Take a working vacation

The case for doing a little work here and there

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the New Corner Office.
Today's tip is to consider taking a working vacation. If
you handle it right, devoting a little time to work
while you're on vacation can enable you to take a
much longer vacation, and you and your family might just

(00:26):
decide that that's worth it. This episode is likely airing
while my family and I are at the beach. With
camps canceled this summer, we decided to tack on a
few extra weeks of rentals. I also took along my
laptop and scheduled some calls. Why well, if I do
a few hours of work while we're on vacation, we

(00:48):
can go for weeks. If I decided to draw a
bright line in the sand and say no work on vacation,
well we probably wouldn't go hang out on the literal
sand for more than a week if that. One of
the upsides of working from home is that you don't
always have to work from home. A coffee shop or
coworking space can provide some variety, and a table at

(01:11):
a beach rental can work too. Many people find it
hard to travel far if they don't have unlimited vacation days,
or even if they do. We all have jobs that
need to get done. But location flexibility makes it possible
to do some serious travel as long as work can
be part of the picture too. For instance, if you

(01:32):
elect to work on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday during a
vacation week, you can get a full week out a
vacation destination plus the weekends for the price of two
vacation days. Not bad. That means you could take a
full month somewhere for the price of eight or so days.
And if your office closes for a day or two

(01:54):
in there, as many people do, for say the fourth
of July, then you can take a month for the
price of six or seven vacation days. This is a
pretty good deal. It makes it possible to travel to
some exotic places. I know a lot of international travel
is still limited this year with COVID restrictions, but in
the future, an American family could go spend a month

(02:17):
in Europe with the breadwinner working remotely for ten days
in there. With the time difference, he or she wouldn't
even have to miss out on all the sight seeing
on those days. Working from two pm to ten pm
in Spain could cover a work day in the US
and allow for mornings with the family and museums. If
you don't need to keep track of vacation days, maybe

(02:39):
because you work for yourself, then this calculus is less relevant.
But allowing for some work during travel weeks can still
open up possibilities depending on where you're going and what
you're doing. You could either do an hour or two
before the family wakes up, or you could work for
two to three hours in the afternoon while everyone now

(03:00):
apps or has screen time. If you choose your activities well,
this can definitely be enough to keep the business going
without you feeling like you're missing out. Just be sure
to turn the business off when you're not working so
you can relax. The good news is that unplugging for
a little while will probably help you gain a fresh perspective.

(03:22):
That's true even if you do a little work enough
to make a long vacation possible. Do you ever work
strategically on vacations in order to take a longer vacation.
You can let me know about it at Laura at
Laura vandercam dot com. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's the succeeding in the new

(03:44):
Corner Office. The New Corner Office is a production of
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