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I get a high hourly rate but works at irregular interval. (.NET certified trainer)
So most of my time is free. I also have my economies in front of me so I can refuse work if I don't want to work.
In fact, I forgot what a vacation is, because this is a concept that only people with external time constraint seems to have. (It can be the boss, the business, customers, or social pressure like wife, kids and friends)
Except to go out during summer with friend, I don't have any of those constraint. (On the short term, sometimes, but never on middle and long term)
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When I had a family to support holidays were a very precious luxury, we would try and get 2 weeks away in a year but not always. The time off == lost income is certainly a driving force when the finance is tight but if you get to the point where there is more incoming than expenditure (this happens when the kids leave home) make the time to take all the breaks you can.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity
RAH
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You take your laptop with you.
Easy Peasy!
cheers
Chris Maunder
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righhhhhtttttt 
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Based on the replies, I have concluded that there are a number of people I would love to interview and understand the business decisions they have made. Some of us became employees and then got a wife / family, and have been trying to bust free financially ever since. The best thing I have ever done is to start my own business.
I appreciate the feedback except for Chris'. I took my laptop on vacation once. I have never eaten so many <****> sandwiches I my life. I can still see my FIL looking at me with concern, telling me I needed to really go on vacation and put the laptop away. I still recall paying for all of them to be at the beach. I think there is something wrong there, but I'm not sure.....  never did figure out how he said that with a straight face.
So, how many of you do working vacations?
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Have a life 
Seriously, I do not force myself to a either-solution. I did in the beginning (home office for the last 25 odd years) but it didn't really worked and I got grumpy  Nowadays, if a idea / thought for solving some work related problem raises it's head I'll deal with it. Often by writing it down on, preferable, a post-it note (my memory haven't gotten any worse but I do not trust it as much these days  ) and returns to vacation.
rgds /Jonas
ps during the dark hours of the moon-less nights the Masked Dark Programer returns ...
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The short answer is that I don't get away as often as I should.
The main thing is keeping on top of any queries that come in. That imposes a constraint in that you can't go anywhere "off the grid" - a reasonable data connection is essential (and that's a pain, quite frankly).
When I'm away I always have an ultrabook (with a 3G card), and a 7" tablet with me. The former has a full set of dev environments on it and is fully equipped to build our products (but not sign them - the code signing cert stays back at base on the CI server). We use TrueCrypt to keep the code etc. secure.
That means that I can investigate bug reports and put together a patch for a customer if need be.
In practice, I can't think of a time recently when I've had to do that. Mostly it's just email (but that in itself can be quite a drag - at a conference last year I had a chatty dev sending me several tech queries a day!).
As a case in point in the last week while I was at the ACCU Conference[^] I wrote about half a dozen emails (a mix of sales/reseller enquiries and tech ones), but never fired up a compiler once.
Anna ![Rose | [Rose]](https://codeproject.freetls.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/rose.gif)
Tech Blog | Visual Lint
"Why would anyone prefer to wield a weapon that takes both hands at once, when they could use a lighter (and obviously superior) weapon that allows you to wield multiple ones at a time, and thus supports multi-paradigm carnage?"
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Hey Charlie - I think that's like the "Holy Grail" question for contractors or business owners. I've had the same question myself for years and have some thoughts that may help but no perfect answers - part of the reason for that is that it really depends on the individuals circumstances (we don't all have multiple businesses with millions sitting in the bank and multiple employees that can handle things when we step out of the picture for years at a time!).
1. Goals. How much money is "enough"? If you have goals, as some of the other people have responded indicate that they do, then it's easier to define when it's ok to take a break because you've "earned it" and you won't associate the "another hour = another $" as much (or at least that's the idea). If you're really ambitious that can make this difficult because you're always striving to get in just a few more hours. The other issue that many of us have dealt with personally (at least when you first start out) is the concern that if you don't do this work now then the work opportunity may not exist tomorrow - that's lost income, right? The truth is that may in fact be the case and you'll have to make a judgement call on that based on the other factors - do you have other work lined up in the coming months, how marketable are your skills, how big is the opportunity, etc.
