It’s more and more popular to work and travel, but does it make sense? I’ve tried that and decided to have my thoughts put in a form of article.
Time
When you’re on vacation, your mind is totally off work, and you can use 24h of your day for sleeping, eating, swimming, sightseeing, in basically any proportions. If you’re in “work and travel” mode, you have to split your time between both. If your work requires communication with team or customers, you’re bound to work when they work. Which means, you lose up to 8h of daytime. When you travel multiple time zones, it can also force you to work graveyard shift.
If it’s possible, it’s worth to consider working part time. It forces you to take some days off, but same time it’s only half of amount you’d have to take normally.
Reboot
Medicine states that best way to reset your mind and body is to go for at least two weeks of holidays and don’t allow yourself to think about work. In that perspective work and travel, will expand your horizon but won’t let your mind rest.
Gain perspective
While working in office with people is my thing, sometimes I need alone time, like for preparing this article. In those cases, leaving office and going semi-vacation is great opportunity to disconnect and find time for individual projects/tasks.
It also allows you to gain perspective to your daily office work. If you try something different, it’s an opportunity to check whether it’s still good for you. When it’s constantly the same, you might forget why like it so much.
Final thoughts
In my case, traveling is an important part of my life and being disconnected totally is best way to recharge. But I also love my job and can’t be separated from it for too long. Work and travel is a nice compromise between being wanderer and workaholic. Being abroad and living in different countries is great for understanding the local culture, the weekend trip won’t give you same experience. But if I was put against a hard choice, I’d stay in office and work with our team – it’s energy like no other.