Happy New Year! I want to take this time In the New Year to address my biggest goal for the New Year for all moms: your paid time off.(PTO) Even if you are a stay at home mom, an entrepreneur mom or a corporate mom, it is so important to plan out your time off since we are on 24/7 as a mom.
PTO days are a big topic in the wellness space that often gets ignored. It gets ignored for moms because we are using sick days for runny noses, throwing up and then we get the flu days after the kids recover.
Sometimes we are saving our PTO for a vacation that we want to go to, but it is important to think about PTO as a self-care routine. PTO is there for a reason as it helps us take time away from our job to be with our family and for emergencies. Though the problem is that PTO is often used for emergencies.
PTO is important for a wellness routine. Wellness is not something you think about only when it is an emergency. Wellness is about immunity and being able to handle whatever obstacle comes our way. By planning your PTO days, you have more guidance in how you want this year to go. Here are some ways you can plan your PTO days.
- Plan your vacations! Set a budget for vacations for the year. Sit and talk with your family about what vacations they want to go to and pull out a piece of paper or excel spreadsheet and start to crunch those numbers. This will help with planning for how much money you need and how much you can save. Setting a savings for vacations can be helpful so you don’t feel so overwhelmed.
- Plan self-care days. When I worked a 9-5 I would take my planner in January and plan vacations and a day at least once a month that was a self-care day. This was a day that I knew my child was in school and I was able to be in the house alone. Imagine being in the house alone with no one to answer to! Now there will be times that emergencies come up and you might not be the only one in the house, but this will give you several days in the year for you to plan your ME time.
- Build within a holiday weekend. Make sure you think about the holidays that already exist. When you think about the holidays that already exist you can set yourself up so you can have an extended vacation. For instance if there is a holiday on a Monday you can take the Friday before and/or the Tuesday after. This will help you have a 5 days off instead of 3 days. This will help you maximize your time away from your job, so you can feel refreshed when you return.
Try these tips when thinking about your PTO this year and start NOW with planning for the year.
Take care