We’re back, after a peaceful week in a tent, at the edge of Yosemite. For one exciting, very wet day, thunder and lightening crashed around us. The rest of our vacation was sunny days by the river, swimming, fishing, and eating popsicles. I even read a whole Aimee Bender novel!
The absolute best part of the trip was all the focused outdoor time with our kids.
The second best part was that we had no cell phone reception.
This meant that I couldn’t give in to my annoying tic, wherein I check email on my phone every five minutes. Or maybe every five seconds, if I’m really worried about a work thing, or more likely, I’m just bored. Or procrastinating. I hate that I do this.
But with no cell phones working, I couldn’t check email (or news headlines, or stock prices, or Facebook). So instead, when I felt a twinge of boredom, I relaxed into the empty space of my unoccupied mind. It was peaceful. Therapeutic. I came home with a new resolve to spend less time staring at my phone.
Which brings me to this story my friend Steve sent about Americans working through their vacations.
Sixty-six percent of the 5,000 people surveyed said they will check and respond to email during their time off and 29 percent expect they may have to attend meetings virtually while on vacation.
In other words, most Americans work during their vacations.
That seemed sad to me. We all need down time. Especially the 88% of working parents with stress-related health problems.
But the even sadder part was the tone of the article, which quickly turned to advice about the “best way to blend vacation and work time.” You know, like, ask your colleagues to send you a single daily report email, rather than ad hoc emails, or find a proper business center where you can do your work with minimal disruptions.
“Modern work pressures mean that more and more of us work during our vacations,” said Guillermo Rotman, CEO of Regus. “The important thing is to minimize the inconvenience by working as efficiently as we can. Rather than struggle through three stressful and unproductive hours trying to work by the poolside, you could do the same amount of work more efficiently in a single hour at a business center, with free Wi-Fi, secure high-speed broadband and professional administrative support. You then have two hours free to relax properly.”
The important thing is to work efficiently on our vacations? Hmmm…I have a better idea. How about we just stop working?
I can see why it might be difficult for, say, Obama to do this…but are the rest of us professionals really so important that we can’t go away for a week and let other people cover for us? I don’t think so. I suspect that a lot of this working on vacation is really about trying desperately to appear indispensable, because we’re all afraid of losing our jobs. Which becomes a peer pressure thing. If everyone else works on their vacation, then you look like a slacker when you don’t.
Here’s my advice for your next vacation:
1. Tell people you’re going will be unreachable.
Say this with a nonchalant confidence. No apologies. If you apologize, it implies you are doing something wrong. Give people plenty of time to plan around your absence.
2. Pick a vacation spot with no cell phone reception.
Psst! Bay Area families! Tuolumne is great for this. And the only land line available is the pay phone in the dining hall. Be sure to leave your quarters at home. Better yet, leave the country, and avoid the Internet cafes at all costs.
3. Set your auto-reply message to the most annoying setting.
Have it send an “I’m not checking email” message to every single person who emails you, no matter how many times they email, rather than only sending a one-time only auto-reply. That way, every time someone sends you an email, they will be reminded that it is piling up in your inbox with all the others they sent.
What do you think? Are you going to work on your next vacation?
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m really struggling with this. I really really really don’t want to bring any work with me on my vacation in August. I did so last year, due to some very poor planning on my part, and it was awful. But I’m a freelancer, and I’ve had a really crappy spring and need to start bringing in extra income (somehow?) to make up for it.
I am one of those people who refuses to work on vacations. If I take a random day off and someone asks me to participate in a conference call, I say that it has to be counted as a “Work from home” day. Also, I refuse to call others on their paid time off. I feel that if I don’t expect others to work on their days off, they can return the favor. There is so little time with my family, I have to draw the line in the sand and stick to it.
The previous poster – freelancing does make it hard. Lack of paid vacation days make it a whole different kind of animal, not sure what the solution is.
@Jen Good for you!
@Rachael As a fellow freelancer, I hear that. It’s really, really hard. I don’t know what the answer is. One of the things I’ve learned to do, although I’m not always successful, is to live below our means. We could have bought a house in a better neighborhood, but didn’t. We could drive new cars, but don’t. Never even considered private school for one minute. This gives us some buffer for saying no, although, with the rising cost of health care and other living expenses, this is getting harder…And all that said, I have taken “workations” in the past, because I couldn’t say no.
I just had to come back to comment, because we’re leaving for our vacation tomorrow. As I wrote above, I had a crap spring; luckily, I’ve been (almost) making up for it over the past few weeks. Unfortunately, taking on a great gig with a great new client meant taking along some of the work to do through vacation …
*EXCEPT*
… that I just learned that the client is sending the manuscript I’ve been working on back to the writers! Which means I’ll have no manuscript to work on until at the end of next week! When it should be in better shape and easier to work with!
And in the meantime, I guess I’ll have to go swimming or read a book or something … Am I jumping up and down — literally? You bet.
Yay! Here’s to good timing. So what are you going to read? My recent faves: “Half a Life” “Bossypants” “Zeitoun” and “You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know.”
I used to have a really stressful job – too many hours, too much work, too much of everything (sound familiar?)
