This week's Fantastic Friday article is all about balancing work vacations and school schedules. In last week's article, you were advised to put all your work and family obligations into your calendar. If you did this, you would have marked off when your children have time off from school and when your spouse is available for vacationing.
photo credit: kevin dooley via photopin ccA reality of life for working women is that have to plan a great deal of our lives around our children's school schedules. While it is true you can take a vacation whenever you choose and arrange for your children to miss school, it may be desirable to schedule family vacations when your children are on school breaks so as to interfere with their education as little as possible. One good thing about school children is that their vacation and school breaks occur at the same time every year. This makes it easier to schedule around them.
There are numerous studies that show employees return to work refreshed and more productive after vacation time. It is important to find time to step away from work for vacation and then return to work. If you know your vacation time
well in advance, you will be able to arrange your work schedule, customer appointments and fill in coverage in a way that allows your time away to cause as few disruptions as possible. Most employers prefer to know as early as possible about time off employees will be taking. Since you receive your children's school calendar each September, are able to plan the next nine months without reservation. If you are a valued member of your work team, knowing when you will be on vacation will help your fellow employees to schedule important tasks that only you can handle before or after your vacation period.
Another thing to keep in mind is that some people for a variety of reasons must be in touch with work during vacations. If this is the case for you, set down some ground rules. Have set hours that the office can call you to talk about work related issues and adhere to this schedule strictly. During those times, arrange for the family to be resting in the hotel room between activities. If there is work that you have to do, make an appointment with your laptop and do that work in the evenings after the kids have gone to bed. These types of plans work best when you are honest with your family and let them know, while you are not at the office, you still have to get some things done for work, but you will not let it ruin the family vacation. Then stick with the times you set aside for work.Keep in mind, at the end of your days, are you going to regret that you didn't spend more time at work or that you didn't spend more time with your family.
Last week, we talked about using our planning skills to balance our work and home obligations. This week, we used those planning skills to figure out when to take vacations and to show that we can tell our employers about our vacation needs up to nine months in advance. Planning is a useful tool and it leads to success in all areas of life. So, the question for you this Fantastic Friday is how do you balance work vacations and school schedules?
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