⭐ Interested in the cost breakdown? Then please scroll down to The cost section!
Abstract
During my PhD, I have gotten a lot of work done during a number of privately organised workations. In this article, I will share all of my learnings about a Workation as a PhD Student with you so that you can go ahead and organise a workation yourself! My advice is tailored towards PhD Students but is also applicable to other jobs as well like for example post docs. Lastly, I provide a checklist to help you planning your own workation.
Introduction
This blog article is about going on a vacation during which you work on your PhD. A modern term for working during your vacation is “workation”.
One of the great advantages of doing a PhD is that you have a lot of freedom. The freedom is not so much in “will I work?” - just because you will have to work in order to get finish PhD - but rather “where will I work?” and “when will I work?”. The PhD is therefore the perfect time to go on a workation to increase your productivity and creativity. Additionally, going on a workation might become harder once you get a regular job.
Image of a beach that might be a good destination for a workation.
In this article, I will show you how to organise a Workation as a PhD Student, the types of accommodations to chose from and the associated costs. For each of the topical sections, I first go into general advice and then explain my own experiences. Lastly, in the last chapter I offer a small checklist that eases the process of planning your own Workation as a PhD Student.
Workations and the motivation behind them
A workation combines both work and a vacation. A prototypical example is renting a house near a beach to work a job during office hours and then relax on a beach afterwards.
This example implies that one should be able to work remotely and preferably even asynchronously. Remote work means that you do not have to be present in an office to work and asynchronous work means that you can decide yourself when work is done as long as it is performed.
A workation can promote creativity, focus & productivity while also removing you from some of your distracting daily habits; think for example of increased physical activity and less frequent email checking.
A Workation as a PhD Student is based on four pillars that need to be considered beforehand. Those pillars are shown schematically in the following figure and are:
- The accommodation
- The work
- The time
- The cost
The four pillars that make up a workation as a PhD Student: accommmodation, work, time and cost. I explain them in the following.
Accommodation & different types of workations as PhD Student
Your accommodation largely determines the type of workation that you are doing.
No matter how you choose your accommodation, make sure to:
- have a place to work at and
- have a good internet connection.
The type of workation that you want to organise largely determines the budget that you need to reserve. If you book a more expensive workation, in a hotel with lobby for example, the place to work at might already be part of your accommodation. However if you book a less expensive workation, you might need to find a suitable place to work at outside your accommodation like for example in a café.
These are the options in order of decreasing accommodation cost with a few comments attached to them:
Book a whole apartment:
- You book a whole apartment, for example on a beach or in the woods.
- This could also be interesting for professionals who would like to conduct a slightly longer workation.
In a hotel with own lobby:
- The own lobby ensures that you have an easy-to-access place to work at.
In a hotel without own lobby:
- When you do not have an own lobby, you need to find good places to work at.
- This might be in your hotel room if it is suitable. Alternatively, check for example coffee places, work cafés, public libraries or university libraries.
- The hotel can be an actual hotel, a hostel-like accommodation or an AirBnB.
Workation at home:
- This is by far the most affordable option that also does not require much organisation upfront.
- Make sure to structure your day in a way that feels differently from all other regular days, e.g. by ordering food or doing something nice after (or in-between) work. To accomplish this, you might want to set fixed timers to be reminded to do nice things like for example going for a movie in the cinema or a hike to explore the place you live in a bit more.
Another thought is to, potentially, try to find a boring place which allows you to really focus on your work.
