Workation - nice or stupid?

Work vacations only exist because capitalism demands the entirety of our lives. I’m not working on my vacation, period.

I agree but it's supposed to be the other way around: Have a bit of vacation while you work. You still get your actual PTO in addition to that which you can use on an actual vacation.
- See it never works out that way. My experience has been that I'm stuck working more than I am vacationing, and when I'm not working, I'm thinking about work the whole time. It also means I'm not doing the same level of focused work as I can at home. I have hardcore ADHD and introducing more distractions is something I have to personally steer away from. So I'm either in (fully on a vacation) or I'm out (fully working in my own space). There's no in between.
- I also see it as having vacatio while you work, plus you have plain old vacation without working.
I think that's a skewed way of looking at it. I can see the appeal if your family is able to take advantage. Like if your kids are off and your spouse doesn't work (or maybe can also work remotely). That way you can enjoy some nicer weather and a different location and are able to stay longer. It's definitely not for me because like you said I'd rather just have a vacation, but I think blaming it on capitalism is a bit of an odd way of looking at what's essentially someone's lifestyle choice.
- The problem is that it gets presented as a way to take time off from your job with "unlimited" vacation time while still working, which of crap.
  
  The idea only works as a more extreme form of remote work. So, remote work where some of the time is at Grandma's.

IDK, seems stupid to me. The whole point of going to a vacation is to get away from work... well, at least for me. Some workaholics out there might disagree, but that's not me 🤷.

What if you put on top? Let’s say you get your vacation + 4 week of workation? Very useful for me to visit the family tbh
- Cool do they pay for me to travel there? Like I’ve got friends on every coast and I’d be down to work from near their homes for a week or two, but I’m not paying to travel to hang out with my friends after work.
  
  Also what are the odds I keep my vacation days? Like seriously. PTO replaced vacation + sick claiming you get more flexible days and now we all have the same amount of vacation but get to spend it when we’re too sick/infectious to work.
Idk, presumably you have time before/after work everyday plus a weekend in this other place without travel. I feel like I could enjoy something like this.
- Not me, thanks. I would rather pay for my own vacation, but everyone just leave me TF alone.

If you're working, you aren't on vacation

How very dystopian

I did it for about a month and and loved it. We got an Airbnb in Arizona. We woke up early, clocked out early, and went hiking nearly every day. The weekends we did a trip to the Grand Canyon and Sedona, both great experiences. If you can make it work, then try it out. I know tons of people that maintain jobs while travelling almost full time.

I’m on vacation with my extended family and I brought my laptop. I didn’t expect to get a lot of work done, but so far I’ve only been able to keep up with emails. There’s always something to do and someone who wants my attention. Family definitely comes first, and I’m enjoying the vacation, but I’m getting very little work done.

How did you manage that? Who did you travel with? How did you separate work time from fun time?
- Our situation was a bit different since it was just me and my wife. We both had our 8 hour work schedules so we kept to our jobs for most of the day. I also recall taking a day off to make a three day weekend here and there.
I did this for most of covid and it was fucking awesome. We would pop around one month at a time or one week at a time in different places and go on weekend adventures.

As someone who is right now working from abroad by necessity - this idea is full of shit.

Yes, you won't get a chance to properly enjoy your time away, you will always have time constrains (remember - you still need to work, and it's still on top of your priority list), you will only get to enjoy the country like 2h a day (or whatever you had before as "me" time - that time didn't change much) .

Assuming you are not going out far from your usual timezone - you will basically only enjoy it in the evenings, and if you are adventurous enough to move very far away from your original timezone - gl, because now you will have all the timezone mess upon you and possibly are working in the unusual hours.

In short: your work will suffer, you will suffer, you won't get to enjoy your vacation and the country and on top of that - this will cost you more money than you usually pay! What a steal (literally).

And what happened to someone I know is: When they came back, everyone acted like as if they had a full vacation and not just worked abroad. Everyone expected them to have magically recovered from work and they were asked to not take "another vacation" because "they already had one". On top their work from abroad was looked at way more critical, because some people assumed you can't do your work well when the beach is waiting for you.
- That just sounds like they suck at setting boundaries. I spent a month in Hawaii earlier this year. I made it very clear that I would be taking two full weeks off at the end before coming home. It was a magical winter for me - being sun burnt on the beach.

One day here and there, sure. Going to another place to work for a week or more? Absolutely stupid. Work is still work, and if you have to work, you might as well work in the best conditions, not on some small screen that you can barely see because of the sun.

