(Mostly) Not Working on Vacation

My Thanksgiving week trip ended a day and a half ago. As I've begun the week back at work I'm reflecting on how I (mostly) didn't work on vacation.

I've noted before that it's harder and harder in the remote-work era to avoid work while on vacation. Not only does Corporate America (and in this case I mean workers as well as leaders) have an unhealthy culture of work-life imbalance, but modern technology makes it easier than ever to reason, "I'll just join a meeting or two while I'm out," "I'll work on that report that's due after I get back," or, "I'll keep up with email since so many important things are going on." It's harder than ever to truly unplug— and so many people think that's okay.

Unplugging while on vacation has seldom been a challenge for me. I've always made a point of it. And for the last many years I've had managers and colleagues who support good boundaries.

There is one concession I make to "working" while on vacation. I quote working because it's such a minor thing. I delete email. Yes, I check my work email, via my phone, once a day or so to delete it. 😳 No, I don't delete important stuff. But I do clear out all the spam and automated notifications. It takes generally a minute or so a day, and it greatly reduces the cognitive load I face when I do return to work after my trip. I'm not snowed under by having 200+ unread emails in my queue. On Monday I only had maybe 50. 😅

Sometimes in pruning email and Slack messages that are unimportant I spot something that's truly time sensitive. I spotted one of those early last week and dove in to address it. It took 5 minutes, maybe 10 tops. For me that was a real break from the norm. It was frustrating having to do it. But I do dive into things like that every once in a while when it seems they could blow up if others press the issue in my absence.

Staying at the Hilton Resorts World in Las Vegas

Vegas Travelog #3
Hilton Resorts World, Las Vegas - Tue, 27 Nov 2023. 9am.

It's the start of Day 2 of the trade show here in Las Vegas. This entry isn't about the trade show, though. It's about the hotel where I'm staying. This trip, like AWS Reinvent a year ago, I'm staying up at the Resorts World casino. Last time I stayed at the Conrad hotel there because I found a great rate; this time I'm at the Hilton because the Conrad was a bit more expensive. And both were way more expensive than last year. My tradeoff of walking extra distance to save some money vs. staying closer to the show hasn't paid off so well this time around.



My room at the Hilton is on the 54th floor. The room itself is nice though a notch below the nice room I had at the Conrad last year both in size and luxury.



The view out the window is partly obstructed by the mammoth video screen on the south face of the hotel. Those horizontal beams you see through the window have outward facing LED lights. They're part of a 300' tall illumination system.

That weird thing in the center of the picture that looks like an imaging glitch? That's the Las Vegas Sphere.

The afternoon view out my window faded quickly. The photos above I captured around 4pm. By 5pm it's pitch black in Vegas this time of year. Vegas is located at the eastern edge of the time zone, so that's what happens. On the flip side, early dusk means early dawn. The sun's already up at 6:30am.



I woke up naturally around 6 this morning. I figure that's because I somewhat acclimated to Eastern time on our Thanksgiving trip last week. I've used the quiet morning hours today both to relax while doing some personal stuff on my computer and to catch up on some work stuff I was way too tired to deal with last night.

Too bad this hotel doesn't have balconies in its rooms like my room at the Cosmopolitan a few months ago did. I think next year I won't come back here. It's a long walk to the Sands convention center and it's not the cheap price compared to other hotels that are closer, nicer, or both.