2. Productivity. Some people "need" vacation more than others and, as others have commented, that a vacation will make you more productive in the long run. It can be hard to be convinced when you have a s**tload of work staring at you that the fastest way to get through it is to take a week off! I really think that comes down to the person as some people need a break more than others and some need different types of breaks - a night out playing pool once/week vs. a vacation away for a week. Only you can answer how your productivity is affected by taking a break - just don't ignore the fact that it can be affected and don't ignore that your "break" choices impact your family.
3. Community decision. As you have already commented, bringing work with you everywhere will not make your wife a fan! I've been there too, more than once! Unfortunately if you're the only person that can deal with a particular part (or all) of your business then it may be unavoidable to bring a phone/tablet/laptop and be accessible in case of emergency, but do your best to separate the emergency situations from planning to "get a bit of work done at night while at the resort" or "pulling out your laptop at the beach or poolside while the kids are having a swim". Ultimately if you're in a family you are one member of the decision making team (unless you happen to run a dictatorship) so be sure to involve your family in your goals and vacation plans. The more they know the better they can support you and help you to help yourself ("Dad, you said we could go camping this weekend after this project was done") - some times we need those little reminders to stop us from being workaholics.
I can also tell you that having been involved in a number of entrepreneur groups that this is a common theme across any self-employed discipline - and I've heard very successful entrepreneurs stake the importance of making that time (and that includes both from those individuals who have families and personal lives AND those who had "lost" their families because of their focus on work) and also people that sincerely believe that being an entrepreneur means you don't have a personal/family life (which really sounds sad, especially when you consider that many of us are doing this, at least in part, for our families).
Sorry for the long response. As I said at the beginning, there is no perfect answer. My suggestion - get input from everyone here, talk to your family, and figure out what works well for your situation. *edit - for the record, I can't remember my last real vacation so feel free to ignore all of my advice! *
Cheers
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I was self employed for about 6 years. I usually took a few weeks a year of official "vacation". I would plan to do no work, but would still respond to some calls and emails sometimes for emergency fixes, sometimes to just say I was on vacation and I would get to it the following week. Most of my time off would come in the variety of a few days here a few days there kind of thing. That plus the ability to take a few hours off in the middle of the day to go for a hike or whatever kept me sane.
It was only later that I realize what a horrible job I was doing at taking vacations. My first vacation after I started as a full time employee again was a real eye-opener. I literally didn't think about work in any serious way from when I left early on Friday until I was walking back in the building 10 days later. I felt so refreshed.
It really made me value vacation time much more highly, and I'm much more willing to trade salary and other benefits to gain more vacation time. I highly recommend you do your absolute best to fully shut down work for a few extended stretches (1 week minimum) a year.
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Budget appropriately. Know how much you are likely to make in a given week (or however much time you wnat to be able to take off), and then know how much the vacation will cost you, and then save that amount. Put it into its own savings or money market account, or even just a jar in your house.
Then when you have enough and aren't in the midst of a project that mustgetdonenow, you take your vacation. A portion of that amount will be giving you 'paid vacation' and the rest will pay for your vacation.
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I was there as well...
Then a wise mentor asked me what ONE activity do I do that actually generates income...
Surprisingly, it was NOT working, it was Invoicing!
I was SO BUSY, I was not invoicing all of my clients on time... I needed to hear that.
So, I accept 4 things now:
1) Not all hours will be billable
2) If I am not rested/efficient it costs me and my clients
3) This is an ultra-marathon, not a sprint
4) The best way to survive is to have other employees who are billing their time while you are on vacation.
So, over the last few years, I have worked hard to provide other resources to my clients on a regular basis.
This has allowed me to take a vacation for 2 weeks to Rome, and come home with checks in the mail. (now, I did
schedule the two weeks so I had plenty of time to get my invoicing done on time for the month).
Just this year, I realized I have not been to "training" or conferences I used to go to. So I have scheduled 2(luckily some can be done online). I will travel for 2 weeks of more training before the end of the year.
