

It’s a sad reality that burnout has been on the rise, across all levels and all industries. Researchers like Dr Michael P. Leiter and Dr Christina Maslach say that burnout in the workplace occurs when there’s a mismatch between employers and employees in one or more of the following areas: the amount of control a worker has, fair treatment, a sense of community, workload levels, the provision of rewards, or company values.

This manifests itself in three ways: occupational exhaustion, depersonalisation, and a decrease in feelings of personal accomplishment.

The first is where work drains you so much that you desperately need a big break – like the upcoming Christmas holidays – just to recover from it. The second is where you care little about the people you work with, and the third is when you feel generally ‘blah’ about your job.

Take your re-entry in January a bit slower if possible, and enjoy the first few days of sharing and reliving holiday memories with your colleagues.

If any of those sound familiar, then you do need some proper time off. But even if you’re not on the road to burnout, learning how to take a good break from work is one way of ensuring that you don’t get there. So here’s how to do it well.

It’s best to think about your Christmas break as before, during and after.