Take a working vacation

Working remotely doesn't need to mean working from home

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning,
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to take a working vacation if you have
any flexibility to work from home. Working from a different home,

(00:25):
particularly during August, can make you feel more relaxed and
can make a lot of memories possible, even if it's
not easy to take a ton of time off. A
few years after the pandemic, a great many knowledge workers
are still working from home, at least a few days
a week. Lots of organizations have settled on a schedule

(00:47):
of roughly three days in the office and two days
at home, but in many cases that is just a
guideline and the exact days themselves aren't strictly enforced. The
idea is that you need to swipe into the office
a little more than half the time over the course
of the year. Now a key point here working from

(01:09):
home really should be called remote work, or perhaps location
independent work. Unless you need specialized equipment that your organization
has installed at your home, you generally aren't required to
actually work from your house. Most people just choose to
work from a home office because it is convenient, comfortable,

(01:30):
and you already own or rent it, so you don't
have to pay anything else to use it. But if
your work is truly location independent, then there is no
reason not to consolidate a few of your remote work
days and take a working vacation. This might make it
possible to get away for longer, even if you don't

(01:51):
get a ton of vacation, or if you work for
yourself and the work never really goes away. For instance,
maybe you rent a beach house for the month of August.
You take the first week of August off, and your
office is closed the friday before Labor Day. You also
take two other fridays in the month off, but work

(02:13):
twelve days remotely from the beach. You are still working,
but you can likely walk on the beach during lunch.
Or if you've got a family and your family is
with you, you can go to the beach after four
pm or so every day with them. You're getting a
lot of the upside of taking a month away without
actually taking a month off, which is hard for a

(02:35):
lot of people to do. I have also seen this
work even if you do have to go into an office.
Sometimes organizations have offices and places that you might consider
a vacation destination like other countries. I know someone who
plan to spend a month in Europe, during which she
would spend two weeks working in her organization's Amsterdam office

(02:59):
while her and kids explored that city. Then she would
travel with them for the other two weeks around the
Netherlands and other places. She only wound up taking about
nine days of PTO, but got the month in Europe experience. Now, obviously,
this is easier if you either don't have children or
they are old enough to fend for themselves in a

(03:21):
vacation location, or if your spouse is not working or
else has an incredible amount of flexibility. Absent these conditions,
then this is more challenging. But I know people who
have found day camps for their kids in far flung locales.
You rent an apartment near the beach in California for

(03:41):
a month, you work remotely, and your kid goes to
a local day camp. You meet up for adventures after
four pm and on the weekends, and on the handful
of days that you take off too. Now, some purists
might claim that taking a working vacation is ruining the
whole point of a vacation. I am a big fan

(04:03):
of taking time off wherever you're working, and I think
it's also wise to set some boundaries. If you are
working while you have taken time away from normal life
for a while, this is probably not the time to
be doing overtime or evening calls or the like. These
are probably more coast days. But I know that for me,

(04:28):
if I couldn't work while I was traveling, I would
not travel nearly as much. By the end of August
this year, I will have been away from home for
more than six weeks on things that at least kind
of look like vacations. I have worked on several days
during them, because there is no way I would have
been willing to get away that much if I couldn't,

(04:49):
so I think it is a worthwhile trade off. And
if you are looking to make August or any upcoming
month more fun, more adventurous, and more relaxed, consider that
working from home doesn't need to mean working from your
actual home. Home can be somewhere cool, at least for

(05:11):
a little while. In the meantime. This is Laura. Thanks
for listening, and here's to making the most of our time.
Thanks for listening to before Breakfast. If you've got questions, ideas,

(05:32):
or feedback. You can reach me at Laura at Laura
vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a production of iHeartMedia.
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