Who needs a holiday when you can have a worliday?

A worliday is a bit like a holiday and a bit like work and, contrary to what you might think, it is really rather nice, writes LUCY KELLAWAY

FOR MOST of this summer I’m on worliday. This is a new word I have just made up to describe something I’ve been doing for a few years but that now seems in need of a name.

Worliday is a bit like holiday and a bit like work. 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 e-mails 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. Or rather, I’d look at the glowering sky and put the sausages under the grill instead.

Most professional workers have been taking worlidays for some time now. The steady advance of the concept can be traced by the rise and fall of the automatic out-of-office e-mail.

Five years ago these were all the rage: if you sent anyone an e-mail in August, you would get an automatic message straight back telling you that the recipient was off on a two-week break.

Then, a couple of years later, the response changed: you would still get the automated message but it would be swiftly followed by a proper response tapped into a BlackBerry from a Tuscan poolside.

This year, you will just get the message from the pool – hardly anyone sends out-of-office e-mails at all.

Indeed, last week I had lunch with the head of a media company who has forbidden his staff from sending them at all, on the grounds that they are both pointless and unprofessional.

Most people will tell you that worlidays are psychologically unhealthy.

It is surely terrible that we are all chained to BlackBerrys and in touch with offices even when supposedly having a break in the sun (or rain).

Taking time off completely, stress experts say, is essential if we are to connect with our families and with our souls and recharge our batteries.

But in my experience it doesn’t work quite like this. A human battery is a funny piece of kit, and doesn’t always respond well to a sudden, cold-turkey immersion in idleness with the family in a strange place.

Intellectual stimulation charges my batteries more reliably than sitting in the rain with bored teenagers.

Back in the old pre-internet days when holidays represented a forcible break from work there was a wild dash to get everything done before you left.

Then you arrived at your destination shattered and with a mind stuffed full of work concerns.

It used to take the first week to relax and stop worrying about what was happening at work. By the time you had stopped fretting, it was time to go back to work, and then further discombobulating acclimatisation was required in the other direction.

The first great thing about the worliday is that there is no stark transition between the two states.

Because I work when I’m away, there is no unseemly dash before I go. Better still, the worliday means you should be able to go away more often to compensate for the fact that you are still (sort of) working when absent.

This means the worliday is not family unfriendly at all as families get twice as many holidays. Admittedly they only have half the minds of their parents at any given time, but most children may see this as an advantage.

However, 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. The current arrangement only makes sense for people who work fixed hours – they clearly need fixed holidays too.

But for professionals who have not worked set hours for decades, fixed holidays seem an anachronism.

Netflix, which has a famously groovy culture, worked this out some time ago. Its employees are allowed to take whatever holiday they feel like taking – no one keeps records.

The danger with such a scheme is that ambitious people could stop going away at all, but that is already a danger with the existing system.

Indeed, so long as people are paid for results rather than for sitting at their desks, taking a great deal of worliday seems entirely consistent with achieving a great deal of success.

And on that happy note, I’m about to pack my bags and head off cheerfully with my family to Yorkshire for a few days.

In my suitcase will be my sunglasses and Wellington boots – as you never know with the weather up there – as well as my BlackBerry and computer.