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LIFESTYLE CAREERS

The Formula to Get More Time

Off Using Your Vacation Days
Piggybacking on public holidays to create longer breaks, taking off Mondays
are among the tricks

By Vanessa Fuhrmans Follow

Jan. 1, 2024 9:00 pm ET

It is barely past New Year’s Day. If you’ve taken the day off, congratulations: You have aced
your first test of vacation-day math.

We get only so many days of paid time off a year. And that is if you’re lucky—one in five U.S.
private-sector workers gets no PTO, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Without a
strategy, you can have a generous number of vacation days and still feel like you never truly
got away from it all.

Think of the times you took a mini-break from work only to feel stressed before and
afterward. The average American worker with five years at the company gets 15 paid days of
vacation in a year, BLS data show. That leaves little room for bad planning if you want a
serious break or two, plus some long weekends and the occasional personal day.

Maxim No. 1: A vacation day equals more than a day of vacation when you attach it to a
public holiday or two. Taking the day after New Year’s this year snags you a four-day
weekend at the start of 2024. Timed just right between federal holidays and weekends, 15
days of PTO can turn into nearly 50 days of extended break time this year. (That is, if your
co-workers don’t beat you to claiming those dates.)

Another guiding principle—Fridays off are overrated, and not just because they are peak
traveling days. For a long weekend or a random personal day, there is evidence to suggest a
Monday and Wednesday can be more satisfying. But more on that later.

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A weeklong vacation vs. long weekends

First, some science: To really recharge, you need at least one weeklong vacation, bracketed
between two weekends, research suggests.

In one study of more than 50 people who took vacations for an average two weeks,
participants’ well-being levels didn’t peak until their eighth day off. A 2023 study of more
than 300 vacationers found people who took between eight and 14 days off reported greater
and longer positive effects once they returned to work, such as better sleep, than those who
took shorter breaks.

One to two weeks off, in fact, appeared to have longer-lasting benefits than lengthier
vacations. After a while, “you creep back to old habits,” says Ty Ferguson, a research
associate at the University of South Australia in Adelaide who co-wrote the study. His own
recent getaway—several days down the coast—went bust when his three children, ages five
and under, came down with a bug. Then it was time to return.

“I should take more of my own advice,” he says.

One reason taking a week-plus vacation is important is that is enough time to actually reduce
workloads. Network-equipment giant Cisco recently conducted a deep data dive on
employees’ work habits and well-being, examining more than three years’ of metrics such as
virtual meetings, badge-ins, PTO and engagement surveys. When workers took a day or two
off, the number of meetings they had in the month didn’t change much—they just packed in
more work before and after their time off.

Meeting loads dropped sharply for workers who took at least five consecutive days off. The
fewer the meetings, the greater tendency to report healthier routines and better stress-coping
abilities, Cisco found.

“I always believed in the long weekend because it can be so hard to take a week off,” says
Cisco’s chief people officer, Kelly Jones. “I was wrong.”

Maximizing public holidays

To get the most out of your finite days off, consider Gail Martino’s PTO hack for 2024. “I’m a
leisure laggard,” says the senior project manager in New Haven, Conn., of her habit of
waiting to take vacation time until things get slower. (Hint: That is never.) Then there is a

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scramble to use it or lose it toward the end of the year, with the days she does take off feeling
not terribly satisfying.

“You wonder, why am I so tired?” she says.

Gail Martino bird-watching at Lighthouse Point Park in New Haven, Conn. PHOTO: GAIL MARTINO

In recent years, she’s become a bird watcher and wants to take a couple of birding trips along
the Eastern Seaboard in 2024. “I spend a week in the woods, among trees and nature, and
that is an incredible break,” she says. “Now I want to chart out the entire year.”

