Most advice is pretty bad

My company recently switched to unlimited, and everyone has been consistently taking more than we were offered prior, which was a generous amount compared to previous places I've worked for.

So far in the 4 months we've had unlimited, I've taken 40-50% more time off than I would have otherwise. I think many employees know of the issue you mentioned, and we're collectively taking steps to prevent that from happening. It mainly has to do with culture and not have too many key person dependencies.

The majority of advice I've received was founded in experiences 10+ years in the past, yes, and did not account for the substantial societal changes that have occurred since. My issue is not that the giver hasn't noticed changes in the world, it's that most often the underlying reason they give advice seems to be as a form of nostalgia rather than a careful consideration of what my best options are.

> By your reasoning, you would have rejected that person's advice if they had given it to you earlier because it would have looked a lot like the form of advice you have an issue with.

No, I am not saying that any advice should be immediately rejected. It should be appreciated, always, when given in good faith. It should also be silently examined, always, before application.

Ah, I guess that makes sense from an American perspective. For context, 5.6 weeks (28 days) is the legal minimum for absolutely every full time employee here in the UK, and I believe that’s one of the lower legal minimums in Europe. Higher allowances are not uncommon here.

My employer considered introducing unlimited holiday, but we said no once they admitted that they were hoping it would result in us taking less holiday in practice. I’d rather have my 5 weeks guaranteed, no guilt, than be worrying about whether I’ve taken too much unlimited holiday.

I too only have anecdotes from myself and friends/colleagues, but a few experiences stand out:

* The accountability culture really matters. Are teams responsible for their own commitments/deadlines? If you think you might get fired, or at least a lower performance review for taking vacation (because you shipped less while out) then you are less likely to take vacation. Of course the problem here isn't the PTO policy, but unlimited PTO in a company like this is worse than a defined amount of time.

* Are senior leaders work-a-holics? If so, that might breed a culture where, even these same leaders always say the right things about everyone needing to recharge and take advantage, the ambitions see those above them, and ape the behavior of working more. This trickles down, though it might be inconsistent across the company.

* As time has gone on with these being more common, some strategies have emerged to take advantage of them more effectively. Such as being more aggressive with 3 day weekends, or flex schedules, or remote work, or vacation hybrids (like going abroad for a 6 weeks and working every other week). Taking a bunch of multi-week vacations may or may not work in your company, but figuring out the broader category of "flex work" seems to be getting a ton of experiment.

I disagree.

In my career I started getting close to the people that had already done what I wanted and just asked them for advice.

The advice they gave me was incredible and the most useful thing you could do.

The most important thing is that it must be an active process. You must do the work to decode and extract the information.

Different personalities will give you different advices. If someone has a very strong visceral nature, her advice is going to be "don't be too visceral, think before you act", because that is the advice she needs, but not what you need.

That advice is completely useless if your nature is thinking too much, and you don't have a problem thinking, you love to think all the time. The advice you need is acting instead of thinking, to take decisions.

So you need to be active and ask specifically the problems you are having when trying to do what you wanted. Most of the time you will realize the super big problems that you have are the most stupid and obvious thing for the person you are asking.

It is so easy for them because their own nature or personality makes it so for them. 9 times out of 10 they will give you an easy, "obvious" solution you never thought about.