If you follow me on Twitter, then you know where I am right now: New Zealand. For a month.
(Yep, that’s me, obnoxiously tweeting pictures of the creamy white sand and dreamy turquoise ocean. And the regrettable novelty taxidermy.)
It all sounds pretty exotic (and it is). But for me & my partner in crime (and biz), it’s a kind of normal. We travel a lot.
There have been years where we literally spent half the year abroad. At this point, it’s old hat.
This isn’t even our longest trip — no, that honor goes to a 2.5-month around-the-world “workcation,” a genuine circumnavigation of the globe including one 36-hour travel day with two back-to-back 12-hour flights, over 12 domestic and 4 international flights, 6 weeks of road tripping, 5 major cities on 2 continents, 2 conferences we worked (1 training/presenting, 1 running an exhibit), 1 major new project from scratch, and 3 seasons.
(Ahh, the trip that nearly killed us!)
So I think it’s safe to say that I’ve learned just about everything there is to know about traveling while running a business. The hard way, of course.
And it’s not what you think.
The Heartbreaking Myth of the Workcation
I do so love a good portmanteau and “workcation” is a great one. It means a “working vacation” — also known as the juicy dream of enjoying the beach while working on it, Piña Colada in hand, complete with umbrella.
Also known as “rarer than unicorn tears and twice as hard to come by.”
The problem is this: working requires great attention. So does being present on that beautiful beach.
If you’re any good at what you do — and you are, right?? — then you know what it’s like to really get shit done. You sit at the computer, and it sucks you in. You may nominally exist in your physical body, but your brain and your senses are somewhere else… in The Land Inside the Screen. Workland.
And when you’re in Workland, you can’t truly be in Beachland. You can work in Workland and commute to Beachland at night, but you can’t bi-locate. Physical impossibility and all that. Sorry.
The good news, such as it is? Working on the beach actually sucks. Even before you consider the sand-in-the-keys-underwear-and-nostrils factor.
The net result is this:
- when you’re focused on working, you might as well be in a room with no view, and
- when you’re not working (and you are enjoying that beach), there’s that little nagging thought in the back of your head that you should be working
It’s actually a subtle form of torture. Whatever joy you might have extracted from working on the beach was always, and would ever be, a fantasy.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Try it yourself, and you’ll find that that:
You’ll return from your trip feeling like you never were really, 100% there.
Or you’ll have achieved just barely a fraction of what you planned to, with all the guilt & self-recrimination that comes with.
Take your pick. Which will it be?
Take the Green Pill: the Hidden Option C
Or choose the hidden option C: dump Fantasy by the roadside for being incorporeal and utterly unreasonable… and beg Reality to come home and bitchslap you with her wisdom, the harsh but steady mistress she is.
Without further ado, here’s how to best long-term travel instead of allowing it to best you:
Travel Like a Snail: Stay Put for Several Days
Stay in a location least 3 days if you want to get solid work done. Yes, really. Three days minimum.
Constant moving around is a huge drain on your mental & physical resources. It’s also the dread enemy of routine (and routine is necessary for flow).
“But I’ve gone on vacation and slept in a different bed every night and that didn’t tire me out!” I hear you cry.
Yes, of course you did. So had I. Long, around-the-world trips aren’t just short trips plus extra days… they’re different. Long-term travel has a lot of emergent properties, and the exhaustion of constant motion is one of them.
Travel for 3+ weeks while trying to get shit done, and you’ll soon find out for yourself. You need that time to catch your breath, adjust, to create what little routine and ritual you can.
So give up whirlwind tours and adopt a more stately pace.
When you stay in a place for a while, you also get the benefit of enjoying it when you’re not trying to work. You don’t end up feeling like you missed out because you had to do some email. (And you get to develop a deeper understanding & enjoyment of it, which is the stuff long-term travel is made of.)
Segregate Work / Fun Times with an Iron Fist
You probably love your work. That’s why you started your own business in the first place, right? Me, I’m a workaholic. There’s little I’d rather think about or do. I love my work.
But even so, I love a good vacation. And so do you.
