I have generally always lax about taking all my vacation days. At the same time my prior position and employer was a bank that had a requirement to take five consecutive days off every year. Most of those vacations were at home. And you had five sick days.

My current position has been under two different companies. The prior company started you off with 17 days PTO for both vacation and "sick" days. You were responsible to reserve enough to handle the sick days; but you could carry over 40 hours.

The new owners start around ten days of use it or lose it vacation days and it goes up with time. (Three years + is fifteen days.) But they view sick time as sick time with a reasonable limit. And they expect you to try and telecommute on your sick days.

But at the same time I don't really stress about being off because when I'm at home I'm in a nice relatively stress-free environment. I have no spouse or kids. I live on six acres in a very rural area. A few years ago my ex-GF wanted to go on a weekend cabin retreat. About the only difference from my place was more trees, a little less traffic, and a jacuzzi compared to my garden tub.

So to me that makes a world of difference. I was doing a 110 mile round trip commute until recently. Now I'm telecommuting. Even though I now can be at "work" 24/7 I know how to turn it off and relax at home.