h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I've often thought of doing this, but never had the courage to give up the luxury of entire weeks off. But I wonder if it would be a more useful/restorative way of using holidays to have a mini holiday ever week for most of the year. Most full-time employed people in the UK could manage between 20 and 30 long weekends per year this way

Anyone tried this ?

I do this most years, primarily because I forget to take my holiday allocation then have to use it before year's end. I basically work a three day week for half of November and all of December.

I used to do it that way.

Now I'm retired, which is hard to take a vacation from.

I had an uncle who took every Friday afternoon as leave - apparently it really annoyed his employer (local government).

These days, everybody seems to take the whole of Friday as "inverted commas" working from home.

Alongside the bank holidays which we have in the UK it should be possible to engineer something over 30 long weekends and short weeks. However, that could be pretty disruptive to an organisation - in a team of 3, as I am, it would be unmanageable with my colleagues needing to take leave too. If I were my manager and I attempted that, I'd tell me 'no'.

I have toyed with the idea of a condensed week (4 days of 9.5(ish)) hours, but a similar problem occurs.

I often do take 3 and 4 day weekends which then become long enough to travel to places like Vienna, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Thank you Mr Ryanair from Luton airport.

PP

"These days, everybody seems to take the whole of Friday as "inverted commas" working from home."

Being of the local government persuasion myself, I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about

We are encouraged - nay just plain *told* - to take at least 3 consecutive weeks to guarantee complete rest and switching off. However, this may or may not be based on any scientific research.

I certainly wish all weekends had 3 days. As well as the 3 weeks off!

With my overtime account, and the public holidays coming up, I could probably do that this year!

We get an extra day this year - on the 31 October the whole of Germany gets a day to celebrate 500 years of the Reformation. Even the Catholics!

Following my last post, I had a little google to see if there was anything about research into length of holidays.

I found this totally useless link

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/7946668/Short-breaks-make-people-happier-than-one-long-holiday-psychologists-claim.html

Firstly, it claims that people who take several shorter holidays rather than one long one are "happier". How you scientifically evaluate "happiness" and whether this is the aim of making people have longer or shorter breaks, is all very vague. I am sure employers are less bothered about their employees' "happiness" than their ability to work more productively on their return from their holiday.

The second half of the article presents the opposite view - Tim Harford (him of "More of Less") says that surely lots of short breaks means more hassle, more organising, more travelling and thus more stress.

This, of course, is assuming that you are going to go away every time you take time off work.

Personally, I enjoy just being able to stay in and potter about the house on a long weekend, which surely helps me to start back on the Tuesday refreshed and raring to go!

So, to answer the original question, and to use the information in the article, I would suspect that for most people, 2 weeks' holiday and a few short breaks strewn over the year, not all involving stressful travelling, would probably be the best compromise.

In contrast, in the jobs I've had we are actively discouraged from taking more than 2 consecutive weeks of leave...

I once contemplated using leave to shorten the working week and save on commuting, as in one of my jobs I could have done two four-day condensed weeks followed by two four-day weeks taking two days of leave each month, but it happened to be in local government, so I worked at home for two days a month and that helped.

I tend to take short breaks throughout the year myself, as I like to go away on a holiday but also like home comforts as well. I try to fit in at least one whole week off, though, as I do find it is good to have a longer period to switch off from work mode, but I wouldn't go away from home for the whole time as I need a holiday to rest after a holiday!

"So, to answer the original question, and to use the information in the article, I would suspect that for most people, 2 weeks' holiday and a few short breaks strewn over the year, not all involving stressful travelling, would probably be the best compromise."

I'm not certain about this but think I'm right.

I work in the NHS and have several (in fact loads) of colleagues who hail from such places as India, Mauritius etc, and managers are (quite reasonably) happy, where they can, to allow people to carry leave over from one year to another occasionally in order to allow for a long trip back home.

The down side of that for them of course, is having a year with very little leave in it in preparation.

PP.

Pffft - if I took more than 2 weeks off at a time I'd need retrained when I got back.

Several years ago I opted to work "4-10s", Monday thru Thursday ten hour days, giving me three day weekends permanently. I like it. I don't necessarily do much more traveling on weekends, but when I do it's nice not to have to take leave to do it. I normalized to three day weekends fairly quickly and the novelty wore off. Most weekends are rather dull and routine.

I should be enjoying more leave time and more discretionary funds as I've just turned 50 and as of next month I'll have worked at this job for 20 years. But this last contract change has cost me dearly. My pay was cut by over 10%, the last contract combined sick time and vacation time and capped them at about 3½ weeks after 10 years of service, and of course my medical insurance rates and deductibles have climbed sharply. This contract also stopped letting us carry excess leave time over from one year to the next. I don't know when I'll be able to take another long trip like I did in 2014 when I went to the Manchester meet and Edinburgh.

I took a week off last month to pet/house sit for my parents as they went on a Caribbean cruise. Stay-cations just seem like wasting time unless you work on some project or do something special. I didn't even get around to seeing a few films like I thought about doing. (I think there was basically nothing worth going to the cinema that week.)

Why is it that Americans have far less time off work than the rest of the industrialised world? We had similar in the 19th Century (Marley & Scrooge), but things moved on.

The demonization and fall of our trade unions. We've moved into a new era of robber-barons.

Baronin your opinion do you think that the average American is aware that their holiday entitlement is poorer than most other countries? I only ask, because there is a perception (rightly or wrongly) that Americans tend to be more insular and parochial than other countries, with little interest or knowledge of what goes on elsewhere in the world. Or do you think that the majority are aware that they get a raw deal in terms of leisure time?

Speaking for some Canadians, I can tell you that many are not aware of the differences. Only through conversing with people from this site have I become aware of the very real differences.

I won't get an extra day for 31st October because afaik in Hessen it's a holiday anyway and 1st November isn't

Neither are here . . .

Oh, definitely the greater majority of working class Americans are clueless to how they're getting shafted. And a lot of this is willful ignorance. There has been a real war against trade unions here since at least the Reagan administration. Unions are constantly blamed while corporations and their robber-baron CEOs are worshiped.

Most working class Americans believe the propaganda that socialized medicine is evil, tax cuts for the rich will improve the economy and magically eliminate deficits, and welfare recipients are all drugged up lazy sponges.

There's the pervasive idea of "American Exceptionalism" which basically translates as the US is the greatest nation ever and any suggestions otherwise is revisionist history (or currently "fake news").

Those memes of "The world according to 'murkins" are funny because they're true.

http://img05.deviantart.net/e720/i/2013/255/2/2/how_americans_see_the_world_by_kevex777-d6m2l8o.jpg