How do I 'justify' taking unpaid vacation?

For me the question is entirely reversed. I have to justify to myself giving up my time for a client or employer. The natural state is for me to fart around, I wasn't put on this planet to commute to a cube.

I do it because it allows me to achieve my goals - things like having fun experiences, donating to charity, helping out family and friends, being a useful human.

If I did it 24/7 then those goals would fade into irrelevance because I'd have no time to pursue any of them.

I had wrote a longer post, but I've edited it, because I think really this is the key take-away. Do you work to live, or live to work?

Wow dude, if you've only got one client that you can't lose and they are slave driving you then you are worse off than employed as everyone says.

Sounds like the client sucks if you can't slow down or stop or control anything, dump them or start saying No. If you are going to lose out to the competition by saying No, then it sounds like you aren't providing any real value, you are just cheap labour that is replaceable and are getting paid poorly and incorrectly for it.

The point of being self employed is so you can do whatever you want and own your life. If you get good clients then you can get paid more, they can't afford to lose you or easily switch because of the value you provide and are willing to work with someone who has reasonable human needs. You can take projects without hard fixed deadlines or with vacation time booked in and get paid on the project, not by the hour or even day. If you provide real value, they'll want you back for the next thing.

I agree. It sounds very much like an employment relationship - the fact that you can't/don't feel able to choose your own projects is a big red flag here.

If this were a standard situation within Europe/the EU, I'm confident you would be entitled to claim the rights of employment, including e.g. paid holiday. It's possible that this right would extend to a Chinese employer, although I'm not sure.

If you are genuinely self-employed, you should also have the freedom to employ other people to cover your work.

If you are working for a single client and have such micro management that your work is subdivided into tiny tasks and feel that rejecting it would be an issue, then you are not really self employed, you are a remote worker...

Normally the typical advice when someone who is self employed has too much work is for them to raise their rates, but this works much better if you have more than one client since that does mean that you still have some clients to fall back on otherwise...

For your specific situation, I'm not sure what to say, apart from advising you to try to get out of this situation by 1) finding other better paying clients and 2) slowly reducing the tasks you do for your current client to the more value added tasks.

+1

Also note that without some vacation you are slowly drained which leads to less productivity which leads to no contract renewal. Burnout is also a real risk.

I would use the vacation to perhaps find a 2nd customer even if for a few billable hours/month, just to start another business relationship...

Don't forget you work to live, you don't live to work.

Even if you love your work, you don't love it every moment of the day.

Sure, if you're close to a breakthrough invention to cure cancer, or have to race the competition to the first patent, and this urgency is credible and has a likely and credible high-payout in the end, you can crunch for a finite amount of time. But just churning out one project after the other with no end in sight, skipping holidays, makes absolutely no sense.

I'd take a holiday as soon as you can, talk to your company, and also look beyond your company. There's plenty of us making a decent wage without working like a 18th century factory worker that is denied a Christmas holiday. Working for Chinese wages in a country with European costs also makes little sense to me. There are surely other companies available to work for.

> Don't forget you work to live, you don't live to work.

A variation that I first heard from Lori Edwards: "The people you really work for are waiting for you at home."

You don't have to live to work even if there is no one at home.

This subject probably requires it's own HN post but let me just put this here since it's on my mind.

There is a hierarchy of ways that you can provide value to a client. I call it the TKPV ladder. Each letter represents what you provide in return for compensation.

T stands for time. At this level, your client pays you by the hour, day, week, or even minute. Your value is measured by the time you put in. This is the lowest rung of the ladder. While you have some control over your allocation of time (as opposed to with an actual job) this is not really much different in principle than working at Walmart or Starbucks. You are a wage slave.

The next step up on the ladder is K, which stands for knowledge. If you can promote your relationship with your clients to this rung, your value becomes the knowledge, experience and ability you bring to the table, which is measured by its value to the company, not by the number of minutes you've slaved at a task.

The next rung on the ladder is P, which stands for product. At this stage, you transition from selling knowledge and talent to selling a specific product or service that wraps up the knowledge and talent that you and your team have acquired into something you can sell to a customer, hopefully without too much customization. And then sell to another customer, and so on. If you reach this stage, you have productized your value in such a way that you can produce and sell it at scale.

The final rung in the ladder is V, for vision. At this level, you take your vision for future products and services to people who are in a position to provide you capital and support to expand and scale your reach to its maximum potential.

In my Consulting business, when I deal with clients, I try to keep this hierarchy, TKPV in mind, with the goal of moving up the ladder at every opportunity.

That's a really interesting insight thank you.

I am just putting some thoughts together for what we ought to be doing for the big Enterprise SEO client we mostly work for.

I hope you wont mind if I borrow this

Please borrow it. In fact, steal it.

You overthink it. Just take the goddamn break because quite frankly you need it! If I was you I’d never take less than at least two weeks holidays at once. Personally I’ve taken in total more than 3 months holiday in my last financial year and I’ve achieved more than when I was only having 5 weeks a year vacation many years ago. Don’t worry about competition. Presuming you’re doing a highly skilled job from home nobody will be able to replace you in a cost effective way if you take a few weeks off for vacation. Just the process of finding someone, the time cost of other people having to deal with finding a substitute and the onboarding, etc. all cost more than just wait for you to come back. Also they already know you and if they are happy with your output then there’s absolutely no way that you have to fear anything.

Useful heuristic: if you can't afford the risk of a vacation and the time to find another gig, you are self enslaved, and not self employed.