The question is not "is it better than a normal vacation?" where of course the answer is "no." Rather, the question is "is it better than your regular work routine?" The answer to that depends on a lot of factors: your specific job, personality, personal finances, family obligations, etc. I think there are lots of circumstances where it could make sense for some people.

It's great. But you have to approach it differently than a vacation. You go to a different location, find a nice place to work, and work. On your downtime you can go out and explore. But don't push it. You need to focus on mostly working. And maybe on the weekends exploring. If you do that you'll have a great time.

But I think most people try to cram in a vacation in addition to working everyday. And they hate it. Because they're overloaded. Just think of it as working from a new place for a while. And it's got some interesting things to do. It's not a vacation opportunity you need to exploit to its fullest.

This goes double e so if you're traveling to be opposite side of the world and have time zone issues. Your work has to be your priority. So maintain that time zone. And don't try to stay up at weird times. It's going to impact your enjoyment of the workday

Have an international SIM card before you go. Like Google Fi. Or anything from Arlo.

Map out coworking spaces or coffee shops in the area where you're going to stay. Have at least two locations you could work from in case internet has issues.

Don't assume the hotel internet will be up to standard. It might be that'd be great. But don't depend on it. That internet can be very stressful for remote working

Sounds like an expensive way to work with little reward. I'm all for making work as pleasant as possible, but paying to stay in a hotel just to work seems like a bad idea. It could be interesting in some ways in certain positions.

I was surprised when I looked into digital nomad visas last year, how cheap an airbnb was to book for a month out of season.

Edit, missed that they said a week or 2

Paying money to work isn't something I would consider worth it. Sure, I might get a bit of free time in the evenings, but it doesn't seem like enough to justify the travel and lodging costs

You've got six whole weeks of paid vacation as a Dane. Why would you even consider such an insane concept? The idea of working while on vacation is so utterly perverse that I struggle to find the words to express just how much I want anyone promoting the concept to fuck off and die.

7½ weeks in my case One reason why the idea was somewhat appealing was that I usually spend a lot of my vacation with other people, but now and then sometime alone would be a nice change. It would be an easy way to go on an "ego trip" without sacrificing time with my friends.
They could have 6 weeks of proper vacation then stay on in a nice place and work from there an extra few weeks. You're not sacrificing vacation time.

I worked remotely from Caye Caulker Belize for severalmonths and I was literally the dude in this photo, only much more stoned.

If you're working permanent remote, just do what I did and move to where you like to vacation.

This is propaganda... Plain and simple.

Yep. This is on par with the onslaught of bullshit articles telling us going back to office is better for us, the drive is a good disconnect, etc. It's nothing but capitalist drivel paid for by capitalists.

Sounds like self funded business trip.

You say you can easily work remotely, but that is not the same thing as working from another country. Tax implications, cross border data transfer, work residency rules - absolutely speak to your HR before assuming that if you're remote it doesn't matter where you are

I would imagine that staying in a Schengen country would be good enough. So, a holiday in Spain or Italy should be fine.
This is an area where forgiveness is much better then permission. Just do it, and if there are detectable issues, work it out after the fact.

If you EVER go to HR with a "interesting" problem, the answer is NO, and not only is it NO, but now you know you can't do it, and can't try it anyway.

If you have an office job with projects, deadlines and zoom meetings, especially when your job is interconnected with other colleagues and departments, then its an absolutely stupid idea. It always sounded like a HR buzzword or even borderline corporate propaganda showing people with laptops on a beaches and forests, etc. You can either not fully enjoy your holiday or not do your job properly.

If you more on a freelance side, or have a type of job where you can have a few productive hours a day to cover your full workday/responsibilities and still have time to enjoy your surroundings then go for it.

I would personally never do it.

Come to NZ, we also had a really shit summer!

The only way I'd do that is if my employer paid for travel, food, and lodging. And even then, I'd do as much as I could before leaving and then just phone it in during the week as much as possible.

Some people like the idea but to me that only makes sense if you are basically doing the nomad thing at a cheap location. You'd want to stay in the place for awhile as you're still spending most of the "vacation" working all day. On your days off you could do more. On an actual vacation you would actually be enjoying yourself the whole time. Traveling to just spend all your time working seems like a waste.

Also just try to work on just a laptop for a week. It sucks. I'm not doing that.

We do it regularly - but from a much different angle than the US is sometimes promoting it.