My accommodations and types of workations: In order to get to know the concept of workations and to reduce cost, I decided to opt for the latter two workation types: I did one workation at home and four workations in hotels without an own lobby. During these hotel stays I searched for places to work at. The following table lists the workations that I conducted and the work that I did during them:
| Where | When | Work I did |
|---|---|---|
| Scottish Highlands | Jan | Research |
| Scottish Midlands (organised by Uni) | Feb | Writing my thesis |
| At home | Mar | Research |
| Valencia | Dec | Research |
| Alicante | Jan | Writing my thesis |
The work
Since you are absent from your office and lab, the tasks that you want to work on should be determined before your workation. A good idea is to work on hard tasks that you tend to avoid when embedded in your daily surroundings. The following table provides some examples of work that can be done during a workation and work that cannot be done during a workation:
| ✅ To work on | ❌ Not to work on |
|---|---|
| Writing, e.g. writing a paper or writing your thesis | Experiments for research. If you work experimentally, then you can obviously not do experiments during your workation. However, if you work theoretically, then you might be able to do research. |
| Reading, e.g. for a literature review | Work that depends on other people. A Workation as a PhD Student is all about making progress so that waiting times should be avoided. |
| Working through emails if it is really necessary |
My work: My research work is theoretical, hence I can both work remotely and asynchronously. I worked on numerical experiments and the text of my PhD thesis, see the first table in this article for more information on where I did what. During my workations, I tried to stick to a schedule along the following lines:
- 8am to 12pm: work
- 12pm to 1pm: lunch
- 1pm to 6pm: work
- Then explore the place, dip my toes in the sea, meet with friends (if there are any at the location you are at) and have good food
The time
In principle, every time of the year is possible. External factors, however, make the winter time more favourable and the summer time less favourable.
During summer, you might have other commitments like attending conferences and travel tends to be more expensive because summer is the tourist season. This might lead to places being flooded by loud party people, which you want to avoid. Also, the place that you live in is probably very nice during summer time anyways so that you might not have to escape it in the first place.
During winter, however, Christmas time is around and everyone is busy with finishing everything for the year so that you can easily peter off to a workation. Also, many locations are very affordable during the off-season in winter.
My times: I did my workations in January, February, March and December; see the first table.
The cost
As budget constrained PhD Student your question is probably: All that is nice but how much does it cost?! The cost is an important factor for a workation because typical PhD Students do not tend to drown in money.
The main cost for a Workation as a PhD Student is concentrated in:
- accommodation cost
- travel cost to get to the location of your workation and to get around in this location: flights, trains, busses and transportation
- cost of living: food, shampoo, etc
- leisure: for example paid tours
My costs: How much did my past workations cost? Here, I provide a detailed overview of the involved cost by using my latest workation in Alicante as an example. For this workation, I stayed in a hotel without own lobby. The following cost is per person and for 7 nights:
The cost during my last workation as a PhD Student in Alicante, Spain.
Conclusions
I have nothing more to say than it is worth considering going for a workation if you can! :-)
I wrote very difficult parts of my PhD thesis during my last workation right after Christmas and the progress I made there was priceless!
Acknowledgements
Thanks Linda Nguyen for being the best travel buddy!
Checklist to plan your own Workation as a PhD Student
Preparations:
- (Potentially) Ask your your boss if you can go on a workation.
- Consider taking paid vacation days for your workation. This allows you to skip all meetings, seminars, Slack messages and other responsibilities to solely focus on your own work during your workation.
- Decide if you want to go alone or together with other people.
Beforehand:
Create a budget for your workation. This determines the workation type that you plan.
Plan accommodation:
- Look for accommodation that is in line with your budget.
- Make sure that there are good work places near your accommodation.
- Ensure that you have a good (or at least sufficient) internet connection.
Work
- Postpone work that can be done during a workation and focus on work that you need to do in your office in the time before the workation.
- In order to justify a workation (in front of you and your boss), your priority must be to complete difficult tasks. Keep this in mind and do not confuse your workation with a vacation.
Time: Think of the time to go for a workation. How does it fit with external deadlines? I like to go during winter time.
Cost: Keep cost in mind. Personally, I am a big fan of arranging an affordable workation using a hotel without an own lobby.
During:
- Set up a daily plan to pick one realistic activity per day; for example a sight seeing activity. This helped me to both experience the workation location and getting my work done.