No, I'm pretty sure that in this case you're just trusting in others for security and trusting that they won't overwork you. Unless you're doing work for the Church, I'd say it might be unwise to conflate your client with God.

I’d say even if you are working for the Church. Account for it as pro-bono by all means, but it’s still work commissioned by human beings, no matter how divinely-inspired they might be.

Huh? Could you explain with more detail what you mean?

FWIW I'm a Christian and I can't make out what he's getting at either.

Got you, thanks.

>there was a 82 x 10^120 chance that anyone could fulfill them all //

That's a very specific figure, I'm curious where it comes from, or is it just a hyperbolic way of saying "infinitesimal"?

Back to your original:

>In that case, it would be a virtue.

I think that it can be virtuous to trust when one is in the direst situation to the providence of God (or maybe the providence of those God inspires?) but once one has their daily needs I don't think God intends for us to dispense with basic economies and - for example - not pay in to a pension, or save for the future.

> That's a very specific figure, I'm curious where it comes from

I think it might have been from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQObnw9A6A8&list=PLHr17i6CU5... but either way, it comes from the number of prophesies and then some statistical math.

> I think that it can be virtuous to trust when one is in the direst situation to the providence of God (or maybe the providence of those God inspires?) but once one has their daily needs I don't think God intends for us to dispense with basic economies and - for example - not pay in to a pension, or save for the future.

God wants people to give back to him according to their faith.

"The point is this: he who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work." (2 Corinthians 9 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+Corinthians+9...)

To those who want to go beyond regular virtue, Jesus says: "If you would be perfect, go and sell all that you have, give to the poor, and come, follow me." (Luke 18:18-22 - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+18%3A18-22...)

It all depends on a person's faith. The more trust they have in God, the more God is pleased, and God refuses to let anyone down who trusts in him, so he provides everything they need in life. People like St. Francis of Assisi and St. Benedict gave up all material possessions and trusted solely in God's Divine Providence, and God not only provided for their daily needs, but also testified to their love for him by granting many miracles to them (which were never selfishly asked, but always for the sake of helping neighbor).

Here's a story about God's Divine Providence to St. Benedict: https://archive.org/details/DialoguesGregoryTheGreatPopeSt.5...

Similarly, St. Anthony of Egypt (one of my favorite saints ever), who gave away everything taking Jesus's words literally, it's an amazing story and relatively short: http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/2811.htm

For me, God would not be pleased for me to abandon my way of life and sell all that I have and give to the poor, because I'm the sole provider for a wife and 6 children. But these were single men who were not responsible for anyone, so they made themselves responsible for everyone, praying and doing penance for the sake of all those who won't pray and do penance for themselves. They sold all their worldly goods and purchased spiritual goods, they bought the spiritual field for the sake of the spiritual pearl buried in the midst of it.

When I ran a business, I was afraid of taking a vacation, so I kept working really hard without a break. One day I woke up and couldn't think straight. I had worked myself stupid. So instead of taking a vacation, I simply called in sick for a week and wasn't really in a position to enjoy it. So if you're anything like me, in a sense you're going to take time off regardless. What you need to drive is take a risk and hope everything will be OK. Try taking 2 days off and seeing what happens. Everything will probably be fine, and if your company flies apart the second you step away, just know that was probably gonna happen anyway.

I had that experience when I had a 1 person company (I had a software product but it did not make enough to hire people; it did make enough for me to live comfortably); I never dared to take off. When I finally did because it was really needed, it almost destroyed the company and I decided to sell it because this was not the intention.

I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to start another business unless I knew I'd be able to take time off. That means either providing a valuable enough service that I'd have customers when I got back or that I'd have people to keep the machine running while I was away. It's hard to get to the point where you can do that!

I have been self employed for 20 years. I used to put my work first, and in 2012 I did a serious burnout and nearly died (common virus can make a LOT of damage when you are exhausted).

So I changed my view of life. Now I consider myself on vacation all the time, and work comes second. I work less and get roughly the same amount of money because I plan projects better and select only the ones that pays well.

But my kids are first. For example, it's 11AM here and I am still playing with my daughter and her Xmas duplo set she got. But after dinner I'll work for 4h and be very productive because I am well rested and know exactly what I will do.

The main thing is planning to not be overwhelmed. It takes time and also you should not fear saying no or "it will take six month" to a customer. They are also happier because I am more consistent and regular in my advancements.

Be well, and take care of yourself.

I still have trouble with giving time estimates that seem realistic to me when I feel the customer will think it should be done in a shorter amount of time.

I hate this, because I turn out to take longer and have to push the dealine back on short notice, which makes me feel awful. Especially when I knew from the beginning that my estimate was very tight.

I have a similar problem. I’ve found some of it can be fixed by overquoting and then leaving money on the table. You quote twice what you think you’ll need, then make them pay what it actually took. If they push back on the quote, shave a fourth of it max. If they still don’t budge, walk away - if a customer is bent on short-changing you, there will be worse issues down the line. After a couple of iterations of “I quoted 2x but it took 1.5x so here’s an invoice just for that” they should have no problem trusting your quotes as “worst case” scenarios and letting you free to manage deadlines as it suits you. In the event of it actually taking 2x, just make sure you overdeliver in some way - be it in the documentation for the delay, at worst.

The thing is, it’s ok to haggle and say No to a customer. A lot of them expect your first quote will take advantage of them. There will be no hard feelings after the negotiation, it’s just business.

Obviously then you have to manage yourself. That’s a bit harder, and very much down to individual preferences and inclinations. Daily meditation in the morning helped me in that area, but everyone is different.

