I didn’t take any leave last year, so I’ve hit my annual leave accrual cap already, which means I’m already in a use-or-lose situation. I work four 9-hour days, and one 4-hour day every week. Two of the 9-hour days and the 4-hour day, I telework.
I earn a very generous 24 days, or 192 hours per year. I earn 3.7 hours of leave every week. My supervisor basically told me my options are wide open for what I want to do. She doesn’t care.
As of right now there’s 22 full weeks left in the year, so I have to use at least 81.4 hours of annual leave, let’s just call it 82 hours, starting immediately.
For most of the poll options except the last few, I’m only concerned with the four 9-hour days.
What would you do?
Start one hour later every day
Leave one hour early every day
Take off one full day every 2 weeks
Take 4 hours off of one day a week
Some combination of the above
Take 1 full week off now, then another full week later
I’d suggest a half and half approach. Plan a good, nice long vacation for yourself before year’s end, maybe something like 2-3 weeks. But also start taking a couple hours off every day, maybe sleeping in one hour and logging off one hour early.
When I hit a similar situation, I took off the first full week of each month. Taking off a day here or there is not very restful. A week actually gives you the chance to fully decompress.
I would say taking an hour off (or even 4 hours off) from a working day is bad value. You still have to go to work that day which limits what you can do that day. It’s even quite likely that you will end up working during the hour that you have nominally taken off, because you are busy or have to finish something or just get distracted by your emails.
An extra day off makes a three-day weekend which is wonderful, in my experience, even if it’s not as restful as a continuous week off.
I ran into this situation last year. I get 20 days of leave each year and 24 days of flex leave (for hours worked over my 35 hour week). To get my leave under the maximum accrual I just took a string of Fridays off. I had no desire to take a slab of time off during COVID. It was so good having a long weekend every week that I have kept it up since. I only work on a Friday once in a while if others want a day off.
I voted taking off an hour early. I’d love getting an extra hour at home before sunset. Sit on the deck and relax. Maybe nap in my hammock. Play with the dogs. Yeah, I could do that for the next 12 weeks.
Travel Vacations are stressful for me. The long drives in traffic. Questionable hotel rooms. It would be different if I could afford hotel suites with gorgeous views.
Is the third cold drink as refreshing as the first one was? Do you feel that much more rested with a third day off after you’ve just had two? I’d rather have a Wed off any week, that way, every day you work is either before or after a day off.
I’m on Team Three-Day-Weekend. I think it’s at least twice as good as a normal weekend, and so very efficient in terms of vacation hours.
I pretty much have to burn a day doing normal household stuff, and part of that is also just unwinding from work, so getting two full stress-free days out of a weekend is significantly better than just one. Having two in a row is substantially more useful than two singletons.
Also, I have hobbies that require some brainpower. I don’t always have the mental energy during a normal weekend to work on them. But the third day gives time to both unwind and work on these kinds of projects.
Finally, assuming one is still trying to be productive at work, the first day after a break always sucks. Two breaks per week is a definite productivity hit compared to one, and IMO without any side benefit.
I have use/lose every year. I’ve had use/lose for the past 15 years. I was trained early on to build up my leave, reach use/lose and use just that for leave. The accrued leave is a bank in case of a real emergency, and upon retirement get paid out at my current pay rate, regardless of when it was earned. So I have 208 hours to burn every year.
You will not receive any perceived benefit (mental and physical well-being) if you nickel and dime yourself with taking an hour off a day. At the very least, at least two days off together, tied to a weekend, giving you a four-day weekend. Take a week off (with weekends - nine days) periodically. Mix and match throughout the rest of the year as you see fit.
Yeah, I do 9 hours Mon Tue Thurs Fri, and 4 hours Wed, but when I was going in to the office every day pre-pandemic, I was doing 4 10-hour days with Wednesday off. Everyone else wanted Monday or Friday but I chose Wednesday, so I never worked more than two days in row. I was shocked nobody else thought of that. I used to love asking my friends on Monday night, “What day is tomorrow?” They’d answer “Tuesday.” And I’d say “Wrong. It’s Friday!”
Once the pandemic hit and we went to “maximum telework” I went to the 9-9-4-9-9 schedule so there wouldn’t be a full day every week that my stuff wasn’t getting done. It was mostly a selfish decision so I wouldn’t get slammed on Thursday, but it helped everyone else out, too, and when we started going back into the office some days I just kept the same hours.
I cannot offer any useful advice without knowing a little more about you. The specific point that I need to know is: Why the hell didn’t you take any leave last year?
Maybe you’re a person who really likes to work. In your poll, I voted for “something else”, and the unlisted option that I’m suggesting to you is: “Don’t take any more time off.”
Consider the phrase “use-or-lose”. All of the options in the poll concern the first half, and everyone seems to forget that the second half is a real and viable option. No one is forcing you to stay home if you don’t want to.
Here’s the thing about that: I only go in to the office two days a week, Thursdays and Fridays, so it’s not that I didn’t go anywhere or do anything outside of my house, it’s just that as long as I take my work laptop along, and wherever I’m going has a decent internet connection, I can go anywhere I want from Saturday to Wednesday without actually taking any leave. My telework hours are flexible, so as long as I put in the requisite number of hours each day, nobody cares.
I was kind of thinking along those same lines. Take the damn time off already. I voted for the “take a week now, and another later” option, but I suppose any other option that provides for at least full day off would be alright as well, with none of the “damage is already done” by having to come in at all that coming late or leaving early entails.
I can’t imagine someone on their last day on this earth saying something like: “I should’ve worked more. If only I worked more”. ( Though I’ve run into a few people that probably would )
What’s your current COVID comfort level, especially re: traveling? If taking a longish trip is an option that appeals to you, I’d vote for that. But if not, I’d be more inclined to take off one full day at a time and try to plan a mix of 1) fun stuff, 2) taking care of important but non-urgent personal business you’ve been putting off, and 3) just being a blob at home.
Before I used nearly all my annual leave to take care of my SO while she recovered from some outpatient surgery, I regularly built up five weeks’ worth of use-or-lose. I tended to spread out all those hours to create extra-long weekends whenever there was a holiday.
