The Great Escape

Pardon me for being so late to weigh in; not sure where I was when Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott announced he'd be taking a four-week vacation.

Oh, right: I was working.

Let's ignore for a moment the ensuing flap over whether the CEO of the world's largest retailer should be leaving the store for so long--though to my mind, it's a sign that he's doing something right.

My question is this: What would it take for you to take a four-week vacation?

Here at Fast Company world headquarters, it's become increasingly rare for anyone to take even two weeks off at a time, despite company policy that, on paper, let's us take as much as we want. With regular deadlines and a lean staff, it just seems hard to abandon work and colleagues for that long. One of our staffers just shoehorned a vacation to Vietnam into a one-week window, when just getting there takes nearly a day.

Yet we all understand that a one-week break doesn't really cut it. It takes that long just to unwind, to really relax. Two weeks, three weeks--that's when the restorative powers of vacations really start to kick in.

We haven't read much about how Lee Scott is managing his break--except that he's taking his Blackberry along when he goes fishing. It may just be that a CEO, whose job should be to focus on the long-term, is just better placed to take a longer vacation than the rest of us.