We’ve all pictured the scene: lying in the sun, toes in the sand, a waiter delivering another umbrella-filled pina colada as you smugly fire off an email to your boss telling her the job is in hand. “Working from beach” sounds like the ultimate life hack. And this summer, as remote working has become normalised, research claims more than six million staff are planning to do it, working from exotic locations. But as a freelancer who’s been getting away with this grift for decades, let me tell you it’s not the fantasy you’d think.
I am a connoisseur of the workation. In over a decade of freelancing, I’ve worked while holidaying in almost every continent. I’ve answered emails from yachts in Egypt, sat in on team Skype calls in Thailand and taken work calls in galleries in Istanbul. But while from the outside my whole life might look like a holiday, it can be a nightmare to juggle.
The first thing you have to factor in is the time difference. It’s fine when you’re messing around in Europe negotiating the odd hour’s time difference, but in some countries I’ve had to become almost nocturnal to turn up for work in the UK. In Los Angeles I found myself waking up through the night to answer emails, then waiting all day for no one to reply, and having to schedule meetings at 5am or midnight.
It was great that when I was working from beach in Thailand, seven hours ahead of the UK, I was on time at the office for the first time in my life. I could wake up at midday, hours before my bosses, sending emails that looked hyper-efficient and meeting morning deadlines. But it was less fun in the evenings when my friends were heading out for dinner and I was still stuck at my screen.
The time difference isn’t just a matter of clock-watching; it’s that time itself moves differently on holiday, when day-drinking starts at breakfast and there always seems time for a quick dip, a siesta, or a walk to the beach before getting down to business. While for your colleagues — sitting in the same grey, dull, English office — every moment counts, it’s hard to feel the same sense of urgency when you’ve just been invited to a long lunch. “Have you done that thing yet?” the office is always demanding, just as your second cocktail arrives.
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As a digital nomad, as long as I have my laptop and wi-fi, I can work from virtually anywhere — or so I tell myself. Hell, I can work from my phone! But that’s until you face the reality of doing so. There’s always a panic about whether the wi-fi in your remote Cornish cottage is working, if your dongle can get signal, or you’ve remembered to pack the converter plug.
At some point you have to wake up to the fact that there is a reason most offices have desks. The fantasy might be lying on the beach knocking out emails butoften it is hunching under a towel trying to shield your screen from the sun and not getting sand on your keyboard while someone chucks a beach ball at your head.
• Sun, sea and spreadsheets: millions to ‘work from beach’
Besides, unlike a desk job, when you’re on holiday you rarely sit in one spot for long. Instead, you find yourself trying to work on the move. Hence, I have done a road trip across America juggling a laptop on my knee and fighting car sickness, answering emails while trying to catch glimpses of Yosemite whizzing by. I’ve bounced around on a boat on a Mediterranean snorkelling trip, trying to edit a document on my phone, being splashed by screaming friends in the waves. I have tried to write copy in a hotel in Ibiza listening to the pounding sounds of some DJ leading a daytime rave.
In a way modern technology should make remote working easier, but the it often means you’re just never done. The moment you think you’ve finished, another phone call comes in — which is how I found myself half-dressed chatting to my boss from the changing room of a Center Parcs swimming pool, trying to muffle the sound of screaming kids.
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The ubiquity of video calls doesn’t help. It’s one thing faking an office environment on a phone call over the roar of an Ibiza nightclub, but quite another when your boss wants to “hop on a Skype call” just as Calvin Harris is dropping the bass.
I’ve found myself desperately sprinting back to hotels to rearrange furniture, close the blinds and clear up the beer bottles to convince a colleague I’m working from somewhere work could actually take place. It hasn’t helped that on occasion I’ve forgotten to pack anything sensible, so had to sit through a work meeting in a kaftan and bikini top.
Even if working from beach might suit you, you’re always annoying someone else. Even if you are allowed to work remotely, it still infuriates the office when you join the weekly Skype meeting from poolside at your villa with a jug of sangria at hand. And working on holiday can drive your friends mad. It’s caused endless fights with boyfriends and mates. Like the poor boyfriend who tried to take me for a romantic dinner in Cannes, and I left my phone on and brought my laptop with us “just in case”. Or the romantic helicopter ride we took down the Grand Canyon during which I insisted on checking my emails.
Friends get rightfully annoyed when I’m making boring midday calls while they’re cracking open the Whispering Angel, or answering emails while we’re supposed to be taking a tour of Machu Picchu. How are they supposed to relax when I’m always tense, staring at my phone screen and asking: “What’s the time in the UK?” One particularly agitated friend compared me to the workaholic estate agent Dick from Woody Allen’s Play It Again, Sam.
You’re not only annoying your holiday companions when you’re working from beach, you’re also creating a false economy for yourself; to have paid all that money to go somewhere exotic then spent the whole time doing the same things you do at home is just mad.
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It’s why, ultimately, working from beach is an oxymoron — it’s all but impossible to enjoy both at the same time. Working requires concentration; holidays are about relaxing and letting loose. In the past decade that I’ve been trying to balance the two I may have got to travel the world, but at times I have to admit that I’ve hardly seen it. I’ve been so busy staring at my screen I’ve lost the pleasure of being in the moment, and instead of enjoying magical locations on wonderful holidays with friends and family, I’ve hardly been present. I’ve missed special moments in incredible places with people I love, which I’ll never have again.
There are upsides — the way travelling opens your mind sometimes translates to my work, sparking original, exciting ideas. But on the downside, I don’t think I’ve had a real holiday in years.
