Cheat Vacation at Your Peril

Ah, summer, time to get down to ... work? That's what an important new study says my small-business friends have to look forward to. Fewer and fewer entrepreneurs expect to take a summer vacation of a week or longer—59 percent now versus 67 percent four years ago, according to OPEN, the small-business arm of American Express. I can only guess that most of these owners feel they'll get more done and thus put more food on their family tables, a laudable goal.

I wish that were so, but I don't think so. Without vacation breaks, what the owner picks up in quantity of hours worked she loses in the quality of that extra time. All work and no play kills her skills, whether it's planning and organizing, interacting with employees or decision-making. They're the same deleterious effects that are also caused by getting little sleep, eating poorly and exercising rarely.

Early in my entrepreneurial years, I tried cheating the clock in all of those ways and more. Turns out they actually cost me time when I factored in my overall quality of work. So think again when you try to increase your company's profits by skipping that vacation or pulling into the fast-food lane. It ain't gonna happen—you can't cheat on time off any more than you can cheat sleep or the taxman.