Web Worker Daily

Holiday season is just around the corner. Some of us will stay home, some will go away. Some will work every day that’s not a public holiday, or on which our presence is not required elsewhere by friends and family. Others will take days, if not weeks, of time out from work. Read the rest of this entry »

Freelancers can be stubborn about taking vacations. We know that money usually doesn’t come in when we go on a holiday, so we skip vacations and relax during off hours. But we all need vacations or else we’ll head straight for Burnout City, a place no one wants to go. I finally compromised with a recent vacation by going on a short break over a weekend that was close to home. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past four days, as far as my social network, email and IM contacts were concerned, I disappeared completely. No, I didn’t unplug all my devices or sit in the dark with my power cut off, or even have to exert any willpower. I simply took a trip, up beyond the range of my cell phone carrier’s data network, to northern Ontario’s cottage country. The cottage my family visits there is not only beyond cell phone range, it also has no cable, no satellite and no local dial-up service available.

It’s an anachronism, but a welcome one for a web worker looking for a true vacation. Not that I didn’t work. Because I love (some) work, so it doesn’t feel like an imposition when I bring it with me on vacation from time to time. And what better setting for getting some web work done than at a remote location surrounded by nature and devoid of any Internet access? Read the rest of this entry »

There are some great things about being self-employed and working from my home via the web. One of them is that I can give myself permission to take time off whenever I need it. The flip side of that freedom is that because I am self-employed and work alone from home, there is no one to cover for me while I take time off. If I’m not doing the work, it doesn’t get done. If I want to completely take time off, I have to work extra hard before my break to create advance content to schedule for my readers while I am “off.” Then when I come back, I have to scramble to catch up with an inbox full of email and RSS feeds at the same time I’m diving back into my regular work.

The entire process of essentially working double-time before and after my time off is so exhausting and stressful that most of the time, it completely offsets any benefit I might get from the time off itself.

But we do all need mental breaks to recharge. I can’t just not take breaks because taking them is too much work. So to cope with this challenge I’ve developed a system of being able to partially dial back my level of work activity. This gives me some of the mental feeling of taking time off without the break itself causing a stressful workload. Read the rest of this entry »

I have a singletasking tip for you, and it’s an important one: Work like you’re on vacation. Before you type up the smart-aleck response, “You mean don’t work at all?” let me explain. I mean work like you’re taking a working vacation. If you’re a full-time remote worker, you probably know the kind of focused working vacation I mean. Sometimes, you can pull one off without your employer even being aware that you’ve taken a vacation at all, if you’re experienced in the art.

The key to a successful working holiday? Good time management and prioritization skills. Having fun and distracting things, settings and activities all around you has a way of throwing what needs doing and what can be put off into sharp relief. The result, for me at least, is a kind of highly motivated tunnel vision that has me blowing through high-priority tasks in half the time I would normally take.

Since you’re not actually always on vacation, how do you replicate the effect in order to trigger task triage? The solution is to bring back the motivation, if not the exotic locales. Read the rest of this entry »

I wish school would go year-round — then summer would be easier to handle. Alas, the kids have almost three months off, and it means finding a way to balance fun and relaxation with working.  Parents everywhere face the summer dilemma every year, so try these tips from fellow web workers with kids.

Stay with other family. The first week is going well as my younger two kids take turns visiting Grandma who lives an hour away. Having one kid at home and one at Grandma’s takes away any chances of them fighting. One gets all of Grandma’s attention and the other enjoys a calmer mom who doesn’t have to play referee. Read the rest of this entry »

Palms and crystal clear water. White powder and blue skies. Camels and rippling sand dunes. Whatever your idea of a perfect vacation, if you’re not on a permanent salary, your dream getaway can all too easily stay that way: a dream.

Just last week I was speaking to a new neighbor who runs an interstate consulting business from his barn. But when I asked if he had any vacations planned, he shook his head. “No,” he said, “when you have your own business, you don’t really get vacations.”

I know plenty of people like this guy. They have the cash for a break, but they just can’t seem to make the time to get away. It’s not surprising: If you don’t get paid leave, taking a vacation involves a number of issues. But if you can get over these hurdles, you’ll be on track to check out and kick back… Read the rest of this entry »

Editor’s note: With this post we welcome Meryl K. Evans to the WebWorkerDaily team. Meryl is the author of Brilliant Outlook Pocketbook and the co-author of Adapting to Web Standards: CSS and Ajax for Big Sites. She has written and edited for a bunch of places online and off. A native Texan, she lives a heartbeat north of Dallas in Plano, Texas with her husband and three children.

I love Spring Break… when there’s a trip involved. Alas, I haven’t taken a real vacation since Spring Break 2002. Sure, my family took a road trip from Dallas to San Antonio and Austin last year, but that was no vacation between the drive and a volleyball tournament (the real reason for the trip). If you’re one of the lucky ones taking a vacation, here are some tips for packing.

This year, one kid has driver’s ed classes for the week, another takes a test and some have a few appointments. So this Spring Break gives us an opportunity to catch up and do things that we don’t want to do during the school year. But that doesn’t mean the thought of the younger two staying home all week doesn’t stress me out. The 5-year-old and 10-year-old argue, then come growling or crying into Mom’s office.

So what can you do to manage kids during Spring Break if you stay home? Read the rest of this entry »