In one of Scott Adam’s pointed Dilbert cartoon strips, the boss reminds employees to use their vacation time before the end of the year. When they do take the days, they are lambasted for not being there when there is so much work to do.

Have you accumulated vacation days that you should use before the end of the year? If yes, one reason may be that you felt you had too much to do to be able to escape for a week or two.

Another reason may be the feeling that the boss discourages taking time off and that it signifies a lack of commitment to the job or the company, as in the Dilbert scenario.

Alternatives to taking real vacation time include taking miscellaneous days off during the year or adding one or two day for a long weekend. Often these scattered days are taken not so much for a break but as for a means of getting personal errands accomplished. While some of these are necessary and worthwhile, it doesn’t replace the need for enough time to mentally break from workday stresses.

Again and again, it has been proven that productivity increases when people can take vacation time and return to work refreshed. Yet we can find ourselves struggling to keep up each day, already overwhelmed and stressed by time management issues, and therefore reluctant to break. Often we do not realize how we have bogged down and how we are accomplishing less while clocking ever more hours in the office.

As we enter into the last month of 2007, this is crunch time. Some of you may be able to roll over days into the new year or may be able to redeem unused days for cash. However many of you will be facing the choice of using days or losing them. What will your choice be?