Asklemmy

The idea of "work vacations" only exists because capitalism demands the entirety of our lives. I’m not working on my vacation, period.

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 🤷.

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.

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).

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

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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'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 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).

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?

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.