I've used two strategies over the years, one pre-habitcal and one post-.
My pre-habitcal strategy was just being a little laxer about the definition of compliance on a vacation N-day, or as I put it on the home page, "My policy is: vacation days are like non-S days, with extra tolerance for screw ups." And it worked reasonably well.
But since the habitcal that doesn't quite seem satisfactory. I want my greens to be greens, my yellows yellows, and reds reds -- not something ambiguous. And I especially want "stats mode" to be meaningful.
So what I do now is clearly divide vacation days into N and S days. If it's a vacation of about a week, I try for 50/50 (weekdays). I usually manage 3/5 weekdays, and I don't think I've gone below 2/5 since I started doing this (quantitative habitcal analysis pending
![Smile :-)](./images/smilies/icon_smile.gif)
Although I generally advise deciding up front whether a day is an N or S days, vacations can be surprising. All of a sudden some great culinary opportunity can present itself that you might not get to enjoy again for ages. Or some great family moment. So I'll let myself take any vacation day when there's something sufficiently tempting as an S-day, but if there's not, I'd much rather put down "green" than "yellow" on the habitcal, so that gives me sufficient incentive to resist lesser temptations. It lets me enjoy what's really worth enjoying, and ignore the rest. Again, stats mode is particularly helpful in this regard -- every day over two a month starts not to look so good.
Whatever happens, I never give myself "red" for vacation days, because
I think that would just be demoralizing and ineffective.
If you don't use the habitcal, one thing to do would be just try to keep about half your vacation week days N-days. Just keep a simple tally. And enjoy the rest with a good conscience. I've actually found I don't even like going more than 3-4 straight S-days.
I use the same 50/50 N/S vacation day policy for "shovelglove." (I put in in quotations because I don't usually have access to a sledgehammer on vacation and just do 14 minutes of pushups, squats, etc. instead).
Looking forward to reading about your strategies, experiences, and concerns!
Reinhard