Working on Vacation: Necessity or Lack of Time Management?

Summer vacation is the best time of the year to recharge the batteries and have some time off. But are we able to shut the laptop off and enjoy the holidays without work as an intrusion or time-wasting activities that interfere with our time with family and friends?

For Americans seems to be normal to work on vacation but is it really necessary or do we need Time Management skills to prioritize our activities?

August has come and with it the time to take some time off and enjoy the sunny days of summer. 

Whatever you are planning to do I bet you are starting the countdown.

Despite the common desire to go on vacation, it is very difficult for the majority of the workers to take some time off and shut the laptop down for real.

An urgent email arrives, your boss calls you to ask you about that client of yours, and so on. Nowadays we speak and try to create a work-life-balance way of working and living, as we already anticipated in last year’s article, What will work look like in 2021?. Despite working-life-balance having become a common topic, the working society where we live seems to keep struggling with a toxic working culture where being productive and always available are the normality.  

Working on vacation has become normal; let us take a look at the data 

A survey from MyPerfectResume asked 1000+ U.S. workers how they handle their time off from work and how they separate work from personal life during vacation. And relaxing seems to be more difficult than working instead! 

MyPerfectResume found out that 82% of the American workforce work while on vacation. But let’s see what this means and how U.S citizens contemplate work while on vacation: 

• Nearly 90% check work messages and emails while on vacation; 
• 70% of respondents answer calls from clients or colleagues on vacation; 
• 42% take vacation days specifically to do work; 
• 37% work on vacation because they “just like to be on top of things”; 
• 66% reported that their boss contacted them to do work while on vacation and 94% did the work. 

What also comes out is that working on holidays is not just a random action but it seems true to be a habit. As shown in the following infographic, 42% of the respondents have already worked on holidays 2-3 times, and 12% even 10 times! 

Working on holidays; when do we need some Time Management skills and be able to prioritize tasks

As discussed in our article Time Management: project priorities and how to track them, we always feel busy because, as Eisenhower said, we are not able to prioritize our activities and we often spend too much effort on time-wasting tasks and activities. 

Especially on holidays, we need to understand what activities need our time and energy so, for example, we need to ponder if that email is urgent or if it can wait a few days.

Time Management tools come to our help since they help us prioritize tasks of each project we are working on; they track our projects’ time to avoid any time-wasting activity and they provide us the data to weigh what project/client is the most fruitful. 

Does Technology make us overwork or does it make our work easier and also develop some Time Management skills?

Technology is often misunderstood because it is usually seen as a non-stop working tool that never gives us a break. 

A study taken by Project Time Off noticed that those workers who work remotely tend to check their devices and stay connected way more than not remote workers do. Also, 78% of respondents said that they feel better knowing that they can use the internet and access work from their holiday resort rather than not having the possibility to access it at all. Blaming technology is not an answer and blaming a toxic working culture might just be a simplistic way to explain this phenomenon.  

What we, in Timeneye, have been noticing is that usually, companies do not want their employees to overwork but, in some cases, it seems to be necessary. Indeed, the MyPerfectResume study testifies that 77% of respondents affirmed that they would feel guilty if they had to disturb someone’s vacation regarding a work issue. The conclusion is that working during holidays is something that neither the managers nor their employees want; it is just something that seems necessary. 

Timeneye is a Time Management software that aims to make you avoid wasting time and lets you have the time off that you deserve. 

Timeneye provides you with a simple and intelligent time tracking tool able to register hours, monitor project progressions, and improve productivity. 

With Timeneye you can create the project you are working on, and set the activities and phases that it will require.  

After having done that, Timeneye makes you able to assign the proper time to the project or the activity you are focusing on. You can always use a calendar and create daily different tasks. In case the calendar is synced in Timeneye, all you need to do is to look for it in the Timeneye dashboard and just set it up! Using a calendar is also useful for time block charts and assigning different tasks to your team members. 

Timeneye also provides you with a  time audit that will show you how you have allocated your time across your projects, letting you also know what project, task or client has been taking you most of your time.  

Automatically saving data on the software each time you track your time, Timeneye always provides you fresh data from which you can take insights about your project life cycle and how you have been allocating time and resources to it. 

Timeneye is the software you need to be more efficient while working on numerous, complex projects and splitting different activities between the members of your team. 

Time is irreplaceable and it is the most valuable thing we have, for this reason, Timeneye aims to help you to better manage it and make you spend the best holidays you can without worrying about work. 

What are you waiting for? Sign up for a free 14-day Timeneye trial!