There’s a very special frisson you get from saying “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” Deactivate global roaming, forget what’s on Twitter, leave your inbox to handle itself for a few days, and get gone. “Fuck it!” is the alluring bumpersticker of freedom.
This is the irresistible urge you have to conquer if you want to have a successful work-around-the-world experience.
It’s great to let loose and take a break for a few days. But if you plan to work, and you say “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” — where will your business be?
Then again, if you never get to say “fuck it, I’m on the beach!” — what’s the point of going on a trip in the first place?
The trick is to give yourself both experiences:
Plan to work every 2nd, 3rd or 4th day. Then work all day. You know as well as I that when you work for just an hour or two, you can’t even escape the gravitational pull of Shit That Piled Up, much less Do New Stuff.
The solution is to work all day. But not every day. Otherwise, where’s the fun?
On the days you don’t plan to work… don’t work. Don’t check your email just for 5 minutes. Don’t do any “fun” internet stuff that resembles or leads to work coughTwittercough.
You may think there are alternatives. I ask you: are you, in fact, superhuman? No? Then there really aren’t alternatives.
Here are two strategies which I’ve tried, and which I’ve seen others try. They always fail:
Myth: I’ll just do a little work in the morning and then we’ll enjoy the rest of the day!
Reality: It’s 1pm and you’re still doing email.
Myth: I ought to get that done… but it’s sunny out and the beach / markets / mountains / 4×4 adventure is calling. I’ll do it when we get back. Before/after dinner.
Reality: You have fun. You end up going to a bar or restaurant with your friends/loved ones/new acquaintances you picked up on the side of the road. You tell yourself, “I WILL get that work done later.” But when you get back to your hotel/motel/yurt, you don’t want your yay-I’m-on-vacation feelings to end. You want to bask. Or you’re exhausted in that very special, luxuriating-in-a-day’s-adventure way. Either way, shit does not get done. Then you feel guilty. Which sucks the enjoyment out of, well, your enjoyment.
You could, of course, maintain regular working hours and only “vacate” in the evenings. Like you had a job. But where’s the fun in that? You’re the boss. With great power comes a great ability to say “fuck it!” (Sorry, Peter Parker.)
Much better to keep your work/fun totally separate — since they can’t really be together, anyway — and to devote a full day to each, to wring the last drop of enjoyment, or last drop of focus, out of each and every day.
Hoard Executive Function As If Your Life Depended On It
Because it does.
Every little decision you make drains your Executive Function, that part of your brain that helps you make good choices and exert self-control. Research shows that simply walking down a city street with lots of visual stimuli cuts your self-control to pieces.
Executive Function is the thing you rely on to help you crack open your laptop when you’d much rather be dirt-biking or learning all the different ways to say “I’m drunk” in the local language. And the thing that prevents you from telling an irritating customer “fuck it, I’m on the beach!”
In short: You need spare Executive Function. Badly. And traveling is the equivalent of pouring your Executive Function out onto the street and lighting it on fire.
How many decisions to you have to make when you travel? Let’s see…
Where do we go next? When do we have to leave to get there in time? Should we trust the GPS or break out the map? Should we take the cheaper room in the nicer motel, or the less fancy more expensive room with the jacuzzi tub? Should we take the scenic route or the direct route? Which suitcase should I put this in? Where should we eat for dinner? Should I have the burger with the egg, beet root, onion rings, hash brown, and pickles, or without the pickles? Is this taxi safe? How much do I tip? What do I enter as the code in the motel room safe? Should we buy tickets just for the Liliputbahn, or the combo ticket with the beer garden museum? How many Mai Tais can I drink before walking back becomes a hazard? And where exactly are we staying, again?
Shit, just writing that paragraph made me unable to resist the urge to eat a donut. Luckily there aren’t any in arm’s reach.
Since Executive Function is so critical, and long-term travel seems designed to piss it away, you have to take action.
Save Executive Function by streamlining, simplifying, and deciding in advance.
Eat & live simply. Give up the idea that you have to eat at a different restaurant every time you go out. Rent rooms with kitchenettes, shop at the grocery store, and cook and eat at “home.” (This also saves gobs of money and is infinitely healthier.) (Plus you get to experience things ‘like a local’ which is always fun and illuminating.)
