Clark Howard's Tips

Workers increasingly forfeit vacation days

November 2, 2007

One of Clark's staffers was recently on vacation for four days. While in San Diego, she spoke to some Europeans who laughed at her meager "holiday" time -- they were abroad for eight weeks!

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that only one in seven American workers takes a "long" vacation of two weeks at a time. In fact, people don't even use all the vacation that they've accrued. More than one in three forfeits vacation days.

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Then there's also the working vacation trend, where you go away but spend most of your time working remotely. Clark thinks people are better as workers and family members when they take some time to chill out. He sees a lot of people with "emperor syndrome," where they think that the company can't survive without them. "Impostor syndrome" is also common. That's when people become afraid that the company will realize they're not necessary if they're out on vacation.

These kinds of insecurities can really drain your productivity over time. Clark advises people to get away when they have the chance and turn off their "Crackberry" devices. The world won't collapse if you take a few days to enjoy yourself.

Yahoo! recently sent around an internal e-mail trying to compel staffers to take their vacations. The employees were outraged by the move, and the company had to back down and make vacation a voluntary thing.

There is, however, a ray of hope on the horizon; members of Generation X (those born between 1965-1978) tend to take 100 percent of their vacation time.

When's the last time you took a week off from work?

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