Take Your Vacation Already

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Photo by: Matthew Phenix

A guy named Timothy Ferriss wrote a book you’ve probably heard of, provided you read one of the 35 languages it’s been printed in so far. It’s called The 4-Hour Workweek, and on its cover is the silhouette of somebody lounging on a hammock strung between two palm trees. Below that is a mighty promise: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich. It’s a delicious concept, though I fear its feasibility may hinge on writing a best-selling book that ends up being printed in 35 languages. 

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ll confess that I haven’t read beyond the preface of The 4-Hour Workweek, but I have held the book in my hands. I do that often. I can’t seem to resist picking it up and feeling the inspiring heft of it. I’m skeptical of its title in an 8 Minute Abs kind of way, but with visions in my head of me lounging on a hammock strung between two palm trees, I’m finding the what-if potential of its newly expanded and updated 416 pages to be pretty damned seductive.

I’m not close to a four-hour workweek. Truth told, I’d be pretty happy with a 40-hour workweek at this point. And a vacation would be nice too. A real one, the kind that doesn’t include a tour of the entire hotel before I put down my suitcase or staff photographer Zach Stovall taking pictures of my food before I eat it. 

Statistically speaking, U.S. workers are staggeringly reluctant to use their vacation time: Most estimates suggest that more than half of us don’t take all of our earned days off. A recent CNNMoney story estimated that Americans forfeited 448 million vacation days during 2010.

Of course, the reasons we’re working through our vacations are as manifold as the days we’re skipping, but I’m willing to bet that fear is at the root of most of them: fear that the office will go to hell during our vacation, fear that it won’t go to hell, fear that our absence will make our co-workers miserable, fear that it will make them ecstatic. 

And I’m as guilty as anybody; just ask my wife. Vacations and dental cleanings are two things I ardently avoid even though I always feel better afterward. It’s foolish. The irony, of course, is that I’ll gnash my teeth and rend my garments when the soda machine in the break room steals 60 cents from me, but I’ll shrug off lost vacation days like they were missed reruns of M*A*S*H on TV Land. 

So in lieu of joining the New Rich by writing a no. 1 New York Times bestseller and international phenomenon called Take Your Vacation Already, I’ll say simply this: Let’s buck an ugly trend and take our vacation days this year. All of them. And let’s spend a few of them on the beach. 

I will if you will.

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