Stay in the one place for a while. (Gee, that sounds familiar.)
Book attractions and places to stay in advance — or if you prefer to live fast & loose, settle on a max 2 or 3 possibilities in most places you will visit. Front-load your Rough Guide-reading, Tripadvisor-surfing and motel-benefit-weighing to save yourself hours of thinking and sheer buckets of Executive Function on the day of.
Drive a car instead of taking trains and buses everywhere. Again with the saving buckets of Executive Function by avoiding all the repacking, shuffling, stations, tickets, time tables.
Develop a system for rolling in & out: Always pack things in the same bag, in the same place. Have separate zipper or velcro bags for things like “all electronics cables” and “all bathroom products” and “all receipts/paperwork”. Have a checklist for things you can’t stand to lose. For things you are likely to lose because they blend into the room (e.g. a pillow), choose a bright color or otherwise make them stand out. When you travel with a companion, divvy up responsibilities so there’s no “Did I pack it? I thought YOU packed it” fiascos.
Plan your next bit of work in advance, so you’re always ready to dive in. This will save you “set up and break down” time when it comes to starting work, and will help you make the most of surprise grey, nasty days when you don’t particularly want to be outside.
Pay out the nose, if necessary, for a prepaid wireless cellular modem instead of always hunting around for a cafe, restaurant, or motel with decent wifi. In some countries, this time-consuming hunt can waste days of your trip in total.
Always arrive in the city the day before your flight/train/bus/llama caravan. Even if your departure is late in the evening. This will guard you against so much last-minute panic.
Finally: Enjoy the Hell Out of Your Trip
Yes, that’s a step!
I know that right about now, the romantic in you is screaming, “But… where’s the magic?!” A lot of these fixes, habits, and tips are, well… not romantic or magical at all.
Staying in one place? Working all day? Eating at home? Cutting your decisions? Driving a car?
Are these the ingredients for a rip roaring good time??
In a very real way, yes.
I’m not giving you this advice because I’m a boring old dried up travel-hater who loves to stab dreams in the eye til they bleed rainbows and glitter. (I love travel! And hate being bled on by dreams. Glitter is so hard to wash out.)
No, I’m simply telling you what I wish someone had told me before I thoroughly botched several very expensive, could-have-been-lifechangingly-awesome trips. And futzed up my business while doing so.
The ideal case is to not work at all on a long trip. That’s more achievable than you might think, but not always possible. (And that’s another essay in the works.)
But if you have to work, my advice will help you get good work done and enjoy your trip.
Follow my prescription, and you won’t find yourself home once more, saddled with that pitiful feeling that “you were never really there.” Nor will your business fall apart while you’re gone because you can’t seem to get anything done.
And… that’s it for now. Travel well!
TweetWant more unicorn-free advice about traveling’ around the world while running your biz? Get my future posts by email (for free!) and follow me on Twitter, cuz I’ve got more posts planned: how to prepare your biz for your trip, what to buy, sign up for, or cancel before you go, and how to deal with the whole “money” situation (traveling around the world gets expensive!). Seeya on the flip side!
Amy this is a seriously epic post on how to combine travel and work.
I have just come home from a 6 week trip that included staying at a resort in Dubai, a castle in Ireland and many different towns and cities around Ireland and England.
I definately agree with staying in the same place for a number of days – we stayed at least 3 days at most places and I had a ‘work day’ at each new stop.
One tip I would add is that on your work day you need to send your travelling partner or family out of the house. It is very difficult to work around people you don’t normally work around.
Cheers
Ainslie
Hey Ainslie! Sounds like a great trip
Good addition re: sending away your traveling companion.
I work with mine, so that never would have occurred to me, but most people don’t!
Nice post Amy! Good to see some practical, helpful advice rather than the usual smug (wish you were here?) angle you usually come across.
Thanks, Laurence! That’s what I was going for.
Those smug “nyah nyah I’m traveling the world” posts always get to me. People gloss over the bad stuff in order to look & sound special. Drives me nuts.
