MM #107: How to Get Paid for Your Vacations
1. Announcements/Offers
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2. FEATURE: How to Get Paid for Your Vacations
Historically we have separated work and vacation.
We work 50 weeks of the year (in the US anyway), and take 2 weeks off.
The result? We’re stressed out.
It seems crazy to me to lump work all together, and then lump vacation all together. You stress out while working wishing you were on vacation, and then often get bored on vacation wishing there was more to do.
It’s time to get MORE vacation in our life. And at a lower cost. Below are some suggestions of how to work it. But before that, let’s take a look at the big advantages to combining the two:
Top Ten Reasons to Combine Business Travel with Vacation
- You can double your vacation time
- Your vacations can be partly or wholly tax deductible
- Use the business travel budget to cover your transport costs (e.g. work flies you to Miami and back, so the cost of your vacation is really just accommodation for the extra days you stay)
- Split up long period of stressful work with some R&R
- Split up long period of R&R that can start to feel a little boring, with a little productivity (great for us workaholics)
- Come back to the office happier, more grounded, and more productive
- No more long periods out of touch with the office when people are unable to access you
- Keeps you out of the office more so your assistants can prove they can handle more responsibility
- Forces you to be more efficient when you’re only allowed to work for 2 hours a day!
- Allows you to get those BIG projects done with no distractions
How to incorporate business in your travel?
- Ask your boss if you can work for 3-5 days “from home” in the middle of your vacation. This extends your time away by up to a week, allows you to break up your vacation time, and means you’re not “away” from work for so long. For example, if going to Florida for 2 weeks, go for three, and play one week, work one week, and play another week. And of course – it’s all play. You can suggest to your boss you might be MORE productive away from the distractions of the office, and may come up with new perspectives by being away from the office. If she’s still hesitant, suggest it as a trial. If you can demonstrate more productivity, it’s on the table to do again down the track. It could even open the door to you working much more “from home”.
- Work for a couple of hours in the morning or afternoon, every day you are away. This is a favorite of mine – I don’t need days and days away from work; I actually like my work. But it’s great to work from say 2-4pm each day, and play the rest. It means I can feel good about staying away longer, because important things are still being addressed. It also makes me a LOT more efficient if I know I’ll only have two hours a day of work; I only deal with the most critical things, and delegate the rest. Wonderful! Again – pitch this idea to your boss, and extend your vacation from a week to 2 weeks, with your boss resting easy that instead of 7 days with no access to you, they’ll have access to you for 2 hours every day – even on weekends!
- Be sure to stay close to wireless internet (no dial-ups!) and have your laptop handy. With a $50 web cam you can even do video conference calls. With the free www.Skype.com you can call from your computer for nothing or 2 cents a minute. And then of course – there’s the trusty cell phone. For printing I just use the hotel business desk, or ask nicely if reception would print off something for me (so carry a 1 Gig memory flash-stick). They’ll also often scan or fax, although http://www.efax.com/ let’s you fax directly from your computer.
- Got a BIG project? Get away to a dream location. Once I needed to get a lot of writing done, and I just couldn’t get it done at home or work with all the distractions around. So I took off to Thailand for a month, and wrote every day. I had a wonderful vacation, I got the book done, and the trip was tax deductible.
- Not sure what business-related thing you could do while on vacation? Call the local Chamber of Commerce or Rotary Club and offer to speak. Attend a local meeting of any professional body you’re affiliated with e.g. Toastmasters. Set up a couple of meetings with companies that might buy your services, or might want to joint venture with your company. Find a local training workshop (e.g. via The Learning Annex) and take an evening, one day or two day course.
- If you can’t find a business related thing to do AT your vacation hot-spot, perhaps you can stop at another city on the way or on the way back and get a business task done. Work will often pay the cost of what the fare would have been just to fly direct to that city.
Example: I flew to Calgary this year for a couple of weeks with friends. Before I went I contacted local coaching organizations offering to speak. While they fell through, I also asked my newsletter subscribers for a volunteer to set up a local talk for me; someone set up the whole thing including video taping it. This forged new relationships, added a lot of good will to my subscriber base, got me an hour of good video content, and made part of the trip tax deductible.
NEXT ISSUE: How to incorporate vacation in your business trips!
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Action: Post on the blog:
1) What is one idea you would like to incorporate to combine work and vacation?
2) Post your answers to the blog. And we’d love to hear ideas of how you have combined work and vacation.
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Enjoy!
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