Yeah, I had the same problem, but you can explain why it takes so long to the customer. Another tactic I use often is to cut of features, or simplify them in ways that are subtle to the customer but change a lot in term of development time. For example, let's say you need to display search results of some sort, instead of displaying all the results with pagination, you can just display the 50 highest results. The customer might not notice, and you just cut yourself some development time. Of course this is just an example, but you get the idea.

Justifying taking time is easy, doing it is a little harder for a lot of people. But justifying it, if you don't take time for yourself you will implode (fail) and when you do you will lose your client(s) and all your income. It is seriously that simple.

While I know it is that simple to justify, all of us that have been consultants where our money is dependent on our time understand where you are coming from, so you aren't alone in this. Based on your description though it seems like you are scared of your client taking work away, if true, this is a horrible client to have. The best way to solve this issue is to find a new client. I am a little confused though as you also call them a partner company so I am unclear what your relationship is, but either way it sounds unhealthy and you need to change it. Either you need to set new expectations and new boundaries or you need to find a new client and get away from them.

I always set boundaries at the beginning of an engagement, and I would always set the expectation that if a contract was 3 months or longer that a developer would take around 2 weeks of vacation. So even if the dev didn't take time during that contract and did it after or before, the expectation was there so everyone was on the same page. Plus good clients don't want you to burn out because then they lose out on your services too. When you have a client that doesn't respect you and you've allowed them to dominate you it will never end well. You have to set clear boundaries and expectations early on, doing it later is possible but it isn't easy.

Basically, if you don't fix this soon and take a little time, you will fail by burning out which is much harder to overcome at that point, and can take much longer to recover as well. So best to address this now and not wait.

I'm quite sure they would not replace me just for one vacation per year, though personally I would also prefer to work less overal and in that case I'm not so sure they would not find rather someone else, because this job requires extreme consistency in results.

And besides quality I guess one of the main reasons why they stick with me for years (because they sure could find someone cheaper) is very fast response time and basically zero downtime.

All in all I didn't complain about job, I just complained that my workload is more than I would prefer and can't really do much about it. But mostly I was looking for recommendation what would be the best way to take vacation under these circumstances, if I should just take vacation and work during vacation, hoping to find few free hours in morning or afternoon or sacrify completely lost income (though I think that would make me uncomfortable knowing I am doing nothing throwing money I could earn out of window and someone else is earning them possibly building position for himself to replace me).

Increase your hourly rate until the demand for hours decreases to the level you prefer.

That works if the OP has many different customers. But the easiest way to raise prices is with new customers.

If OP has only one customer they do not work for themselves, they work for that customer and have a job - regardless of what they like to tell themselves.

That's nonsense. I know plenty of 20K / month consultants that work as contractors, one project for one customer, a couple of months later for another. The shortage of qualified people at that level is such that they have the jobs for the picking. They are self employed in every way that matters, to the tax office, their customers and their bookkeepers.

But in those cases they do have multiple customers, serially. That is still regular market dipped into where pricing can be tweaked.

Working as a contractor for a single company for very long periods of time (say 1+ years), is a very different type of relationship, even if the mechanics are similar. I suspect that's the type of relationship that was being referred to.

It's a different relationship, but it is still not the same as being employed. The people here equating the two are either clueless or disingenuous, I'd hope for the former but I fear the latter.

It's easy to piss on those that manage their one person business over multiple years from the comfort of an actual employed situation, and it is equally easy to piss on them from the position of the manager or early hire of a business with a lot of employees and a lot of customers.

But the amount of responsibility that typically lands on the shoulders of these one man operations tends to be disproportional and they deal with those responsibilities in a much better way than many of those large companies. The main reason that they stay in business in the first place is because they tend to be good at what they do, and reputation damage being what it is in that world the first job you fuck up may well be your last.

I'm not sure this logic follows. I generally take on one client at a time, sometimes for many months (even years, on occasion). I've ended gigs that I was unhappy with, and I've stayed on contracts for extended periods of time.

I still make my own hours and have relative freedom to operate how I please, despite only having one client at a time.

Your mother-in-law says you keep erratic hours and job hop a lot.

Your resume says you own and operate a consulting business.

Six of one, half-a-dozen of the other

Sounds like the same thing I do at jobs....

That’s about like people who are so proud to be a “business owner” because they bought a franchise and now work 60 hours+ a week and never take time off. They aren’t “running a business”, They bought a job.

Not if they have profit / distributions.

> I don't won't to refuse any projects to miss on money

> I would be perfectly fine even with half money I earn

Wut? Either you're willing to work more hours and receive more money, or you're willing to work less hours and receive less money. They're literally mutually exclusive.

You can't genuinely want both things.

if I start rejecting projects they will find someone else and I will have nothing to reject in the end, not even that half I would be fine with. it doesn't work that easily that I can just limit how much work I take without repercussions (it already happened in past, but not because of rejecting reason)

and yes, there is also the money reasoning why not to reject something if it's still within my limits, although I rejected rarely some tasks, but it's like <5 out of maybe 200-300 I get per month

> if I start rejecting projects they will find someone else

... Which you're basing on:

> it doesn't work that easily that I can just limit how much work I take without repercussions (it already happened in past, but not because of rejecting reason)

If it's true that they won't accept anything less than 12 hour days with zero down time, then you're better off working elsewhere.

it's not 12 hours day, on bad day (usually monday and friday) is 8-10 hours of actual work, on good days (which are very rare recently) 3-4 hours, but usually I work between 5-7 hours (with some gaps between) plus I have free weekends most of the time and maybe 10 days of Chinese holidays spread over year

