I honestly don't understand how a group of people who so often invoke the phrase "the plural of anecdote is not data" can be voting this comment up. It's prattle -- pure American Exceptionalism and John Wayne Work Ethic -- designed to make people feel guilty for not working like dogs.
So, your grandparents worked very hard. Well, so did mine -- on the other side of the management/labor divide. My grandfather did long days at an auto plant for most of his life. He lost his hearing from the factory noise, slipped discs in his back from lifting, and started his days at 4AM for the entire time I knew him. Thankfully for his family, his union felt that vacation time was not an option.
So by all means, work as hard as you like. Avoid vacations if you want to, dedicate your life to grabbing the brass ring by whatever means you feel appropriate. But that's your choice. When people no longer have the luxury to choose not to live like that, we've gone far off the rails.
And not for nothing: I'll wager that your grandparents didn't work hard with the intention that their grandchildren would have to spend their lives working for a company that never gave them time off.
"And not for nothing: I'll wager that your grandparents didn't work hard with the intention that their grandchildren would have to spend their lives working for a company that never gave them time off."
Very interesting. I had never thought of this... that the impetus for the former generations was, perhaps, to make it so that their children didn't have to work their asses off. But, instead, we took their dedication to work as some kind of example of how an 'honest day's work is done' and felt a moral obligation to do the same, and we pass this lesson on to our children.
"Vacation may be the thing for students and corporate drones..."
If your attitude towards people who work for a paycheck is that they're "drones," then you have the wrong attitude to be starting a business of your own.
If you succeed, you'll need employees--hopefully lots of them. They aren't "drones," they're the people who are going to make your company succeed or fail.
You need to learn to respect the concept of work/life balance if you're going to be able to earn the respect and loyalty of your employees. It sounds like you could stand to have a little balance in your own life.
Sure, that was true of my grandparents also, but they didn't think it was a good thing; they worked constantly with no breaks because they were poor and had no choice. They actively hoped that an outcome of their hard work would be that they could launch their kids into a better life, not the same life that they had had. And it worked; my dad went to college and got a better-paying job with better working conditions, such as more reasonable working hours and a few weeks vacation per year.
> Three day weekends with an occasional week or two off between gigs always seemed like enough.
For a long time, as an employee, I used to do that. I usually took a couple of weeks off over Christmas and New Year, but rarely took more than a day or two consecutively at other times of year.
I had no idea what I was missing.
Since going freelance and starting my own businesses, I've taken week-plus holidays several times, sometimes going abroad (which I'd done very rarely for much of my adult life) and sometimes just getting away from the job to spend time with friends or simply retreating away from life in the fast lane for a while.
I found it remarkably easy to leave e-mail and phone contact behind, completely, for a week or more. Although I enjoy keeping up with news and participating in discussions on sites like HN, I'm very aware now of what a time sink this sort of social news site can be and how much more interesting stuff I could do without really missing out on anything. Most important of all, I have enjoyed new places and shared new experiences with my loved ones that I would never have done as an employee who used up most of his vacation days on long weekends.
If you're a workaholic and what drives you is business, so that it's almost a fun hobby the way managing investments is for some people, then go ahead and knock yourself out. But I hope anyone who does that chooses to do so in the knowledge of what the alternatives are, and not just because they have so little experience of life that they don't even understand how much more they could do.
Perhaps it isn't you that needs a vacation; it's your family. Or perhaps you've been enjoying your work a litte too much and your wife is lonely because you've been gone 60+ hours a week. Many people hit a plateau where building their nest egg begins to take precedence over the wants and needs of their own family. Wouldn't that contradict the purpose of building a nest egg in the first place?
You should relish on life experiences and memories. Don't let time pass you by. I take vacation because I enjoy it. I enjoy spending time with my family more than work.
It's not the input (= work) that counts, but the output (results) that you get.
A year has 52 weeks. If I take 5 weeks of vacation per year that's 10% of the time that I have. So I will be 10% less productive (if I ignore increased productivity after vacations).
For me that's a reasonable trade-off. I don't live to work, but I work to live.
In addition, I suggest that you look at the per capita GDP of different countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomin...). If hard work would increase your output, you would expect the US to be at the top of the list. Instead, for example at the IMF 2010 data Sweden (which gives you 5 weeks of holiday per year) is listed above the US.
"If hard work would increase your output, you would expect the US to be at the top of the list."
Ceteris paribus, but ceteris are not paribus. Additionally, nominal GDP per capita is a pretty horrible way of measuring worker output; are Norwegians nearly twice as productive as Swedes, or do they live next to a gigantic source of oil?
If you look at the per capita GDP by purchasing power parity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP...) on the other hand, only oil rich nations, Singapore, and Luxembourg are higher than the US. While Sweden ranks 13th, 14th, and 17th on the different lists.
There's more to life than business, and no matter how hard we work or how few vacation days we take, we still die the same, so why not enjoy ourselves a bit?
It may be different if you're building a business for yourself, but if you're building something for your family you better make sure you still have some time to spend with them!
I'm from the UK, but my wife and I live in the US. I get barely enough time to spend with her, let alone the rest of my family, who I get to see once every year if I'm lucky.
Perhaps in a few years' time all my hard work will have paid off, and I'll be wealthy enough to live across two continents. Realistically, it's dangerous to depend on this; you never know what's going to happen.
You can get away with taking a vacation while running a startup. There's an opportunity cost to it, but there's an opportunity cost to everything you do. You just need to do a bit of planning and check in from time to time.
Hell, running a company makes it easier to take a vacation, as long as you've got people you can rely on in your absence. I've done it a few times, and the world's never ended. My cofounder's done the same.
And with that, I'm off to go pack - I'm leaving tonight for five weeks in southwest France. (If you live in Bordeaux, Arcachon, St. Emilion, Bergerac, Périgueux, Sarlat, or Biarritz and would like to drink some wine with me, send me an email!)
If you're building a business for yourself and your family, but have very little time to actually enjoy time with your family, then what's the point of building the business in the first place?
From Europe here: My close friend is running his construction(!) business successfully and taking 5-6 week vacations every year plus easter and other holidays.
When most of the country sort of closes down there is not much to do for any businesses. Except relax and enjoy life.
I do respect your work ethic, but it really depends on what you do as to wether this is good advice or not.
As a creative type, I really wish I could just sit down and "Get idea's" and then create them. But the reality is that it just doesn't work that way.
If you are taking in the same sights, doing the same routine day in day out, you simply won't be as creative as a person who adds as much variety in their life as possible.
Even if you are not the creative type, please see also my other post here entitled "Sharpen the Saw."
With respect to your father, spending 4 hours in the car each day during your family vacation time together seems like a poor use of time. It sounds like he deserved a break.
There have been an enormous increase in people productivity since the days of your grandfather and father, due to computers, cell phones, way better batteries, better machines, better chemicals, etc. What your father could accomplish in a year, you can do in a month. That's the reason competitive economies, like those in Scandinavia, can give employes 25-30 or more days of vacation per year. The payment received during vacation is higher than the regular.
The problem in US is that the majority of profits from the increased productivity went to the CEOs and the major share owners. Taxes paid by rich people have been decreasing constantly in the last 50 years.
Every study I've seen shows that people taking 2 weeks or so vacation are more productive than people who take no vacation.
