Which do you prefer with the same rate of pay, an interesting and challenging job with less vacation or a job with more vacation time but less fun?

Whether people should take an interesting yet difficult job with less vacation or a job with more vacation but less fun arouse a heated debate among job seekers. Although there are pros and cons for this statement, I personally prefer getting a career that is interesting but with less vacation. My reasons are as follows. To begin with, mental health is an essential factor for me when I am choosing my career. Therefore, I prefer to acquire a job that is interesting because it can enhance my mental health and make me happier. For instance, I am currently a white-hat hacker; I get paid for penetrating an organization’s infrastructure and hunting for vulnerabilities in servers. As a matter of fact, my job is exceptionally intriguing because I need to address unpredictable yet fascinating problems all the time, such as guessing the correct password patterns, finding vulnerabilities in server misconfiguration, etc. As a result, even thought I may need to arrive at my company during the summer vacation, I did not feel upset or stressed doing my tasks for once. On the other hand, I once joined an algorithm research laboratory at National Institute of Research. The researches conducted in the institution is comparably advanced and hardcore, and the average workload is quite heavy there. To be more specific, before paper submission deadline, I felt despondent every time I failed to complete my algorithm report. Therefore, despite the fact that my supervisor allowed me to take a break from July to September, I felt exceptionally exhausted during my work time, and this made me developed some mental health problems like melancholia. Last but not least, I place an emphasis on efficiency on my work, and taking an exciting job with less vacation can undoubtedly improve my working efficiency. As an example, I once participated in a company called AIdea Technology as a machine learning engineer. My supervisor asked me to use the most state-of-the-art machine learning model to build a face-recognition machine. This newly-invented model is quite interesting because it required precise calculation on the curve of human’s facial expression change. Therefore, I become really attentive when researching this topic. In addition, my boss did not granted me to take a two week spring break, so I had no choice but to concentrated on my model-training mission during the break. Consequently, I finished constructing a face-recognition model with 90% accuracy in no more than a week. So according to my experience, having a fun job without any vacations increases my productivity. In conclusion, I prefer getting a job that is interesting but with less vacations due to the aforementioned reasons. After all, I am really concerned about my mental health and working efficiency.