I first heard about the concept of workation back in April after listening to a few podcasts and reading numerous articles on the subject. By loose definition, a workation is a vacation that allows you to work remotely while integrating elements of leisure to help you unwind, relax and be more productive. In other words, taking a vacation away from your normal place of work, but not from the work itself.

2020 and 2021 saw a rise in the trend towards workations replacing traditional vacations since so many workers are able to work remotely, and in turn, from anywhere.

My initial reaction to this was 'no thanks' because when I am on vacation I want to be truly engaged in my destination and turn off work and relax. But the more I thought about it, the more the idea started to grow on me. One could hypothetically take more vacations since PTO is not being used, and still get to enjoy and explore the destination at lunch, after work is completed and over the weekend. And who would be opposed to working with a view?!

When my friend Pete mentioned traveling to Florida and working remotely for a week, I said "hell yes" and booked my flight. We would be staying on St. Pete Beach on the gulf side of the state.

Of course we picked one of the hottest summer months to visit, traveling over the fourth of July, but that didn't stop me from making the most of our proximity to the beach in my down time. I work up every morning for a sweat drenched run along the beach and Pinellas Bayway. I would seek out local coffee shops for my morning buzz and breakfast and get to working in a new environment each day. We visited a couple breweries, had dinner by the water and caught the sunset on the beach. I ended up taking a summer Friday on our last full day and going to the beach for as long as I could stand in the hot summer sun. We also got lucky enough to experience Hurricane/Tropical Storm Elsa and a Tampa Bay Rays air conditioned baseball game.

Final takeaway? I definitely see more workations in my future, as working remotely has been something I have been doing even prior to the pandemic. However, since I do like a good few days to explore, I can see myself taking at least one PTO day on any future workation trips.