Mastering the Skill of Going on a Workcation
It’s open-season with these coined phrases, isn’t it? If you’re not aware of what a “workcation” is as one of these neologisms, then you must be living under a rock or something, but I’m pretty sure if you’re not familiar with its meaning then you can guess exactly what it is. So a workcation is indeed one of those trips on which you try to balance some serious work you’ll have to complete with the typical enjoyment of a vacation.
Workcations of some sort are often taken by so-called digital nomads or remote workers, but it’s quite a skill to master. By no means is it an impossible skill to master at all, but it does indeed take some doing and we have some top-tips (picked from the brain of a digital nomad) for you if you are to master this often very elusive balance to strike. Those on workcations need to make sure they set aside enough hours to work whilst they’re on this vacation. Many businesses that have these workers make sure that they manage unified communications to allow the remote worker to stay in contact with other employees in the office. This allows workers to collaborate on projects and video-call when they need to. This keeps everyone connected, regardless of their location. This can be a real help for those on workcations.
Log your time
Simply keep a spreadsheet going in which you log your time spent working.
Measure your output
The whole aim of logging your time using something as simple as a spreadsheet is so that you can measure your output by working out how many hours you put in and how much that amounted to in earnings.
Bringing it together
Bring it all together and you have some very accurate data to work with, with which you’ll be able to dynamically gauge where you are during your workcation in terms of how much time you still have to put in for you to be productive and how much time you can set aside for the leisurely parts of the trip. It can otherwise become very easy to look back on what was meant to have been a workcation with a bit of regret at the realisation that you were neither here nor there by way of what you got up to.
Separate the elements of the trip
The ultimate step to mastering the skill of going on a workcation, all things considered, is indeed that of being able to separate the elements of the trip. You need to be critical about it too – clearly define which elements of your trip are for entertainment purposes and separate that from your work so that you don’t ever find yourself halfway between feeling like you’ve been productive and you’ve had fun. For example, if you go on a cruise for single people while you’re away on this workcation, that would suggest that you’re now catering to the entertainment side of things exclusively, because there will be no time to whip out your laptop and work. If on the other hand you happen to find yourself at one of those co-working spaces which are becoming increasingly popular with remote workers from all over the world, you know exactly what you’re there for as well. You’re there to put in some work, so make that time count.
So in conclusion one could say that iconic photograph we often see of a supposed digital nomad with their laptop at the beach is quite misleading and is rather ironically in no way really linked to what a workcation is all about.