Better Days

Most people don’t like working and would rather spend that time socializing, cultivating a hobby or sleeping (unless you took the red pill). When it comes to booking holidays, many choose to book around weekends and statutory holidays in order to maximize their effectiveness. For example, booking off the Monday after a long weekend, thus stretching the weekend to four days. Some strategies work very well to optimize your time off, while others do not. Let’s find out how to make your vacation feel as long as possible.

First, the obvious statutory conjunction. When a statutory holiday falls near your planned vacation time it is best to bump your vacation up against the statutory holiday – adding that extra day helps a lot. If you are planning on taking four or more days off, you can use what is known as the stat sandwich. This method involves planting your vacation days in the same week as the holiday in order to achieve a full week of total vacation. Combined with the surrounding weekends, we can get nine days off for the price of four. That’s a vacation efficiency rating of 225 per cent!

But what about the question of which days of the week to book off? Some people enjoy several short breaks instead of one or two larger holidays. Often they will book one or two days off at a time so they can stretch out their vacation over several weeks or months. These folks are pretty smart, usually incorporating tactics such as the statutory conjunction, but there is often confusion about which days to choose. So which days of the week are the best days to take off? Here is their ranking in order of worst to best:

Tuesday: A foolish choice. Your weekend stopped on Sunday, then you worked one day and now you get a break? What a waste.

Wednesday: Often attractive, as it appears to break the week in half, but we run into the same problem as with Tuesday. The holidayee may not feel as though they need the day off after only two days of work. This also produces a strange effect where one work week morphs into two smaller, more deadly weeks.

Thursday: Usually underestimated due to its lexographical and locational similarity to Tuesday. You may feel as though Thursday would be a premature and inadequate taste of the weekend, causing Friday to drag on in eternity, but in fact, taking Thursday off serves to accelerate the approach of the weekend. Upon completing the Wednesday shift, an unexpected gift is bestowed, and then the only day remaining is Friday, which usually goes by quickly anyway.

Friday: There was a large debate regarding the supremacy of Friday as the ultimate day to book off of work. This debate was resolved with the election of U.S. President Barack Obama. Friday is a great day to book off work, but its key weakness lies in the sheer delight experienced by empolyees as their Friday shift approaches completion. As the final day of the work week, Friday seems to slide right past us because our attention is so focused on the impending weekend.

Monday: The champagne of days. Truly, if you’re going to book off only one day, make it a Monday. Both Monday and Friday increase the length of the weekend, but unlike Friday, Monday is a work day worthy of dread. A bonus feature of booking off Monday is that it cuts into the week following your vacation, not preceding it. And, as we all know, you eat your dessert after your dinner, not before.

Have an efficient and optimized holiday.

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