Scrap Holidays, Bring On The ‘Worliday’? Why Not Scrap Work Instead?

Financial Times columnist, Lucy Kellaway, has made up a new word. Worliday. Only she hasn’t really because the very similar made up word, woliday, has been in casual use for years now.

For those unfamiliar with what a worliday is . . .

“Worliday is a bit like holiday and a bit like work,” explains Lucy in an article that appeared in both the FT and on the BBC website. “It’s the future for most professional workers – and actually, contrary to what most people would have you believe, worliday is really rather nice.

“Here is the sort of thing I did when I was on worliday 10 days ago in north Cornwall. I would wake up, do a few emails and then go for a walk by the sea. Later, I might write an article sitting under a window with a view of a stream. After that, I’d go outside to light the coals to barbecue a sausage.”

It’s hardly the future. It’s how far too many professionals have spent their holidays for a decade or more. Unable or unwilling to switch off during a time that would have included the walk by the sea and the lighting of the barbecue anyway, but without work turning up to spoil the fun (and it’s amazing how often doing “a few emails” eats up most of the morning or how easily those sausages burn when you are firefighting work problems from afar).

A worliday sounds suspiciously like taking work on holiday with you. It’s neither new or particularly nice.

Lucy probably has it better than most. As a successful freelance writer, she can pen her articles from anywhere she happens to be and at times to suit too, providing that she meets her deadlines. That’s been true of freelancers of various persuasions for years now, but even so, idyllic trips to Cornwall wil be the exception rather than the rule for most freelancers. Many work longer hours than employees.

For those caught up in the rat race life is rarely so sweet. As Lucy points out in her article, those condemned to a 9 to 5 existence rarely have that sort of work flexibility.

Where Cornwall-style worliday makes sense for the rest of us, however, is when you apply it not just to your two weeks in the sun (or rain), but to your whole life.

We shoudn’t need to dream up “new” concepts ike “worlidays”. Leisure should by default dominate every day of your life with work being a mere sideshow.

I find it truly incredible that this isn’t how we organise our lives given the incredible technology at our disposal to do so. Somehow, we have been hoodwinked into accepting the opposite. Instead of liberating us from work, technology is used to chain us to our desks even when we are thousands of miles away on holiday.

We really need to get away from this obsession with work – and being on permanent worliday is definitely a step in the right direction. That’s not going to happen if you are working for someone else, selling your time by the hour. It can happen if the “work” that you do continues to make you money long after you have stopped “working” and that’s the essence of my Plan B as outlined in Get Out While You Can.

But what really puzzles me is the conclusion that Lucy reaches following her worliday in Cornwall. “The mass adoption of the worliday doesn’t mean everyone ought to be given longer holiday entitlements. It means that holiday entitlements should be scrapped altogether.”

Smartphones and laptops have made it harder to escape from the office so we shouldn’t get holidays unless work gets to come too? That is some crazy logic.

Maybe Lucy needs a proper holiday.

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