If I worked as full time employee here in Europe, I would spend 9-10 hours in work each day including commuting but with lot of spare time just sitting/resting in work plus 5 weeks of paid vacation, but also my salary would be like 20-30% of what I have as self employed working from home, nobody can offer me what I have in this company, so I wanna bank on this while it's available, because I'm sure it won't last forever (though I had this attitude already years ago and I'm still doing it with more work)

my main (if not only) issue is lack of continous vacation, I was just asking in OP how to justify taking it under these circumstances, if you are willing to spend let's say 4000USD on short vacation and another 2-3000USD on lost income, if I didn't work in hotel room. I just can't justify completely stop working even without worrying to be replaced

4000 USD is a fairly lavish holiday.

I consider myself fairly well off and that's roughly what I'd spend in two months.

I've had a few vacations turn into work trips. It's really easy (at least for me) to work a lot in the morning and spend the late afternoon at the beach, park, or museum.

If all you need is a laptop and internet then there's nothing stopping you from an entire month at a vacation destination.

But is it really a vacation, if you MUST work in the hotel room often? (not just rarely)

Losing pay isn't so important at all, if you have enough for your family, and your pay shouldn't depend on taking merely 20-30 days vacation an year .. with your skills you can find very well paid european remote jobs with much better vacation

Friend, if they expect to be working 12 hour days, 365 a year that's the best thing that could happen. You have talent, you can find other work, work that's not killing your life, your relationships with your wife and children. Get out now.

Maybe you can inform them well in advance (say, 2 months in advance) that you will be on vacation so they can plan ahead? If they like you and your works, they certainly have no problem rescheduling stuff so you can take your vacation, no?

200-300 tasks is a lot. Do you work only for one company or for a bunch of companies. Can you drop one of the companies and keep all the others?

one company, multiple projects (but basically two main ones and under them subprojects), each has many tasks (some of them smaller doable in minutes, some of them bigger taking hours)

I could drop one project I really don't like, because how unprofessional they are, so I started to get quite bitchy about it and also refused recently task and voiced my objections about their workflow/mismanagement. I would not mind at all if they would assign it to someone else, but honestly this project doesn't take that significant portion of time, maybe hour a day and pays better than the other one per minute, like now I just finished 60USD task in 20mins

If you are accepting / rejecting work in 20 min units of work, you might want to rethink things a bit. The micromanagement level at play here would make any work/life balance out of whack.

Maybe the question to ask is — can I start bidding on work in units of 1-2 week increments? You’d still have multiple smaller tasks in that block. But that would start to give you more flexibility in how to organize you days.

in 95% of my income I'm not paid per hour/time (rarely I have tasks paid per hour, which I usually don't like), but per size of the task, I just use time/money cost for easier understanding after calculation, if I average my income my minimum hourly rate would be between 60-200USD depending on how efficient I am with certain task

and the tasks are assigned by currently 2nd biggest company in their field (over 100bln USD revenue last year), you seriously don't expect me telling them how should their multiple teams manage their tasks and workflow? I'm not doing any bidding, I have my rate and I can decide if I accept or reject task they assign to me (and pretty much all of them go first to me, then to my official backup).

working per hour/time would be worse for me, because I'm much more efficient than other people so some average 1-2 week income would be much lower than what I can get per size. and getting some fixed size for 1-2 weeks would be still pointless because all these smaller tasks have usually deadline within 24hrs, many less than 12hrs. they have vry strict daily deadlines and you can do nothing about it

anyway I was not complaining about my job as most of the commenters picked up, I am happy with with how much I earn for work I do, I would just prefer to have less work, but that's not really an option unless I would subcontract someone working for me, but anyway I would need to check up on their work and it would bring lot of paperwork. if I would start refusing tasks regularly to lower workload they will just find someone who will not refuse, because they need consistent results.

so I was basically asking in my OP how to manage vacation with such schedule/circumstances and how people without fixed monthly income justify taking days off and letting the money go

Think hiring people might not be as hard as you think. I've done consulting for a company in Shanghai and there was minimal paperwork as we both were professional about it, set expectations clearly, and documented them. There would be some checking but you've got some margin with 60-200USD hourly rate, if you can start to outsource some work then checking it will become less of a burden. With deadlines, having someone in a different timezone may help. You can also outsource some of the paperwork. You might want to consider this regardless of time off, because you sound like you could probably make more by taking a break and also looking for more clients. If you have someone you trust then you won't worry so much about losing the existing client.

It may be difficult to switch just now, but for the future consider billing weekly. Obligatory patio11 link: https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...

I'm wondering if your job is worthwhile, the rule I always go for is that self-employed one should make twice as much per hour / or per month if working full time as one would if employed by a company.

If you are making twice as much you should be able to afford a vacation and just do it. If your family is anything like mine they would like to go on a vacation as well.

Increase your prices.

You may be afraid to lose business, and that could be the case if the partner company is your only source of clients.

I did freelance consulting for a long time, and each time I found myself overwhelmed like you I increased my prices. I did lose some clients, but overall I made more money for doing less work.

Am in similar situation. Working remote as a contractor, nearly full time. However I do observe my local holidays and take at least a whole unpaid month off per year.

There are two very good reasons for it - one is family and the other is my health. No amount of money can replace not being around my wife and child. The other reason is health (both physical and mental). I am of no use to anyone if I am burned out and half crazy. If your current partner company doesn't understand that - GTFO.

Self-employed, but it's not in software.