That’s the whole thing about my Unicorn Free stance: I hate shiny happy lies. Will take Reality any day!
What fantastic advice!
But we are in early stages of building WizIQ Online Courses, and the list of things to do and complete keeps piling up always. I haven’t taken a holiday in 6 months. My last holiday was basically 1 day I took after my work at Mumbai. The one before that was 1 day I kept aside after my work in Sri Lanka. That does sound depressing. Not that I regret that. But I do miss out on going to interesting places and meeting new people. Shuttling between Delhi and Bangalore and meeting people working in different IT companies is great, but there could be more diversity.
I am going to try and implement one key lesson from this post : travel and do work every 2nd day while traveling. Let me see how it goes. Cheers
Like many of your posts I felt this one came with the unwritten step 1 of “don’t have kids”. Now, I am making the assumption that you and Thomas don’t have kids, but maybe you do, and just don’t like to write about it on the web. I do, however, often read the great advice in your posts, and think “yeah, all that sounds great, but, where do the kids and family time fit in?” (though, is this just me making excuses?).
Now, I don’t mean this as a criticism at all, and if you don’t have kids I couldn’t expect you to know how they fitted in, and wouldn’t want you to guess.
What I do wonder, though, is if you do know people who do similar things to you (bootstrapped business, self employed, start-up, type stuff) and also have kids, and also share their experience and knowledge in a similar way to you. Or is it just that “don’t have kids” really is the number one unwritten golden rule (or, at least, “don’t have kids until you’ve got the business going”)? Or, is it just that finding time to write about it all is one of the things that gets sacrificed if you do have kids?
If you do have links, suggested people to follow, etc, I’d love to know.
Also, if you do think I’m just making excuses, and need a kick in the behind, feel free to kick away.
I don’t like when people pimp their own services in the comments of other peoples’ posts, but since you asked, Luke, I started a podcast dealing with the issues of “how do you run a web business and be a parent and not have them both totally destroy you and each other.” We only got two episodes in before, um, work and family obligations meant I had to put it on the back burner, but I’m hoping to get back to it soon. It’s called Don’t Touch the Screen.
Lots of the people I know who run their own businesses have kids, including many of my 30×500 students who are working hard to do it.
I know quite a few people who travel a lot with their kids, too.
They just don’t seem to blog about it, though they blog, probably because they view it as a nonissue.
You are just making excuses and need a kick in the behind
Fact is, outside of the first couple years, Thomas and I work drastically reduced hours. I think it’s going to be much easier for us to have kids now that we have our own business than before. Plus we’ll have enough money to hire a nanny so we can get shit done. A couple I know has an older nanny who’s like a grandmother to their daughter, and she even goes on vacation with them. Everybody wins.
OMG, so right!
I think you’ve hit another unicorn on the head. It has always seemed to me to be fantasy when, on TV, I see folks sitting on a beach happily typing away on their laptops. So cliché. I guess if one is playing (aren’t they all?) with pie charts, you might have the mental capacity to do so. But real (esp technical) work? Fuhgeddaboudit.
It is truly disingenuous when folks talk about how much work they think they can get (or have) done while vacationing. (Even “working from home” takes a certain mindset that one cannot delve into haphazardly.) I always take my laptop and all the tools necessary to “build” my code – just in case – but I never plan to do any work. At least, not any more.
Hey Mike! Slaying unicorns is kinda my thing. I feel very lucky to be an “insider” in many worlds that most folks only see from the outside… not because it gives me status or whatever, but because I get to see how it REALLY is.
Watching famous speakers get nervous and vomit before their talks. Meeting folks who just had big exits for their startups, seeing how pale and defeated they seem. The crap you’d NEVER imagine from the outside.
I’ve committed to shining a light on the truth instead of perpetuating the sexy myths.
So thank you for telling me you enjoy it!
Thanks for this advice! I’ve tended to go to one place and stay there rather than visiting the other local cities and dragging myself around, but haven’t made the clean separation between work and play. I also love the idea of spending money to save on frustration with getting wifi.
Amen, Sister!
I’ve been a “technomad” for the last 4 years now and agree with you almost entirely. I would simply say take all your advice and at least double it!
