So many professionals and business owners leave their vacation time unused each year. They say the stress is not worth the time off. They say next year will slow down, it’ll be better so I can take vacation.
Time and time again, I’ve seen how the pattern of not taking time off gets stuck on repeat unless you have a proactive strategy to make it happen.
Achieving guilt-free vacation time is one of the key priorities for my coaching clients.
To explore how I can help you solve problems faster, take control of your stress, and design a life you love – at home and at work – check out my coaching options by clicking here.
Transcript of Video: Rolling Your PTO: The Dangers and Solutions to Unused Vacation Days
[00:00:00] Allison Graham:
[00:00:00] I’m curious. How many vacation days are you rolling into next year? It is shocking how many people don’t actually take their full PTO. And so in this video, I’m going to share with you three critical steps that you can to take that will ensure that you don’t lose your vacation days for next year. Uh, welcome.
[00:00:18] I’m Allison Graham and I’m here to inspire you to solve problems faster, take control of your stress and design a life that you love.
[00:00:27] I get it. Taking time off can actually be more stressful than it is worth. And I hear this when I start working with my clients. They’re like, if I take a vacation, then there’s a huge lead up that’s totally stressful before the vacation. When I get back, there’s this huge pile of work that’s waiting for me.
[00:00:43] I feel guilty putting my work responsibilities either on my team or on my colleagues while I’m away. Or I just find like when I’m away, I can’t relax. So I’m checking in all the time with the office. Enough, right? You deserve the time off [00:01:00] and you know, you deserve it before HR calls and says, Hey, by the way, you’ve got extra time off to take.
[00:01:05] Right. And you know, if you work for yourself, like I do, then there’s no HR department calling. Uh, Your soul, maybe it’s calling, right? And saying like, you need time off because even though nobody’s paying for your vacation, it will pay you dividends. Your energy, your problem solving perspective, your quality of life, your quality of connection and your quality of work requires that you have the opportunity to step back from the day to day grind.
[00:01:37] And so, what can you do? Well, here you go.
[00:01:42] first book the time now, seriously, if you haven’t taken enough vacation time in the last year, I want you to just pause this video, go get your calendar and block off the equivalent of time in the early part of 2025. And while you’re at it book off all of 2025 [00:02:00] too, because if you don’t book it, if you don’t say this is when I’m going to take time off, I guarantee you something else will fill your calendar.
[00:02:10] There’s no good time to take a vacation and so you’ve got to book it or it’s never going to happen.
[00:02:16] second, decide what you’d actually like to do on a vacation. And maybe it’s going to an island and relaxing on a beach somewhere is up your alley or maybe it isn’t, or maybe it’s feasible. Maybe it isn’t, but what do you actually want to do? Because often we end up with time off and that’s the easy part.
[00:02:35] Filling that time off in a way that actually makes you feel rejuvenated is the harder part. I remember once one of my clients, the goal was to give her every Friday off in the summer. And when we first achieved that, I noticed that she started working more and more on Fridays. What’s going on? She goes, well, I kind of didn’t have anything to do.
[00:02:56] And so I had all this time off and the family’s away and you know, at [00:03:00] school and I, you know, my husband’s working, she said, and I just kind of got bored and I’m like, Oh no, no, no, no, no. That’s, that’s the problem. Because as you get more successful, you might get further and further away from actually remembering what lit you up before you were a parent and a spouse and, uh, you know, a workaholic in her case.
[00:03:21] But that’s a no judgment over here. Like I love working with people who love their work. And so, uh, Instead, what I had her do was, and I’m going to encourage you to do this, is to write out a bliss list. What are all the things I can do when I have time off that will recharge me and make me feel sort of energized?
[00:03:41] maybe some days you wanna just spend on the couch doing a Netflix marathon and totally numbing out to the world.
[00:03:48] But if you’ve ever done that, and I’m sure most of us have, I know I have. It’s not that refreshing. Like, you don’t feel, like, lit up at the end of the day. Make a list now of what you wish you had time [00:04:00] to do so that when you get the time back in your schedule and you can take that vacation time, you actually do something that you want to do and you don’t just live on default.
[00:04:10] This is part of the designing the life that you love that I help my clients do. And the third thing I’m going to challenge you to do is to put systems in place so that you can have vacations that are free from workplace angst before, during, and after you go away. by the way, I am so fascinated by how productive people can be when there is a clock ticking that I got to go on vacation and I’m going to hit the airplane.
[00:04:35] Yeah. You’re not going to hit an airplane. I’m going to step on the airplane and I’m going to turn off my computer for work. Everything leading up to that is like, incredible. Why can’t we use some of that energy and that strategy of productivity and focused and only doing things that really matter when there isn’t this big vacation countdown.[00:05:00]
[00:05:00] You can design your life in a way that you can achieve that regularly, that flow state. That will give you the opportunity to stress less. While achieving more and be happier while you’re doing it. I have seen it happen over and over again for my clients and so I know that it is possible and it’s my hope for you too.
[00:05:21] if you are too burned out to actually think of taking days off, then I encourage you to watch the next video on how to feel less burned out with this twist on the 333 principle. And if you are sick and tired of living like life is a blur and not getting that vacation time, I encourage you to check out my coaching options by clicking the link that is around this video.
[00:05:45] And in the meantime, my hope for you is that you will stress less. While you achieve more and be happier while you’re doing it.