Like you, I have way too much to do and not enough time to do it all. But one of the great tools in our arsenals is flexibility. It makes it possible to radically adjust the when, where, what, and how aspects of our jobs:

when - I do most of my work in the afternoon and evening. I may also do a few hours on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. I rarely work in the morning, and schedule all calls to take place late.

where - I usually work at home, but also work outside (libraries, in my car while waiting for kids' activities to end, etc.). I do take my laptop with me on vacation just to keep things going. A few times I have done longer stints abroad, working FT but enjoying life in another country.

what - I choose what to work on, new projects to launch, and what can languish. If something is not generating revenue or is too troublesome, I will make adjustments accordingly (killing project, hiring a contractor to maintain it).

how - No one tells me how to get the work done. That's my call. Increasingly, I have been outsourcing things I don't like to do or don't do so well.

One other thing: I have set up a monthly payroll, so I get paid regardless of how much or how little I do. That is, there is no "unpaid vacation."

I have operated my own business for 7 years.

You don't sound self employed, you sound employed by them.

What's the point of working so much if you don't take the time to actually enjoy your life?

How does your family tolerate you basically spending no time with them? I can't imagine that you have a healthy relationship with them.

For me, it's the opposite: my time is precious, and if I'm going to be spending it in the service of others, I need to be well-compensated for it. And even then, there are limits.

The purpose of work is to live the best life you can live in pursuit of your values. Money is necessary component of work, but not the essential factor.

> I'm not gonna lose only vacation expenses

By framing spending on recreation as a "loss", you have foreclosed your mind from even thinking about it rationally. Recreation is essential to man's life.

> also similar amount in lost income for every day I would not work.

Again, you are framing the issue in terms of loss. Money you don't make while on vacation is not lost income--it is not a thing you have that you lose. It is merely unearned.

> unpaid vacation

There really is no such thing as "paid vacation". Vacations are never paid for anyone. Some people have "holiday pay" or "PTO" or "vacation hours" or "sick hours", but those are all misnamed--they are earned from working and are factored into total compensation (all benefits are paid for by the employee's wages; greater benefits mean lesser wages).

> As I see it now I will give family vacation, meaning wife and children can enjoy different place (beach) and I will work from hotel room, possibly finding few free hours in early morning or late afternoon and free weekend.

Why do you think you are unworthy of vacation, that it is something to only be given to others? And, in practical terms, your plan will almost certainly lead to resentment and regret between you, your spouse, and your children. You will be thinking of the experience as a loss and sacrifice, your partner will feel lonely (the purpose of vacation is to recreation and rejuvenation of oneself and one's relationships), and you will miss out on shared unusual experiences with your kids.

The first question isn't how to justify a vacation or what kind of vacation to take. The first question is: Why do you want to take a vacation?

This sounds like you only have one customer. That's your problem. If you had six or seven customers, you would have leverage to negotiate with them.

As the situation stands, you would be happy with less money for less time -- that means that you might be in a position to hire an employee to do some of the work for you.

I think you missed that I'm already at limits of my workload with one customer (no time for more) who pays me more than competition (even per task they could find cheaper people), actually my local competition without this contact I have because of my past relations charge basically half of what I charge and yes I am considering subcontracting someone, seem like best solution, but I'm still avoiding it until I can manage it by myself

I did quite few things:

1. Getting better at work. I do things x10 faster and better than when I started. That releases me of spending more hour. 2. Be pragmatic with the solutions. 3. I don't accept any job that is not well defined. 4. I do allocate time for me: gym, bycicle, etc.

Seems like an important detail to number one is to properly manage the way that gets presented to the client.

In the OPs case it sounds like if they do that, they won’t realize a benefit. Their client will expand the work to fill the available time.

I do the same to myself often. It’s hard to avoid.

I have done something similar, more hours but in less time. . You are already noticing a problem, that's good.

Taking your holidays shouldn't be a problem. Talk to the partner company and mention the European holidays.

There are different ways to do this, the honest one is telling upfront.

If your partner is not understanding, mention that you are going to work only from a co-working space, because of trouble working from home.

The co-working space isn't open on European holidays.

If all else fails, change endeavours. You are in Europe, not China. Plenty of IT-jobs here who respect work/family.

Ps. The elephant in the room is not finding work, it's for your partner company to find trustworthy/skillful contractors.

> So how would you justify taking unpaid vacation with family under such circumstances?

Frankly, the circumstances are irrelevant. There isn't a set of circumstances that makes you not a human being with a right to leisure time, and a need for leisure time.

You don't need to justify this. It's an inherent human right and need, and everyone knows that. If they claim some other reasoning outweighs that, they're screwing you over, and there isn't a reason for you to tolerate it. You have the power to not tolerate it. They can't make you work, so don't. There are other clients.

Ultimately, this isn't actually a choice you have. What you're doing isn't sustainable. If you don't take time for yourself, you'll eventually have a burnout and that time will be taken for you, in a much more unpleasant way. It's better to acknowledge facts and take the time for yourself before it's taken for you.

Besides, why are you working anyway? I don't work for the sake of work, I work so I can do what I love doing. It sounds like you'd like to spend more time with your family. If your work doesn't support that, find work that does.

Frankly, I've worked with people like this, and even after I set proper boundaries, I'm constantly having to defend them, which I don't want to do. I've found it a lot more pleasant to work with clients who don't have boundary issues.

If you only look at life as a balance sheet, you will only experience life that way.

