The Summer of Three-Day Weekends

This summer I opted to take my accrued 35 days of vacation one Monday at a time. When I kicked around the idea of taking all of the days at once, I put up a post on LinkedIn, asking people where they’d go if they had 35 days of vacation. The suggestions rolled in: Hong Kong, Tuscany, a cabin in the woods. All sounded wonderful, but I knew it was unrealistic to think that I could take all 35 days consecutively so instead I came up with the idea to take a series of three-day weekends — an entire summer of three-day weekends.

I’ll start by saying that this is possibly the smartest thing I have ever thought in my entire life. When people ask me later in life, what what your best idea ever, I’m going to say it was “The Summer of Three-Day Weekends.”

It is vacation season in the office, and everyone’s taking their time away. When colleagues ask me where I’m going on vacation, I tell them I’m not going anywhere. At first, they questioned my idea and told me all about where they would go with that much time off. Honestly, my mind does wander a little too when I think about the possibility of taking an entire month off, sort of like a sabbatical, at some far-flung island retreat or a mountain home in the woods. I imagine languishing through the days, overeating and overspending; doing things that will, of course, create meaningful and lasting memories. Memories that I will look back on later and cherish as special vacation days because that’s what people do when they recall summer vacations.

However, the office where I work includes two semi-remote workers. I am the only full-time in-office employee as the other two split their time in the office: two days a week in and three days a week out. I also have the experience of knowing that taking two weeks off means I get one week of interruptions, text messages, and phone calls with questions about this, that, or the other. It’s nice that they have a hard time functioning without me. Except when you’re on vacation, you don’t really want to be so needed. This is yet another reason why I decided that I would take every Monday off, May through August. I get three-day weekends, one after the other, and it is so delicious. I go to be on Sunday evening and I relish the fact that I still have one more day of weekend! It’s the sheer thrill of having a three-day weekend; you know what that feels like. Except I get it week after week after week.

Another great part of this plan is that I get very few interruptions. I may get a text message or two, and I’ll check my email occasionally throughout the weekend, the three-day weekend. When those interruptions occur, as sporadic as they may be, it doesn’t seem so invasive. The person on the other end of that request knows they don’t have to wait one or two or three weeks for me to get back to the office to respond; I’ll be in on Tuesday. It takes the edge off of the urgency of whatever is needed of me at that particular moment.

And then of course there’s the other side of it: four-day work weeks. I get as much accomplished in the four days as I do in the five days. It’s remarkable. My days may be an hour longer sometimes, but not all the time. I get most of everything done without the benefit of the fifth day of work. Maybe I’m just more efficient because I know I have less days in the week to get things accomplished. Maybe I’m not burnt out and exhausted, because I’m coming in fresh off a three-day weekend, every week.

I’ve had to explain my vacation pattern to my colleagues in the office a couple of times. They are skeptical and do question my thinking. Let me assure you: a series of 12 three-day weekends in a row are absolutely a vacation. I’m not going out of town, I’m not taking on some major house repair, or writing some epic novel. I am spending a great deal of time in my studio making art work. I’m also enjoying time with my husband, an art teacher who is off for the summer.

All you traditional vacation takers, with your one, two, or (if you’re really lucky) three weeks off: I challenge you to take your vacation time in smaller bites. Take five vacation days over the course of five weeks. Take Mondays off, or take the Fridays off instead. It may not work for you; you may need to take your respite in longer chunks of time. But you won’t know unless you try it. And believe me, I love to travel, I love new experiences, and I love making lasting memories. It’s just that this summer will be “The Summer of Three-Day Weekends.” I’m sure there will be other times when I will want take chunks of days all lined up together to be out of the office. But not anytime soon.