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Do you get enough play ?


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Press Release: Playing up the need for taking time out

 

Regular playtimes could be the secret of a happy, healthy life for stressed-out Brits, new research revealed today.

The study, commissioned by holiday company Eurocamp, suggests we need a dose of approximately 90 minutes play per day to balance our demanding lifestyles.

And it challenges people to extend their five-a-day fruit and veg target to embrace the five essential elements of successful play.

The 90-minutes-per-day guideline is based on the rule that an additional 25% of an average 40-hour working week should be spent engaged in one of the five essential play elements. However, experts recognise it’s not always possible to meet the target every day, or even every week, and that for many people this quota is often topped up by an annual holiday in the sun.

Dr David Holmes, senior psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University, who conducted the research, says that even though it may be difficult to find the time for quality ‘play’ it isn’t enough to simply decamp to the local pub.

Instead he has come up with a practical formula for calculating whether or not you are getting enough quality play each day.

The five essential play elements include being with nature (N), taking activity outdoors (O), being active as a family (F), indulging in creative time (CE) and enjoying relaxed, unstructured fun (R).

His formula, using the initial letters above, is:

 

(N+O) x (R + F) + CE

 

David said: “The quality of the play activity in terms of its strength in combating work stress is very important, as quality play can be more beneficial by the minute than that which offers a less healthy alternative to the mundane.

“Just collapsing into inactivity and hitting the bar on holiday may make you less happy than you might imagine. However, a swim or a family picnic can be sufficiently fulfilling in play mode to keep your reward mechanisms buoyant.”

Ruth Start, UK head of sales and marketing with Eurocamp, said: ‘Given recent statistics about the long working hours in the UK, and increasingly high stress levels, we wanted to look at how much ‘play-time’ people need in order to stay happy and healthy.

‘The study has revealed spending quality time with our families, embracing the outdoors, learning new creative skills and enjoying play purely for play’s sake are all important factors to help us redress the work-life balance. Having said that, on the whole, we’re probably not getting quite enough ‘quality’ play as we need and most of us rely on a holiday in the sun to get our annual quota.’

To calculate whether you’re getting your GDA of play visit www.eurocamp.co.uk.