When I contracted, I set my rates and anticipated annual hours to include (1) holidays (2) vacations (3) a bit of sick time (4) un-paid work (like finding new clients). I could always make more by working more, but I didn't want to.

------

It's really no different that a salaried job. I could take "vacation" from a salary job to work on a side-gig, but I don't because that would be exhausting.

Budget for money, budget for time off, take the time off.

that's rational approach except I am not paid per hour, but per job, not that it would change things much, it all comes down to that if I know there are money to earn I don't value my spare time at as much as I earn, especially considering that this won't last longterm and when it's gone I will have plenty of time doing nothing (read working as regular employee for peanuts) with no option to earn that much

in regular job as employee with fixed salary you have paid vacation by law and it's standard for almost all employees, same as it's standard that almost none of them work during vacation and local bank holidays and most of their salaries are shit

in recent months I earn on average 5 times more than is average income in my city (even more if you consider median), so you can see my conundrum why I don't want to give up on such income even during vacation. if I would be earning as much as majority of people, even majority of people in my field (still more than double) I would care about lost income during vacation much less than I care in current situation

Automate your job and where you can’t, just delegate work remotely to workers in other countries such as Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine (you can find cheaper good quality labor in this countries). Remove all the references so you don’t get undercut and forward all the finished work as if you did it yourself. You’d still have to “approve” the work but that’d take way much less of yout time.

my job requires knowledge of local language/market, so I can use only people from my home country

but this still doesnt make much sense: if you just count your spare time normally, you can still get 4-4.5x (and probably more) than your usual pay .. honestly 4x or 5x matters less than normal time

I've also had similar contract once .. and I think

1) it's absolutely not so unique: you can probably find many other well paid remote jobs 2) don't focus too much on the banking thing

08-18 with small breaks is not unhealthy, if you have made sure that it doesn't slowly turn into 08 to 00 hours.

You have been working for years and you deserve a vacation. But first answer what is making you chase the money. If you already have 3 years of expenses/outgoing backup (without inflation) - you are worrying too much. It might last 2 years with expenses, any inflation and leisure trips. If you do not have 6 months of backup, evaluate your financial situation, set a target date for a vacation and take a break anyways.

Second, why do you think you could be potentially replaced by competition? Is it that easy to replace you? It may not be as easy as you think. Try hiring for at least 80% of your capacity and you will know. If it is easier to replace you then the better option is to become a company/agency, hire people and expand your agency's capacity.

Third, if you take all projects that come your way - either your rates are too cheap and you need to increase - or you are exceptionally talented. In the latter case, demand for you will not die if you take a short vacation and/or defer some work. Don't plan for a long vacation like month or two, because it turns out to be boring and less fulfilling beyond 10-14 days.

With family, you might want to try out vacations at nonseasonal times if that works with the family.

When you do not take a vacation - you and your family will end up frustrated with any amount of money you bring in via that work. You might end up hating work at some point and will end up with some stupid decision.

I've been on the other side of this managing a team of developers that was a mix of employees and contractors. The contractors would coordinate with the project manager to schedule their vacations.

Obviously, you need to discuss this with your employer (I call them 'employer' because they are your only gig and full-time). I doubt they expect you to never take any time off, so it shouldn't come as a surprise and they should respond rationally if you approach it with no immediate deadline. For example: "sometime in the next few months I'd like to schedule some time off and I want to work with you to ensure minimal disruption to the business." If you are willing and it would be helpful to them, you can offer to check email once a day while on vacation for any urgent blocking issues.

You mentioned being worried about competition usurping your work if you take time off. It's unclear if you're doing work where there are instant drop-in identical replacements to you readily available. Since you're wall-to-wall busy with work it seems that your role is important and you mentioned that you'd take less money for less work, so you're pretty well-paid. I guess I don't understand because roles for which there are instant drop-in identical replacements aren't usually high earning. If what you do is so mission-critical that they'll have to replace you with another contractor if you're unavailable for a scheduled-in-advance week, then it's likely you have job-specific knowledge and skills that can't be easily replaced by a new contractor in a week. Which is why they should be willing to work with you to coordinate your vacation and minimize disruption.

There are alternative employment opportunities out there. You shouldn’t have negotiate for time with your family - this is a form of bullying by your employer.

not with income I have, I earn 5 times my city average income and 2-3 times my position average income and I'm prety sure this won't last for much more years, so I want to bank on it

if I would earn much less I would value mu spare time much more than I value it now currently with this opportunity, I don't know anyone who bought their first apartment without mortgage and help of parents in my age and is planning to buy second soon in same conditions

I'm sure you did think about this, but are you calculating this 2-3x fairly? I notice many people don't. Especially (disgruntled) EU people who think they make very little compared to their US counterparts in tech. In the EU, when you are comparing your self employed income with published averages for your city for that position, you are usually comparing apples and pears. When self employed, you need to deduct a lot of things that are automatic when you are not self employed; depending on which country in the EU you live in, we are talking about pension plan payments, healthcare (insurance or similar which is mandatory in most EU countries in one way or another), vacation money (which is what this is about), insurance for when you (for some reason) cannot work anymore or get fired (which I don't think is in all countries, but at least here that's included), sick day money, 13th month (mandatory in some countries), bonus, social benefits, car (if needed), computer, phone, home office, travel cost (if needed), taxes, etc. I have been making 'US type' money being self employed for decades, but if you count all of the above, I don't make that much more than what a similar position does in my EU country with a regular job (comparing just the numbers, I make 2.5x more and that 2.5x is almost exactly all the above costs). Still I like it better, so I will never stop. Sure you can choose to ignore many of these factors, but then it's simply not a fair comparison.