I feel I have hit my groove, but it did NOT happen over night. Luckily I have a buddy who likes to sell my services as well, so he does the sales portion I am not good at, and he gets a nice chunk, but it keeps me busy and focused on doing the things I like to do.
Finally, I usually schedule "big questions" for when I return from vacation, so I know I have a reason to turn it all off... Plans to expand, hire a new developer, ways to increase revenues, reviewing what is and is not working. It makes it easier to clear your head and get away when you KNOW you will NEED a clear head...
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I'm sorry, I'm American, what is this "vacation" you speak of?
Psychosis at 10
Film at 11
Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it.
Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I hear you man....
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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That is the great thing about contracting: you are not restricted to 25 or 30 days: you can take as many or as few as you like. You charge extra so that you can pay yourself on the days when you aren't working.
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The best thing I ever did for managing vacations was getting involved (and eventually married) to an amazing woman who works a regular job with 6 weeks of vacation a year. Left to my own devices, I would rather work than travel. Being the only programmer in the company for the last 8 years has gotten easier as products and processes have matured which means that the chances are slim that something will come up that my business partner can't handle when the wife drags me away for vacation. (money spending trip)
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
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I'm reading and have read all of these... interesting read. Just so you know, I understand the mechanics of paying forward for a vacation . The problem is getting over the dang hump of looking at it as "down time". First rule of business is to avoid leaving money on the table. Well, not the first rule, but you catch my drift.
It's strictly a mental thing, assuming you have the mechanics figured out. Just wish the corp tax laws weren't so damn stupid in the US.
Thanks for all the feedback, quite insightful.
Charlie Gilley
<italic>You're going to tell me what I want to know, or I'm going to beat you to death in your own house.
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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I just tried this static code analyser and pretty impressed. Straight away it shows me an obvious bug in my code (with the warning message in plain english):
"It is odd that the body of 'GetY2' function is fully equivalent to the body of 'GetX2' function. bitmapchar.h 37:"
int GetX2() const
{
return m_x + m_width;
}
int GetY2() const
{
return m_x + m_width;
}
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It sounds interesting, but...
"Please write us to get a price for PVS-Studio. Please specify interesting license type.
PVS-Studio (for 1-9 developers team, first year license)
License Renewal (also one year): 80% of current base price"
Which means even they think the price is too high!
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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I had similiar thoughts, they should just tell us the price
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In October 2013 the price was 5,250 euro for standard edition (1-9 users) and 9,000 euro for site licence. If you have a problem with the high prices they are more than willing to provide some sort of discount (as they did for us based on the Rand/Euro exchange rate being so high at the time).
We use PVS-Studio all the time and it has found many potential bugs in our code.
Cheers,
Brett
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ed welch wrote: I just tried this static code analyser and pretty impressed
..lots of spam starts like that these days
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Police investigate Rocklin mountain lion sighting reports[^]
All we need is a few bears, an earthquake, and a tsunami (quite likely given the 4.1 in LA recently) and life will be complete!
Have to say it makes a change compared to England, where the most dangerous thing is a drunk Scotsman....
"The whole idea that carbon dioxide is the main cause of the recent global warming is based on a guess that was proved false by empirical evidence during the 1990s." climate-models-go-cold
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Munchies_Matt wrote: compared to England, where the most dangerous thing is a drunk Scotsman
Clearly, a man who has never visited Luton... 
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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OriginalGriff wrote: Clearly, a man who has never visited Luton...
How about Yorkshire? Does that count as a battle zone? 
The report of my death was an exaggeration - Mark Twain
Simply Elegant Designs JimmyRopes Designs
I'm on-line therefore I am.
JimmyRopes
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Probably. I can't understand a word they say oop thar. 
Those who fail to learn history are doomed to repeat it. --- George Santayana (December 16, 1863 – September 26, 1952)
Those who fail to clear history are doomed to explain it. --- OriginalGriff (February 24, 1959 – ∞)
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