Using ChatGPT to optimise annual leave

Here’s a little trick I tried to get ChatGPT to help plan my Annual Leave for 2024 based around public holidays.  I asked it to look at the public holiday calendar, find all the opportunities for extra long weekends or extended breaks and give me a summary:

Review the Victorian Public Holiday calendar: https://www.victoriapublicholiday.com.au/victoria-public-holidays-2024/. I’d like you to go through all the Public holidays and weekends for 2024 and try to identify the optimal “working days” that I would need to take annual leave to get the longest periods of time off work for the year. I want to optimise for long weekends (4 days off in a row) or longer without taking a full 5 day work week of leave. If there are any places where there are successive long weekends or public holidays which could allow me to take a longer break, please highlight these. I can take more than one day in a row up to 4 successive days. Please optimise for longer breaks using up to 4 days successive leave. Give me a summary of which extended breaks can be used, and give me a table which aggregates the amount of leave consumed by using this optimal schedule showing month, days off, consumed leave, accrued leave, leave balance at the end of the month, and a list of the leave days to request. Allow the leave balance to go into negative so that it can be depicted over the year and show all the possible extended leave periods that are possible due to public holidays.

The output was pretty good:

Based on the public holidays in Victoria for 2024, I’ve identified potential days for taking annual leave to maximize extended breaks. Here are the key dates for optimal leave:

New Year’s Day (1 January) – Take leave on 2nd, 3rd, and 4th January to get a 5-day break.

Australia Day (26 January) – Take leave on 25th January for a 4-day weekend.

Labour Day (11 March) – Take leave on 12th, 13th, and 14th March for a 5-day break.

Easter Period – Good Friday (29 March) to Easter Monday (1 April) already forms a long weekend.

ANZAC Day (25 April) – Take leave on 24th, 26th, and 29th April for a 6-day break.

King’s Birthday (10 June) – Take leave on 11th, 12th, and 13th June for a 5-day break.

AFL Grand Final Holiday (27 September) – Take leave on 26th, 30th September, and 1st October for a 5-day break.

Melbourne Cup (5 November) – Take leave on 4th November for a 4-day weekend.

Christmas Period – Take leave on 24th and 27th December for a 5-day break around Christmas and Boxing Day (25th and 26th December).

These suggestions consider maximizing long weekends or longer breaks by taking up to 4 successive days of leave. This plan doesn’t use a full 5-day work week of leave at any time, optimizing for longer breaks with minimal leave days.

This is great, but I’m a visual person, so let’s get it in a table:

Nice!  I should then be able to remove some break periods from my list and add them back in.  I thought this was a cool use case, so I thought I’d share it.