Also, and again, i'm sure you thought about this, but for the other people reading this; in the EU in many (all?) countries, if you only have one client as a self employed person, the state could see you as an ad-hoc employee of that company, which means that that company actually has to pay for all kinds of taxes/social security (depends on the country) and if they don't, you will have to. This would 'ok', but in many countries I have worked in as freelancer or self-employed, paying these like that are far higher than if you manage it all yourself.

The OP is self employed.

Not sure if it was intentional but GP reframes the situation -- one would not tolerate that behavior from employer, why tolerate it from one's self?

I think one of the hardest things about small businesses is saying no, finding good clients, and firing bad clients...but if you don't you're going to pay for it with time or etc.

I worked for a company that just before I joined turned down what looked like a jackpot. Millions, possibly tens of millions in revenue.

The reason, it was too much work for their team, and despite the bags of money being offered it wasn't clear the company offering the business were quite on the ball, something was off and they said no.

Another small company said yes. They got a windfall of cash, grew...6 months in and they were a big success story...and in 18 months had lost their past customers because they knew they had been put on the back burner, their own people quit because they were working like you are, and the client was endlessly upset because of unrealistic expectations and a real power imbalance in terms of setting goals and realistic planning was out the window.

In short if you can't take vacation...you need better client(s).

I've been self-employed for 20 years, and the idea that I would need to justify vacation is honestly a bit foreign. I assume that I'm going to be taking vacations, and if a customer has specific availability needs, then that's just something that needs to be negotiated. If a potential customer would only accept continuous work with no vacation, I imagine I'd pass. It's important to bill at a rate high enough that unpaid vacation is covered, and bench time between gigs is covered. (After all, employers budget for their employees to take vacation, so you should also budget similarly.)

When you bill by the hour, it's natural to start thinking of everything in terms of lost time and money. And I actually think it's reasonable to think about the cost of taking time off, but if this is keeping you from taking vacation and spending time with your family, then you are severely undervaluing your time off. You can think of time off as a sort of cost, but it's a very small cost compared to the value it provides.

I don't have experience with working for customers in different cultures and across international borders, so I'm afraid I don't have any insight there. If I was in that situation, I think it would still come down to negotiating the vacation that I need.

I also don't have much experience with juggling several (>2) projects at once. In my experience, people seldom need just a little software engineering. If someone wants some software engineering, they usually want a LOT of it and don't want to compete for your time with other projects. So I tend to work on one project at a time, take vacations, and when the gig comes to an end, I look forward to taking a few months off to study.

So I suppose if I was in your shoes, I would insist on vacation, and not worry too much if I lost a customer that wanted to burn me out. (I acknowledge that working in the software industry puts me in a rather privileged position where I can be picky.)

> I don't won't to refuse any projects to miss on money I can't imagine taking vacation, because I'm not gonna lose only vacation expenses, but also similar amount in lost income for every day I would not work.

Sounds like you are being consumed by greed and fear.

When you get cancer or some other malady from what you're currently doing to yourself, you'll wish you'd have justified that vacation. How do I justify it? By any means necessary to avoid the cancer or other malady that stress is guaranteed to give me.

Why not hire someone who can take a bit of your burden?

To avoid burn out. I always take 1 week of vacation per quarter and don't work more than 45 hours per week. As you get older your time is more important than the next dime. You can't take money with you after you depart this life.

> But since I don't wanna be potentially replaced by competition I haven't taken vacation in years (that was not problem before since I was not that busy and could rest enough every day to have free morning or afternoon) and I don't won't to refuse any projects to miss on money I can't imagine taking vacation, because I'm not gonna lose only vacation expenses, but also similar amount in lost income for every day I would not work.

I think that's the key: afraid.

Having too much work is actually a good thing! It means that you can afford to increase your prices. Then use that extra money and go on holiday.

Correct. How much are you charging per hour at the moment? Consider doubling it.

Mate, life, mental health and time with your family is much much much much much much much much much much much more important than a particular job and work.

I am not kidding by pasting `much` so many times, please try to look this from a completely different angle: kids really need actual attention from their parents and all those "vacation but daddy works in the hotel room all the time" are painful .. I am saying it as a guy who also has problems with working in free time ..

You don't have to "justify" this to your clients, you have options, please try to look at things differently(and they're not guilty,

If youre self employed and can't take a day off then you are running your business poorly.

Why? Because your disaster recovery plan hasn't been tested. Thats a significant risk.

That and your work/life balance is probably broken as well.

It’s difficult. I had a job before where I could work from home and they told me it was only 40 hours a week but I really ended up working more like 70 hours. Also got calls over night and worked on holidays too. The best approach IMO would be to plan it six months or more out because it would give the customers time to know you will be take some time with plenty of notice. Then talk it up when you interact, not like a robot repeating I will be off during the week etc., rather talk about how you excited to get a chance to go visit whatever with the family.

A self employed person generally has multiple clients, can control their hours and tools, and so on. Those self employed people who do work constantly will generally have high enough rates they can take time off.

You’re not self employed in that sense. You’re quasi employed, but without any of the protections of being an employee.

The only positive thing you said about this arrangement is you had downtime. But now you’ve lost that, and work more hours, and yet are still not earning enough to take time off.

Why, exactly, are you doing this? You only have one life. There must be alternatives.

