When Was Your Last Real Vacation?
When Was Your Last Real Vacation?
By Robert McGarvey
Research from Funding Circle tells us what we already know: entrepreneurs don’t take much time off. The specific number in their poll is that 17% of entrepreneurs don’t plan any time off this year. 33% plan five days off.
That’s 50% with minimal vacations.
It’s not just entrepreneurs either. Polls say 56% of Americans have not taken a real vacation in the past year.
Many, many employees confess they do not take all the days off we are owed.
We are a vacation deprived people.
Even when we are off duty we are not. Said Funding Circle: “almost 40 percent confess to checking their email multiple times a day when they’re supposed to be checked out.”
I am glad to have Funding Circle’s numbers – even though I loudly disagree with their suggestions about how to deal with this. More on that later.
First, before I throw stones at anyone else I have to confess I have not been on a real vacation since a week in Rome in late 2013. I had a few days at a college reunion in April 2015. A night in Prescott AZ last winter. A day at a college reunion this year.
That’s about it and that is sad.
I know many others in the same boat.
Partly it’s just that most of us are still struggling to get our finances up to where they were before the Great Recession visited devastation on us.
Partly also it’s that how we work has fundamentally changed and there is no going back,
I don’t know about you but I am glad to be able to check email anywhere, and also to receive calls just about anywhere. Twenty years ago when I traveled there always was an unease that stuff was going on and I did not know what. There was always an element of dread involved in the return home – what horrors would I discover?
I cannot say I ever found any real horrors – oh, a few unhappy clients and a few opportunities lost because by the time I responded they were gone.
But I much prefer the control – and knowledge – that today’s technology gives me and, if anything, I’d say I now feel much more able to vacation, anywhere, than I did before the Internet and cell phones and WiFi.
That’s why I shiver as I read Funding Circle’s advice to the vacation deprived. The first suggestion: “Leave your smartphone at home” when you go on vacation.
Absolutely not. I want to be able to see who is calling and to answer those I wish. In Rome I believe I answered one call and ignored the others. But I was glad for the control the phone gave me (and in fact I carry two phones).
I am on record, by the way, as saying I would not stay at a hotel that had no cellular service. Yes, there are still some, even in the US. Shiver. If you check into a hotel and find out it has no cellular, check out and refuse to pay any cancellation fees. No cellular is tantamount to no running water or no electricity and, sadly, there remain hotels (resorts mainly) that refuse to spend on signal boosting and leave their guests in a dead zone.
Funding Circle’s second prescription: Travel somewhere without WiFi.
That is just as silly an idea as leaving the smartphone home. WiFi lets me read news at no real cost, ditto for email, and it is invaluable for mapping, especially in new to me locations. A reason I am a T-Mobile customer is the great deal on data abroad.
The third piece of advice is: Reserve designated work times.
That is, know how much and when you will work when on vacation. I am behind this completely. And my other advice is: only do what urgently needs doing. If something can be deferred when you are on vacation do so.
Bottomline: technology now will let me comfortably and confidently vacation, more often and to more remote places than ever before. It’s up to me to embrace that opportunity.
So now I’m off to see if there are good Brexit deals on holidays in Belfast, Northern Ireland.