Optimize PTO usage by finding the best days to take off around weekends and holidays.
The raw material for a good vacation is already on the calendar: weekends and public holidays cost no leave days. The tool builds the year's calendar, marks weekends and holidays as free, and works out which leave days turn the gaps between them into one continuous break. You enter the year, your country's holiday calendar, and your PTO balance; it ranks the candidate windows by how many days off each leave day buys. The surprise for most people: the highest-leverage day is rarely the holiday itself but the plain workday bridging it to a weekend - the Friday after Thanksgiving, or the Tuesday after a Monday holiday.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Year 2026, holidays: United States federal, PTO balance: 4 days, goal: longest continuous break
Expected output
Top window: take off Mon Nov 23, Tue Nov 24, Wed Nov 25, and Fri Nov 27. Result: 9 consecutive days off, Sat Nov 21 through Sun Nov 29, for 4 PTO days - 2.25 days off per day of leave.
Thanksgiving 2026 falls on Thursday, Nov 26. The four workdays around it (Mon-Wed before, Friday after) sit between the Nov 21-22 and Nov 28-29 weekends, so taking all four merges two weekends, one holiday, and the four leave days into a single 9-day block. No other 4-day choice in the US 2026 calendar produces a longer run.
The tool builds a calendar for your year, marks every Saturday, Sunday, and public holiday as already off, and treats only your leave days as movable. A plan's value is the length of the contiguous off-run it creates; a leave day is worth only what it adds - closing a gap between a holiday and a weekend adds several days, a day in the middle of a work week adds one.
Each candidate window is scored by its ratio of days off to PTO days used: a lone weekday scores 1.0, while a bridge day that joins a holiday to a weekend can score 3 or 4. It applies your balance, excludes days you mark unavailable, and sorts the windows by ratio, so the highest-leverage plans - the classic pattern of 3 or 4 leave days producing 9 days off - surface first.
No. Weekends and every holiday in the calendar are days off that cost nothing; only the days you enter as leave count against your balance. The days-off figure for a window counts the whole block, free days included, which is exactly why bridge days look so valuable - that is the mechanism, not an error.
Yes. Enter your balance for the year and the tool ranks every worthwhile window across the calendar, so you can see all the bridges at once - Thanksgiving, year-end, the long weekends - and decide where the balance goes. It does not know your company's blackout weeks, minimum-coverage rules, or use-it-or-lose-it deadlines, so treat the ranking as a draft to confirm.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
Create customizable checklists with groups, due dates, and priorities for any project.
Design a printable daily planner with time blocks, goals, and priority sections.
Measure your typing speed in WPM and accuracy with real-time feedback and stats.
Pomodoro timer with built-in ambient noise (rain, cafe, forest) generated via Web Audio API oscillators.
Stay focused with a customizable Pomodoro timer featuring work and break intervals.
A precise stopwatch with lap tracking, split times, and exportable results.