To Increase Productivity, Take More Time Off

Andrei Codrescu’s marvelous novel Wakefield features a protagonist who travels the country as a de-motivational speaker, hired to depress workers so they will be less creative and just get their jobs done. It’s a hilarious conceit, but if your business depends on healthy, innovative, engaged workers, forget the outside speakers and consider paying coworkers to take longer and more frequent vacations.

Americans average less than half the vacation days taken by citizens of Japan, Korea, Canada, United Kingdom, Brazil, Germany, France and Italy. According to Joe Robinson’s Work to Live website, 127 nations have minimum paid-leave laws protecting vacations. Even China, he says, offers three weeks off, apparently as an economic stimulus to get people traveling and spending. Based on their economic growth, the plan appears to be working.

During my years at Kinko’s, I worked very long hours, but I also took frequent, long vacations.  And when I returned, the first order of business was planning my next vacation. The goal was not to avoid work, but to improve my productivity. People do not learn new things and think new thoughts by doing the same things every day for months on end. My vacation schedule also defined firm deadlines for important projects, bringing a better sense of priorities to my time in the office.

I consider three weeks a minimum for anyone in a leadership position, and I’ll tell you why. If you go away for one week, you come back to an extra weeks’ worth of work. If you’re gone for two weeks, you come back to an extra two weeks’ worth of work. But if you’re gone for three weeks, everyone figures out how to get along without you and the work gets properly delegated and executed. It’s better for you, better for the business, and better for the development of coworkers.

Business people who exercise know they are more likely to have a brainstorm while running than while running a meeting. As the story goes, Isaac Newton was only sitting under the apple tree because his mother told him that instead of helping her on the farm, he should take some time for himself. Unfortunately, many managers understand efficiency far better than they understand effectiveness; they buy people’s time rather than investing in their talent.

This efficiency obsession permeates our culture. Americans are such workaholics that we even turn our vacations into Type-A stress-fests, over-scheduling ourselves and avoiding unstructured time. On a recent visit to the Art Institute of Chicago, a colleague watched visitors flitting through the galleries as if on roller skates. “Cumulatively, I think they looked at their watches and cell phones longer than they looked at any of the paintings. They had somewhere else to be.”

This is a shame, because wandering provides exceptional opportunities for personal growth and education. My friend insists that two days spent meandering through the Art Institute is the educational and inspirational equivalent of a college semester. “When you take time to shuffle around the many exhibits, browse the bookstore, people-watch, eavesdrop on the docents and generally just look around, interesting stuff finds you. For example, Georges Seurat’s famous A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte appeals to art lovers for its colors, shapes and techniques. However, it got me thinking about economics because it depicts a time when leisure was so new to the middle classes that they dressed up in their best clothes just to go to the park. That got me wondering what other museum pieces might tell me about the economics of their time and place, leading to new insights for my work in investing.”

Real vacations afford adequate time for rejuvenation. Joe Robinson advocates legislation to expand and protect paid vacation time, but I think employers will embrace such policies voluntarily when they recognize the bottom line benefits, such as lower overtime costs, lower absenteeism, lower health care costs, better cross-training (and therefore better customer service), and higher individual worker productivity. It seems counter-intuitive in our work-obsessed society, but longer vacations are good for the employer, the coworker, and the economy.