When I got married, I told everyone that I wouldn’t be available for 10 days but if there was a major problem to contact my mother-in-law who we would check in with every few days. After the 5th call (on day 1) she decided to go on her own holiday so she wouldn’t be bothered by any more annoying calls 🙂 It was a perfect solution as I couldn’t be blamed by her disappearance. Plus, amazingly, all those major problems they phoned about had solved themselves by the time I returned…
Thought you all might want to come to an event in Berkeley next week: Joan Blades talking about the “Custom Fit Workplace” — Details at http://www.berkeleystartupcluster.net/Events.
Jennifer
So glad you posted this, Jennifer. Joan just emailed me yesterday and asked if I would be on the panel after her talk, so I guess I’ll see you there! In fact, if you want to send me more info, I can do a separate post about it.
i am absolutely not working on my next vacation!
This is great advice. It’s a huge problem in our country as I think we lose the opportunity for true rest/renewal – even one email that daily stress has done its damage.
Europeans are so much better than us with vacation time – do you know how they are with the quality of the vacation time compared to ours?
You know, I’ve never understood the work/life balance thing, for me they’ve just been a big mix of me for the last several years because I’ve pursued things in my life to give balance regardless where I am. AND I have a partner who owns half the child rearing that I do. If I was single though, I would still opt for mix vs. divide up personal and work.
I read that New Yorker piece recently on Sheryl Sandberg and it was the first time, SERIOUSLY, that I ever read a piece on some super crazy successful C person who trumpets being personal at work. The FIRST. I think that’s telling. Me? I’ve been driving at this my entire adult life. I never believed for once that work and personal life can’t live in harmony…they can! I know a lot of people who don’t know where to begin attaining all this, even though they are self-employed artist types, principals of a company, making millions or just getting by. But I have and I know others can too, but it does take work. And changing mindsets.
The thing I wish we as a society could learn is to just immerse ourselves in what feels right for each of us 24 HOURS A DAY. This certainly requires a cultural shift which I think we all know, reading Katrina’s blog, needs to happen. Workplaces/employers must give a little more freedom to expression and allowing people to work whenever the hell they want to. As individuals, make it blend the way we see fit. Blanket generalizations that “checking email on vacation is sad” doesn’t resonate with me. Because really, you make time for your family and your friends if you really want to. There should be no guilt in setting a pace for your life, period. And we know there’s not some strange gravitational force pulling you in to check your email or post some Tweet.
And we as Americans are not going to ever get far by the continual “Europeans do it so much better.” What about those in Africa? In the Asia? And yes, Europeans don’t always do it better. So let’s try to evoke real change around us and within ourselves.
[jumping off soapbox now] : )
Thanks for the alternative perspective, Kristy.
I think I mostly agree with you. What I love about freelancing is I can blend a lot of personal/kid stuff into the work day without it interfering, and I thrive on a certain level of multi-tasking (but after a certain point, it’s diminishing returns so I try not to overdo it).
However, I truly believe we all need downtime. I had my Come to Jesus Moment 2 years ago, as you know, when I desperately needed downtime and couldn’t get it. And that’s why I think it’s sad that so many people take work on their vacations. I just don’t buy it that that’s a healthy way to live. HOWEVER, if we all did “what feels right” 24 hours a day, maybe it would be fine. But most jobs don’t meet that standard.
As for the idea of working when you want and blending more personal stuff into “work hours” there’s a whole movement around this called “ROWE”. (Stands for ‘Results Only Work Environments.’) I’ve been meaning to learn more about it and maybe interview one of the founders. You can read more here: http://gorowe.com/
I guess my main point is: if we as individuals feel something is wrong in our lives, we have to set an alternative course. To me, this extends to our society and I am hopeful that over time, we become more enlightened. But it starts with each and every one of us.
It’s f**ing hard to say no and risk things for change. I get it. But in the end, the pursuit of happiness is what most of us are after (and I say “most” because you know, there’s people out there who don’t care as much). We can only drive it, we can’t depend on our society to support us. And it’s a sad truth, but one by one, the mindset –and therefore the blanket term I throw around called “society” can change.
Everyone needs downtime. But it would be a lot less despairing to pine for it if we had more balance. Or mix. : )
Thanks for the ROWE info too. Love ya!
I never work on my vacations. I’m really lucky to have a great low stress job. Sometimes, before I leave, I plan to check email once or twice, but then once I’m gone I usually “forget” to do it. It helps that most of my vacation time is spent out of the country at my mother’s house with really crappy internet service. My coworker is on vacation for the next 2 weeks but will mostly be at home. He keeps saying he’s going to check email every day and I’m trying to talk him out of it. I think it really helps if you go somewhere with no internet/cell phone service. Then you really do have to disconnect.
I agree with Kristy and think how you balance things depends on how you work best. Before kids, I was a total separate work/home person. No work on vacations, no home life at work.
3 kids and still working full-time now, I mix things. I call to make doctor appoints during work hours, I order things online that I need for home from my work desk, and I do a quick check to make sure nothing is urgent before I go to bed and while I’m on vacation. I don’t respond to much, mostly just let it all wait, but I know that nothing is in jeopardy. It keeps me sane and means I don’t feel guilty about leaving early to go to the soccer game, because I might check my blackberry when my kid isn’t playing. You can argue that my way of multi-tasking means no one actually gets the best version of me (or my attention), but with 3 young kids and working full-time, I have just enough time to give everyone a good version.