It's three months into the new year, and I'm itching to go on vacation.

The spring thaw already has me conjuring up images like long, lazy weekends spent camping and road trips to visit friends.

I, for one, make it a point to take every single one of my vacation days each year.

But a lot of American workers don't. According to www.Expedia.com's Vacation Deprivation survey in 2006, one-third of Americans don't always take all of their vacation days.

We also receive the fewest vacation days each year (on the average, 14) compared with countries like Australia (17 days) and France (a whopping 39).

Ellery Duke has heard your excuses about not taking time off.

"It's too expensive."

"Leaving for a week will put me so far behind that I'll feel more stressed out than relaxed when I get back."

"I think that those are kind of superficial reasons," said Duke, a licensed psychologist and executive director of the Des Moines Pastoral Counseling Center. "I tend to think that we're fairly driven and feel like we're at our best when we're working and producing. We don't appreciate the need for relaxation.

"In the long run, we're probably not ... getting further ahead by working rather than taking some vacation time."

Sprinkling your two weeks of vacation throughout the 52 every year can be an especially tough, almost painful, transition for recent college graduates accustomed to months-long breaks.

Duke adds that a growing body of research highlights not just the health benefits of breaking away from work but the adverse consequences of staying tied to your job.

One dramatic example: A Framingham Heart Study follow-up found that middle-age women who took vacations once every six years or less had eight times the risk of having a heart attack or dying of heart disease.

An adequate vacation lasts at least three or four days, Duke said.

"It might help to take a week and the weekends on each side of it; a person can squeeze eight or nine days then," he said. Divvy up the remaining week into three or four long weekends.

"They actually stimulate and energize us in new ways that we don't experience when we're doing the same routine day after day," Duke said. "It helps us to see life differently and with new eyes."

He said doing something new also makes us flex our brains in different, and beneficial, ways.

Duke shared some tips for planning, and enjoying, that well-deserved break: