Rest is more important than we’d ever imagined as a way to balance our overwhelmingly busy modern lives. I’ve been researching various forms of rest for years and even quit my full-time job in order to try some of the things out that I’ve discovered. My conclusion in a nutshell? If you’re working full-time in the United States, you don’t get nearly enough rest each day, week, or year. (That might be the obvious statement of the year.) Well, let’s change that, shall we? Many of us are switching jobs or taking time off in order to secure better benefits and make some real changes in our lives. So, what can you look out for as you make your next big career move? Let’s examine in-depth one of my favorite corporate benefits: vacation time, and discuss what the ideal corporate vacation policy really looks like.
If you’re working full-time in the United States, you don’t get nearly enough rest each day, week, or year.
How Much Rest Do We Need?
Rest isn’t really a topic out for debate anymore. All of the literature agrees on this general fact: we can only deeply focus for around 3-4 hours per day and then we become much less productive. If you want to be performing at your best, an ideal schedule would include focusing deeply on your most important task(s) for 3-4 hours per day, spending 1-2 hours on non-essential items (like emails and meetings), and taking at least 2 days off per week. Spend the rest of the time on relaxing activities such as walking, socializing, reading, and anything else that helps you recover your energy. Many of history’s most productive people did exactly this, whether they were famous violinists, Benjamin Franklin, or Charles Darwin.
If you want to be performing at your best, an ideal schedule would include focusing deeply on your most important task(s) for 3-4 hours per day, spending 1-2 hours on non-essential items (like emails and meetings), and taking at least 2 days off per week.
To learn more about the above topic, I’ve got a few book suggestions for you. You can find my book summaries and links to find the books here:
- Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport
- Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee
- Rest: Why You Get More Work Done When You Work Less by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
- Out of Office: The Big Promise and Bigger Promise of Working from Home by Charlie Warzel & Anne Helen Peterson
Traditional Vacation Policies
Most corporate jobs in the United States offer employees a set amount of time off for vacations. It can be as low as nothing (yikes!), but typically starts at two weeks and goes up to 4-5 weeks off per year, plus holidays. Sometimes that vacation time includes sick leave and time to care for loved ones and sometimes sick leave is separate.
Some offices are highly rigid and require that you ask for each and every day you take off. Others are highly flexible, trusting their employees to generally work 40 hours per week, it doesn’t matter which ones. I’ve always worked in tech and I’ve always had highly flexible policies. That meant that the company trusted me enough to allow me to work remotely sometimes and take time off in the middle of the day to run appointments without using my vacation time. I would never work somewhere that wasn’t flexible. Full stop. If I ever had to ask my manager for time off versus just taking it when I know the team can support my absence, I would be looking for another job immediately.
Unlimited Vacation Policies
More and more, particularly at tech companies, we are now seeing “unlimited” vacation policies. You can have as many days off each year as you want, as long as you get your work done! Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? I’ve worked at two companies with unlimited vacation policies and loved it. I no longer had to work around a specific set of days each year, worry about time off for appointments, or anything else. Taking vacation days is really important. I always took the amount that I needed and still got my work done. It’s also great for the company as they don’t have to pay out hefty vacation balances when an employee leaves.
Unfortunately, what happens at many of the companies with unlimited policies is that people end up working more, not less. If the company culture is one in which employees are working around the clock anyway, checking email during vacation, and bragging about their hours, unlimited vacation policies can actually cause employees to take fewer days of vacation. What it really comes down to at that point is culture. If the executive and management teams take a lot of vacation (i.e. set a good example), then employees will too. If they don’t, then employees tend to follow suit.
Despite this trend, I still very much prefer having an unlimited vacation policy. I want to work at companies that trust me to get my job done and let me take the time off that I need and deserve throughout the year.
The Ideal Vacation Policy
Here’s what I think is actually the best vacation policy. Ideally, most companies would have an unlimited vacation policy with a minimum number of days that each employee has to take off. The minimum, in my opinion, should be at least three weeks. Two weeks is way too little for anyone to recharge. Three is probably on the lighter side, but it is a minimum, so employees should be encouraged to take many more days than that. With a minimum explicitly stated, a culture of rest is baked into the employee handbook and no one has to wonder if their vacation time looks excessive compared to everyone else. If I ever started a company, this would be our vacation policy and the minimum would be a lot more than three weeks.
I’m curious whether you agree with my “ideal vacation policy”? Post a comment and let’s continue to chat about it!