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Vacation Time - Do You Have a Roadmap?
Finding the time to use earned days
  • 30% of employees do not take all of their vacation days.*
  • Americans hand $421 million back to employers.*

In September I read three different articles extolling the benefits of the authors� recent vacations. They were all sharing how they managed to truly separate themselves from work for a period and how this revived and refreshed them. They exhorted their readers to do the same.

The first thing that struck me was the fact that their readers needed to be advised on how to take a vacation. When did we forget how to take time off, avoid office work, and relax?

The sad truth is that almost everyone feels overwhelmed by the amount of tasks and responsibilities that they have. If you are struggling to find time for yourself, you are not alone. There are several reasons you may hesitate to take time off.

  1. Work will pile up in your absence, and you will never catch up.
  2. No one can do this job as well as you.
  3. The company might find out that you are replaceable.
  4. You will lose business (sales or self-employed people).

The result is that you never get to stop. The result of never getting to stop is that you feel constant pressure and stress. Some of the ensuing symptoms might be increased irritability, illness (which leads to absence anyway, without the fun), and insomnia when your mind never turns off.

How can you find solutions that will allow you to take your allotted amount of holiday time without worrying or using some of each vacation day to work?

  1. Prioritize every day. Sometimes you may be so busy that you do not ever pause to plan. Instead you react to each item or event as it comes up without prioritizing. 80% of the tasks you do each day yield only 20% of the results you produce. Determining the most important items first will help you weed out some of that 80%.
  2. Taking the time to train someone to handle parts of your job or outsourcing certain activities will actually help you produce a better product in the long run.
  3. Reality is that everyone is replaceable when the need arises. It is your attitude and your productivity while you are working that prove your value, not just your presence.
  4. Handle upcoming matters before you leave, then let people know through autoresponders and voice mail when you will return. Give them an alternate contact.

When you are pumping on adrenaline every day as you rush from one activity to another, it is difficult to stop that action. Even when you are away from the office, you may find that it takes two or three days to get into the "flow" of vacation so do not cut your time too short if you have the days saved up to use.

Summer is not the only time to think about vacations. There are fall foliage tours, ski trips, and family holidays. Start developing your vacation roadmap now, and use your work skills to have your travel project ready by that next deadline--your vacation date.

*Statistics sources

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