How to Vacation When You’re Working Remotely
Strategies to help you disconnect from work in the digital era
It’s hard to make a vacation feel like a vacation in the digital era. Mobile phones and email mean that we’re almost always within reach of our boss, colleagues, and clients.
Remote work compounds the problem: What defines a vacation if you’re already out of the office? And how do you set limits on your availability when your colleagues expect to reach you whenever, wherever — especially if you’re in a role where it’s unrealistic to go incommunicado for more than 12 or 24 hours at a stretch?
As a longtime remote worker and one who has rarely been in a position to take a full-time, uninterruptible vacation, I’ve wrestled with this problem for years. I love the idea of spending two (or better yet, four!) weeks away with my family, but I can’t afford to go offline that long. Since I’m self-employed, the money tap switches off when I’m on vacation, and if I ignore my email for a few weeks, I may not have a lot of work to come back to.
That means I’m usually in a situation where I need to somehow get into vacation mode without turning off my phone or ignoring my email. The email strategies we discuss in Remote, Inc. help because they mean that my email isn’t out of control in the first place…
