In my early career, I did not take many vacation days. When I was a teacher they called them “mental health days.” When you teach junior high kids, I assure you that you need to keep your mental health. 

@twizzle and @phaidenbauer had a discussion about taking days off. Thanks for the inspiration, gentlemen.

It is interesting how time off differs by job/role. As teachers, we were allowed ten days off per school year. This seems low except when you consider how many holidays and vacation days are built into the school schedule. When I worked for a private company, they allowed us to accumulate paid time off (PTO) up to a certain maximum number of hours–for me, that was 496 hours. I had banked 490 hours and was nearing the cap where I would no longer accrue time off. It didn’t matter because our company was bought by a big company, and the decision was made for me. They paid any hours above 40. I was cut a very nice check for 450 hours of work. 

The new company’s policy for PTO seems to be industry standard. Employees accrue a certain number of PTO hours each pay period based on years of service. You are only allowed to carry over 40 hours of PTO at the end of the year. So your time off is “use it or lose it!” I was tempted to use a footnote here in the style of @valentino , but that construct assumes dear readers will read all the way to the end. So no footnote but an aside. 

Aside: At the big company, our office was based in Phoenix but we had remote workers based in a variety of other states. We had to apply the laws of the states where employees lived. For example, California has a law that says you cannot cap the number of PTO hours employees can carry over at the end of the year. 

With the prospect of losing time off, why would you let yourself lose any hours? If the company were to pay you for the extra hours, would you refuse the check? Which is more valuable to you, time or money? Think and answer carefully. 

I was the guy who didn’t take a lot of time off. Maybe it was the PTO Penalty I wrote about previously. I learned my lesson. 

If you are an entrepreneur or work for yourself, your situation will be different. You don’t work, you don’t eat. Still, you need to take time off. It’s a healthy thing to do. 

So do I practice what I preach? To an extent, yes. I’m better at taking time off compared to early in my career. The problem is that my current job incentivizes billing hours. I get paid a salary plus a bonus for billable hours. If I take time off, I still get a salary but I don’t have billable hours. Fewer billable hours = less money. That’s okay because I answered the question above for myself.