Scanning the 2024 calendar, she devised a spreadsheet of dates bridging public holidays and
weekends with a theoretical 15 vacation days and four personal days. (Working at Unilever
for 18 years, she got about a week more PTO than that in 2023.) The result was 50 days of
extended breaks, including 9-day stretches in July and over Christmas:

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How to Maximize Your Personal and Vacation Days

TOTAL DAYS OFF IN TYPE OF DAY

MONTH HOLIDAY TAKE OFF A ROW OFF

January New Year's Day, Jan. 1 Jan. 2 4 Personal

Martin Luther King Day,

January Jan. 12 4 Personal
Jan. 15

May Memorial Day, May 27 May 24 4 Personal

June Juneteenth, June 19 June 20, 21 5 Vacation

Independence Day, July

July July 1, 2, 3, 5 9 Vacation
4

September Labor Day, Sept. 2 Aug. 30 4 Vacation

November Veterans Day, Nov. 11 Nov. 8 4 Vacation

Nov. 29, Dec.

November Thanksgiving, Nov. 28 6 Vacation
2, 3

Dec. 23, 24,

December Christmas, Dec. 25 9 Vacation
26, 27

Source: Gail Martino

A little tweaking can wring nearly the same number of extended break days with just 15
vacation days and no personal days—that is, if you get a full slate of federal holidays off and
don’t have to trade off with co-workers:

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Getting the most from 15 Days of PTO

TOTAL DAYS OFF IN A

MONTH HOLIDAY TAKE OFF LEAVE TYPE
ROW

New Year's Day, Jan.

January Jan. 2 4 Vacation Day
1

January MLK Day, Jan. 15 Jan. 16 4 Vacation Day

Presidents Day, Feb.

February Feb. 20 4 Vacation Day
19

Memorial Day, May

May May 28 4 Vacation Day
27

June 17, 18, 4 Vacation

June Juneteenth, June 19 9
20, 21 Days

Independence Day,
July July 5 4 Vacation Day
July 4

September Labor Day, Sept. 2 Sept. 3 4 Vacation Day

Veterans Day, Nov.

November None 3 None
11

Thanksgiving, Nov.
November Nov. 29 4 Vacation Day
28

Dec. 23, 24, 26, 4 Vacation

December Christmas, Dec. 25 9
27 Days

The case for Mondays and Wednesdays off

Want to take a three-day weekend that isn’t attached to a federal holiday? Take Monday off
instead of Friday, suggests Jim Burch, a 38-year-old software engineer in Phoenix and an
avid hiker. Taking Fridays off often results in cramming five days of work into four, he points
out.

“I’d get so stressed out on the Thursday before,” says Burch, who at his current job, has more
autonomy over his schedule than in earlier jobs.

Delaying gratification until Monday means your co-workers have no choice but to start the
workweek without you. Back Tuesday, you can quickly catch up on whatever emails or
developments you missed, he says.

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Jim Burch on a hike in Sedona, Ariz. PHOTO: JIM BURCH

Then there is the unexpected pleasure of a Wednesday off. “It is like a midweek weekend,”
says Rachel Blenkhorn, a social-media production manager for a real-estate investment trust
who lives in Warren, Mich. It is long enough to relax or take care of appointments yet short
enough to get back in the work groove on Thursday, she says.

There is science as to why, says Dawna Ballard, a professor at the University of Texas at
Austin and an expert in chronemics, the study of time as it relates to communication.

“Everyone has a different chronotype,” or their

own biologically driven pace, she says. A break
after two days’ work gives you a second chance in
the week to return to your internal rhythm.
Psychologically, it also creates a bit of “slack” in the
workweek, alleviating the stress that comes from
feeling like there is too little time to get everything
done.

However you plot your vacation days in 2024,

don’t leave any on the table. They aren’t just good
for you, there is evidence they are good for your
Rachel Blenkhorn spent a recent vacation at career.
Hocking Hills State Park in Ohio. PHOTO:
RACHEL BLENKHORN An Ernst & Young study of its employees showed
every extra 10 hours of vacation was linked to an
8% improvement in year-end performance reviews. Another study found people who took

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more than 10 vacation days a year were more likely to get a raise or bonus than those who
took fewer days.

Now that is a formula anyone can get behind.

Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at [email protected]

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