As I approach my fourth year of university, I’ve started thinking about the reality that within the next few years, I will need to get a grown-up job. Some people look forward to making their own money and success (get your bag, girlies), and others dread the idea of having a corporate 9 to 5 and believe it could possibly kill their personal lives. Personally, my feelings about it are a bit of a mixed bag. But what I do know is that I’m still going to want to enjoy some travel when I can, and I know I’m not alone.
If you end up with a big-girl job in your early 20s — or even a summer internship while you’re still in college — that doesn’t have a very flexible time off policy, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t have the hot girl summer of your dreams… as long as you do it right.
Enter “quiet vacationing,” a concept where you go on vacation without taking paid time off or telling your manager, and just doing all your necessary work remotely. For those people who want to go on vacation but don’t want to use up vacation days, a quiet vacation is the way to go. It doesn’t mean you don’t work at all, as would (hopefully) be the case if you take actual time off. Instead, you do the amount of work that is required of you, appear in meetings, and so on, then spend the rest of your time enjoying your vacation. So long as you do your job and reach the goals set out for you, then what does it matter where or how you do it, right?
In fact, a survey conducted by ResumeBuilder.com found that one in eight workers plan on taking a quiet vacation this summer, and one in 10 admitted to having done so already. Lots of people online have been talking about quiet vacationing lately, especially since lots of jobs are still remote, or you have the option of being remote.
Many might think of quiet vacationing like some kind of lazy Gen Z trend. But ultimately, I think all we want is not to have our jobs overtake everything else in our lives. Thankfully, the European work culture is on the rise, where the standard in countries like France and the U.K. have a requirement of almost a month’s worth of paid time off per year.
Whether you will be quietly vacationing this summer or not, I hope you get to relax, and make some money, and… maybe don’t send this article to your boss.