It’s already a week into February and I still don’t have my vacations planned.

If I don’t get off my butt, I’ll fall into the same trap I landed in last year. I managed to give back to “The Man” five unused vacation days. It’s bad enough that I don’t get six or eight weeks off every year — but it’s certainly foolish to not use up all four weeks of vacation I EARN every year.

Losing vacation time is stupid. You’re supposed to have the time off to recoup, recover and renew. It’s why you work in the first place.

You need this time. Think of those long days that stretched into the night, the plethora of conference calls and all of those Saturdays spent crunching numbers. This is all expected of you, and it’s expected you’re smart enough to use your vacation time.

Take a few minutes, that’s all the time it takes.  You’ll need a few things and you can plan your vacation time without any worries or issues.

First you should have an idea of what you want to do with your vacation time or at least know when you want to be off. This will let you know how to break up your vacation time. Want to go to Australia? Take two weeks. Visiting if your Mom? Maybe you only want to take two days (unless she’s in Australia and then all bets are off).

Knowing what it takes (besides money) to get to where you want to go is a good idea.  St. Petersburg, Russia, requires obtaining a visa. St. Petersburg Florida does not. Visas, vaccinations or a valid passport could be required. Just do a little investigating to see if you need to do anything before you book your plans. You don’t want to be returning home on day one of your vacation.

Once you figure out what you want and the possible requirements, then grab all personal and work schedules. Want to go to Costa Rica the second week of April? Oh, wait, the second week of April is the annual review of your divisional budget with the CFO. What a better way to unwind after a week with the machete wielding CFO than a Costa Rica vacation the third week of April.

If you have your schedules with you while you plan, you won’t be scrambling to reschedule (often at your own expense). Plus, when you put in for your vacation, you can point out to management that you worked around what they scheduled. This infers (along with the comment that you already purchased a vacation package) that they’d better not change their schedules and expect you to change yours at the last minute.

That’s all it takes. So, take 30 minutes, sit down and plan your vacation. You don’t have to plan every detail, just pencil in when you’re going to go. If you don’t do it now, you’ll be sitting there in December wondering why you can’t roll over that week you never got around to taking.  Time flies — and so should you.