It feels these days that we never get away from work

How do you successfully balance your time on vacation with still accomplishing what you need to for work and keep your family happy. I don’t remember a time when I totally unplugged from the office while I am away on vacation. When you are in a job that requires constant and continuing communication it is hard to just say no. What you can say is this is how I am going to manage it though. That is the biggest thing, along with setting expectation of those that are involved.

My typical vacation day still starts around 5am, I don’t sleep in much, I feel that I am about to miss something if I do. I’ll brew the coffee. Take a quick look outside to see whether we will have a sunrise worth taking pictures of and if so I will get things ready to take a walk down to the beach. However, before I leave, I have checked email, my RSS Feeds and decided on the rest of the morning’s projects that I will need to work on.

Luckily my wife likes to sleep in when we are on vacation so I have until between 7-8 before she gets up. We have breakfast together, I’m on cleanup and she gets ready for the beach. I finish up what I need to do for the morning and follow down around 10 or 11. It may sound a little boring but it accomplishes what I need it to do. The big thing here is that we have set our expectations of what we both need of each other and we try our best to adhere to them. Remember, you are on vacation as well.

You also need to be flexible. You can plan day trips that would normally interfere with your planned time to work but make it know when you are not going to be available and don’t fret over not being in touch. There is seldom a situation that can’t be put off for awhile and if there really is an emergency you can be reached by phone.

The bottom line is that you have to think about yourself, your family and friends that you might be with on your vacation and the needs of those that you left behind. Probably in that order. You can’t be on 24x7x365 days a year. You won’t get the best of you to give to those that need you.