We take 2-3 weeks off work as everyone does in my country. The problem is: Schools off much longer and neither the wife nor I can get more than 3 weeks off in a row (there are other school holidays to cover as well...). So we usually add another week or one and a half and work with reduced hours (accrued overtime, neither of us works for more than 5h per day) and usually mixed (half the time I take off work, half the time she is off work) time off periods. That works wonders as it is still much more relaxing than being back in the daily grind at home and the location away from home forces you to not do something about all the leftover chores waiting for you at home and often it's easier to get the kids entertained at a vacation location. That helps a lot.

Actually my friends company explicitly promotes this type of arrangements as they found their staff satisfaction to be much higher this way.

If you just go somewhere else to work from there without time out...well... that's a fucking business trip. Not a vacation.

I have 20 days a year to work anywhere from EU. I mostly use it to go back to my home country and meet friends & family, without having to use up vacation days.

If I'm not being made to overwork, why not? Better than a dreading cubicle

I'm not one to judge. If it works for you, cool. It might be something I'd be willing try. I just don't know though.

Thank you for all of your perspectives

Some more perspectives/information. I can see that my post is lacking important details: 70% of my work is like mostly talking with people on how to reach solution (and possibly fixing it), 15% project work and 15% misc. It is a weird mix of sysadmin, technical support, and "internal process consultant". Deadlines are not a problem and I could even make it an easy work-week, e.g. 6-hour a day. We have a good infrastructure, thus remote connection is not a problem from that perspective - but internet connection at a hotel or café could be an issue as some pointed out.

I do not have a wife and children, but living together with a gf and one cat.

Regarding price I had in my thoughts just to use some of those cancellation trips which makes it quite cheap (Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Spain... lots of cheap flights when the vacation season is over).

With all of that said, I can see it work, but it mostly sound like a bad idea :)

I’ve spent most of my adult life working remote (also in tech) and have had some trips like this that were fantastic and others that were big hassles. The determining factor is whether the location you go to is conducive for actually working, otherwise you spend way too much of your time trying to sort out stupid logistical things (where can I hold a call? How flaky is the internet? How do I sync hotel checkout to work schedule? Etc). But some locations are designed for remote workers.

Look on the map specifically for coworking and read reviews and look at pics to get an idea. Consider getting a Spaces membership, which is a very large network of coworking through most of Western Europe and some other countries , where you can drop right in and everything “just works”.

I have a wife and kids now so it’s not as easy for me to float around as much, but I’ve had some excellent week long trips or even just long weekends through much of Western Europe. There are many places with budget flights and you wouldn’t necessarily go to on serious longer holiday, but are awesome destinations for this kind of travel. You get a chance to have a taste of those places and don’t use up your PTO.

A recent place I went like was to Taghazout, a cool beach town with a bunch of surfer tech nomads and lots of coworking spaces. I went in April on a $50 Ryan air flight (in/out Agadir). It was a great trip.

This really depends on the type of work you do, the deadlines, how far you go (timezone differences), how much you feel like missing out if you don't go out to explore.

If all you want is get away from the rain, then it might suit you. Now if you also want to explore and relax, it might get a bit more complicated

if you work isnt stressful but your workspace is, then it might be interesting.. but really shouldnt you just invest the energy and money into making your workspace better for you?

I enjoy combining some holiday when I travel for work to new cities (e.g. taking the weekend after a conference). However the idea of being productive away from my home office where things are setup for maximum productivity is silly. I'm 100% WFH but wouldn't want to combine that with traveling even if I could (family etc).

Through reasons I didn't completely plan, I've had this happen to me twice, so I've had a little experience with it.

It sucks.

First time, the room didn't have a desk, so I had to deal with a mix of issues trying to get a place to work. I wasn't working full time, but I was working enough while still having to fight the urge to get up and go on vacation.

Second time, I had places to work while I was away, but I was still dealing with the issue of wanting to get up and enjoy myself where I was. I also bore costs to me alone to pay for my ability to work.

The only way I see it work is if you have enough mental discipline to work wherever or there is a firm understanding that the quantity of work is going to decrease.

If I were single or, heck, didn’t have kids, I think I could pull this off. I have done a few conferences at cool locations where my partner comes along and that was doable, if only just. But with a partner and kids in-tow, I know I don’t have the discipline to truly work while they’re all out doing fun touristy things. Maybe a an hour or two, or a half-day at best, but no way I’m going to want to (or be able to) stay chained to the desk, no matter how nice the view is. But that’s just me and what I know about myself.