What’s a Workation?
A workation is just what it sounds like – a blend of work + vacation. For me and my family, workations allow us to travel for longer periods of time than we could normally afford to if we were just taking a vacation. We get the best of both worlds: The chance to see the world, while still earning money while doing it (and without burning through vacation time!).
This site is for people – especially families – who want to figure out how to spend several weeks or months living elsewhere without quitting their day jobs or significantly uprooting their lives. I hear from a lot of people “I want to do what you do, but I don’t know where to start.”
I’ll give you ideas, steps, tools and recommendations for making workations a reality for you. AND I want to hear about your experience too! If you’ve taken a workation or have ideas/experiences to build on what I have here, I want to hear about them!
Why I Love Workations
My husband and I traveled a lot before we had kids, but once we had kids we feared we might have to be home-bound (or at least U.S.-bound) for the next 15 years.
Not so. Instead, we’ve lived and worked in other locations for 4-6 weeks at a time starting when our kids were 2 and 4 years old.
I love workations because they allow you to really know a city (or parts of it): we make connections with people we work with in a coworking space, we get to know the nanny and pepper her with questions about her culture, and we get a stronger sense of the ebb and flow of life because we are a part of the neighborhood’s fabric: We’re commuting to work, going on lunch breaks with everyone else, taking a yoga class with our neighbors, and bringing our kids to the local park. You get to see and feel a completely different part of the culture than if you were only visiting the tourist sites (though, of course, we do visit those!).
Plus, a workation lets you completely change your entire routine for a period of time. When else do you get the opportunity to change nearly everything about your daily life? You change your home, your food, where you grocery shop, where your kids play, where you work. Every major aspect changes, and that is thrilling.
For me, it boils down to the fact that workations are a more immersive and richer experience than a vacation.
Why I Started Workation Woman
When my family and I started taking workations back in 2014, I didn’t have many resources other than Tim Ferriss’ Four-Hour Work Week (paid link), which gave me ideas and opened up my mind to the possibilities of workations.
Since then, I still haven’t found good resources online that would help guide a typical family that’s considering a workation. There are lots of sites/resources if you want to quit your job, sell your house, homeschool your kids and travel the world. There are also lots of sites to help you plan your dream vacation. But if what if you’re somewhere in between? What if you just want to shake up your life for a few weeks or months out of the year, but not drastically uproot your whole family?
That’s how I felt, and that’s why I started Workation Woman: To provide you with the starting tools for making workations a reality for you.