Semi-related, I think the OP doesn’t give him/herself enough credit. Frankly, given then relative abundance of talent in China (1.4 billion population with general preference towards STEM subjects is no joke) and relatively cheap cost (you can hire a junior swe for probably $30-40k/year), there must be a reason the Chinese company decided to partner with you, an European living in a different time zone and speaking a different language. Take your vacation. Charge more. You probably have more leverage than you think.

The most important person is you, and you need to take care of yourself, first.

If you’re close to 100% and not burned out, when working, you’ll thrive.

I only learned this 12 years in. I’m on year 16 now.

You just realise that if you worked for someone else, then you’d be paying for these holidays in one way or another. It would be factored into your salary somehow. You just just need to do the same for yourself.

Also, taking breaks can feel uncomfortable if your not used to the feeling of freedom, start small and work your way up to taking longer breaks. You will find the rest will make you more valuable as you’ll likely be more effective if you’re rested.

To avoid burnout and still be "able" to work in the future? I agree with the sentiment that "justifying" time off is coming at it from the wrong angle.

Work/life balance is important. We can only go so long before our quality of work begins to suffer, along with our mental health.

Seek out more clients, raise your rates, and sub-contract the more menial/unpleasant parts of what you do, would be the ways I would look at addressing this.

Sounds like you're being willingly worked to the bone.

As far as I'm concerned, the point where making more money doesn't increase your quality of life but reduces it is where it needs to stop and you look well past it. The point of self employment is not having to justify your life style, including vacations.

If I were you I'd look for a different employer or rework my business and split my time between a number of them.

Sorry if I am being that explicit but I would consider myself a slave, not a self-employed, if I had to follow that work rythm you just described

I never understood people who are that obsessed with work and money. When I was self employed I'd only work when I needed money, which didn't amount to much time at all. I am at the other end of the spectrum. Unless I'm working on something I'm truly interested in or need the money, I find it hard to justify taking work over vacations.

I’m not sure about OP, but for me it’s mostly about risk tolerance. As your income source is much less stable, and you are exposed to much more risk if you have health problems, it means you need to do much more careful financial planning. Naturally, this implies building a decent savings account, and it also means it’s more difficult to take time off (“if I know for sure I have a client right now, wouldn’t it make sense to wait with vacation until it dries up?”).

You budget working 46-50 weeks a year and get it in your contract. Most people whom I know who are happy with contracting have multiple clients and assume a certain amount of bench time.

Call it professional development or whatever you need to. Build your rate card around that timeframe. If that’s not acceptable, you need to think about what you want and work towards that.

You have stated that 1) you make far more than you need; 2) the workload is too high and that 3) consistency and response time are important to the client. If you are truly concerned that taking time off will lead to problems with the client, then the solution is to hire someone to help you. But take a vacation before you go nuts.

If you need to 'justify' taking a break then think on this. Working the hours you do, non-stop, without break, is massively increasing your risk of either burnout, a mental breakdown, or a stroke. The mind and body can only take so much. Take a break fool, you can't look after your family if you collapse from overwork.

It sounds like your work consists of one contract for this company in China. That makes you vulnerable. You need to find other contracts. Once you have four or five lines of income you will be a true freelancer.

You need to listen to yourself. This will probably continue for a long time, and it will affect your relationships, so be prepared to make scarifies.

I save money until I have enough saved that I can afford to take the desired time off, and then I buy my own time and pay myself to relax. ;)

Would your clients allow you to subcontract the work out? That way you can keep taking the full load with minimal additional work.

it should be possible, but it's too much hassle to organize it just for vacation, while I can still manage workload

If you can justify taking off 80-128 hours out of 168 per week, surely you can justify taking off 10 out of 365 days in a year.

You need to rest! You'll do better work with a clear mind.

A wide man once said..Treat yo self

People shouldn't turn work into an idol! Work itself has no inherent moral value and workaholism can be more dangerous than many other addictions. Life isn't meaningless, I hope you can see things differently soon enough :)

You seem to have a Judeo-Christian background based on the "idol" statement combined with not viewing life as meaningless. I refer you to Ecclesiastes. Everything is grasping at smoke (meaningless).

"5:18 I have seen what is best for people here on earth. They should eat and drink and enjoy their work, because the life God has given them on earth is short. 19 God gives some people the ability to enjoy the wealth and property he gives them, as well as the ability to accept their state in life and enjoy their work. 20 They do not worry about how short life is, because God keeps them busy with what they love to do."

If that means eating and drinking while working so be it. There is no point to life. Vacationing is just as empty as working. At least with working something is accomplished.

Burn out is due to a tension in the person's mind between knowing that they only have work and the desire to have fun. When you make work fun, the tension dissolves. That's not to say you shouldn't unwind. Every engine needs a chance to cool off. Rather, you should realize the cool down period is only a few hours, which is well within OP's time availability.

Great reference! But I feel that's not exactly what Ecclesiastes means .. because it seems you ignore the context and the rest of the Bible in this hypothesis:

meaningless, vanity, this is what life without God, life focused only on the material, physical reality "under the sun" looks like: “1:14 I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.".

That's what focusing on the temporary leads to.

And even opening the New Testament, you can see Corinthians 4:18 "So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal."

The message of the gospel is full with hope: it doesn't teach that "There is no point to life." and that life itself is meaningless .. as what is temporary, is not the important part of life at all.

In this sense, most jobs is often focused on the temporary and we shouldn't idolize them, as it's sadly easy to addict to work. And of course: I think it's great to enjoy your job and to find fun in it, but to keep in mind it's just one aspect of earthly life, and not an ultimate goal. It's not something to "obsess" on. And "accomplishments" are a very subjective thing.

Find a new client