A Place Where Solos Can Work Away
To me, there’s nothing more depressing than the concept of the staycation – essentially, spending valuable days off from work hanging around the house and area where you live. Sure, I get the concept of local sightseeing (I live in the tourism capitol after all) but that’s what visitors and houseguests are for. To me, vacation means getting away – far, far away.
Still, as a small law firm owner, I realize that true vacations aren’t always possible. Even if you can successfully master the planning, a trip of sufficient duration — i.e, more than a three-day weekend — can be costly and often not worth the effort when a pile of work awaits upon return.
Having wrestled with this conundrum myself, I was intrigued to learn, via the New York Times of co-working vacations. As the article, by Tanya Mohn describes,
These new [co-working vacation] centers are an offshoot of co-working spaces, which offer the benefits of an office environment on a temporary basis. But they also provide a place to sleep, have fun and mingle with colleagues — not in humdrum office parks, but in exotic locations around the world, in the European countryside close to urban centers or in warm-weather destinations like Bali.
Call it the busman’s holiday for the digital age.
A co-working vacation could benefit solo and small lawyers in several ways. First, they provide a break from routine and an opportunity to spend time in new surroundings without really leaving the office. Most co-working vacation sites offer amenities like high speed wireless, desks and conference rooms for those who choose to bring others from their office. At the same time, in contrast to the home office, a co-working resort offers a chance to network and return home with the souvenir of new contacts.
Some of the people profiled in the article live nomadically, traveling from one co-working space to another, all over the globe. That probably wouldn’t work well for most lawyers who can’t stay away from meetings with clients and in-person court dates forever. Still a co-working vacation might be just the kind of change in routine that most solos need to stay fresh.
This is really interesting. Thanks for sharing!
Sorry, but the Times article reads like something from The Onion. Maybe, just maybe, for a single person, but with your family? It sounds like the most depressing thing imaginable. I will stick with the traditional “check your emails occasionally, return a call when you must, and turn a document late at night if necessary.” Even when I was at large firms, with other partners in my group available to help out, and trusted associates, I still felt compelled to at least stay up to speed with what was going on while I was away. And, for what its worth, I have found over the years that a nice flip side of regularly being very responsive to clients is that they will go out of their way not to bother me on vacation unless it is really, really important.
Bill
This is Great ideas.. Awesome I am impressing Thanks for sharing…
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