About Working on Vacations

I wonder how many people enjoy doing their work while they are on vacation?

This must sound crazy, but when I'm relaxing on a vacation, or a few days away from the office, I usually find myself inspired to do some work.

But I'm lucky because the work I do, or at least most of it, I love.  It's not the work I did when I was a Vice President or CEO in high tech.  I did enjoy much of that, but only small portions of that work was interesting enough to do on a vacation.  Usually the only high tech work I did on vacation was reading and learning more about strategic marketing and long term planning.  The rest of that work was best left for when I was back in the office.

No, the work I love to do is to build up the CareerPlanner.com web site with good content and innovative career tools that can help people achieve better careers.  Now that work gets me motivated and that is what I find myself doing on a holiday such as today.

So one could say it's not work if I enjoy it so much that when I wake up on a holiday it's the first thing I do after getting a cup of coffee.

If you enjoy it so much can you legitimately call it work?  There has to be a better name for it when you are able to do the work you love.  When it adds real value to the world.  When it helps people.  And especially when the work you do is productive and not wasted. 

So much of the work one does when one is managed by a less than capable boss is a waste of everyones time.

I remember being on a board of directors where one of the investors was just plain stupid.  We all wasted more time trying to explain the basics of the business to this person.  Meeting after meeting we had to answer the same questions.  Well no he wasn't stupid.  He had just stopped learning years ago and was cruising by on his reputation.  People that have stopped learning are not very useful to have around.  Well more on that at another time.

My only point here is that when you do the work that you love, it is so rewarding that you might find yourself waking up and doing some work one morning when you are on holiday.  That will be a true test of whether it's the right work for you.