I try to stay for at least a month in any one place. People I meet are constantly shocked by how few “checklist activities” I’ve ticked off in the weeks I’ve been somewhere: they can “see” everything a place has to offer in a few days and then are gone.
The difference is I’m living in that place. In many ways my work day is the same as “at home”, except for my lunchbreak I’ll go freediving in crystal clear tropical waters, or surfing, or drive out to a favorite restaurant to carry on working as sun sets.
Last year I spent six months working from a beach hut in Thailand, with cable broadband, of course, rented from my favorite restaurant where I ate almost every meal. Weekends, evenings or a predetermined “vacation” for a few days allowed me to do everything I wanted to do, and living with the locals allowed me to understand them better than a fortnight of regular “vacation”.
That is exactly what I have in mind. Except perhaps only one month instead of six. Do you have any advice on how to find out in advance where to go to find that beach hut where you can work (As a programmer that need some internet access, but not neccesarily a fast one) and go to the beach for a swim or snorkel dive in the breaks. How did you find that place you went to? Cheers!
Hi Martin,
My techniques for finding good places, in order of preference:
1) Friends who live there already
2) Friends of friends of friends in that place (that’s how I found my beach hut)
3) helpx.net – it’s interesting how the host/guest relationship changes (for the better) when no money changes hands. Most recently I spent 6 weeks living with a Bedouin tribe in the desert (I was testing out my 3G solar laptop setup, getting about 5 hours working online a day, doing more planning on paper etc.)
4) Craigslist etc. – if you’re staying a month or more in a place then subletting an apartment or whatever is significantly cheaper (and often better) than paying per night somewhere
5) Just walking the beach! What I’ve done a few times is find the swankiest beach hotel, and stayed in the cheaper place next to it. Then you can use the hotel’s wifi (often a scratch card system), or even just work in their nice cafe – they normally don’t mind as long as you buy coffee etc. I’ve even got to the stage where I’ve used their pool because I know all the staff so well! (Note: you might want to tone down your reality to the “normal 9-5er” guests in the hotel – ruining someone’s very expensive 2-week honeymoon by telling them a) how long you’ve been there and b) how much you’re paying is not cool!)
So did you have work visas for all these places (You need a work visa to be able to earn money in a foreign country, even if it involves running an Internet based business)?
(There’s also the little irritating bit about getting visas, but that’s a lot easier for citizens of developed^Wwestern countries).
Nope, Devdas, I don’t. Ask any immigration lawyer “Do I need a work visa to be able to answer emails from my students?” and they will laugh at you or tell you they don’t know.
There are no laws that deal with our kind of business. What am I doing to “earn” money? All I’m doing is answering emails from my 30×500 students, or our intern who’s handling support for Freckle, or writing the occasional lesson for 30×500.
No one’s paying me to answer emails. I’m not billing. The money isn’t being earned, it’s already in the bank… in the case of Freckle, the money gets deposited automatically, all the time, whether I “work” or not.
If you’re a novelist and you head to a foreign country to hole up and write some chapters, do you need a work visa? You’re not actually earning money.
If you’re a developer in a foreign country, and you write something for fun, and it later sells, were you working?
The laws need to be updated because nobody can tell you for sure yes or no, because the law never even imagined life like this.
I think the key phrase is “earn money in a foreign country”. You’re not really working in that country, as your input and output are from wherever your company is registered.
Your example of a novelist is spot on: no writer would ever think of applying for a work visa so they could pop off to the south of France to finish their novel.
Hey, I’m a writer too – I just write code instead of prose!
Couple years ago freelancing while traveling worked out pretty well for me. I had tickets or stories assigned, I committed 30 hours a week to the project. I would start in the morning, work in the hostel or a cafe (never the beach) and then enjoy evening and night life of the place I visited. I totally agree that you have to stay in one place for a while to build some routine – find places with reliable WiFi etc. Nowadays I’m more immersed into projects I’m working on and cannot imagine working like this again – tot to mention running your own business.
Hi Amy! Do you plan to offer your 30×500 class again anytime soon? I need a class-style kick in the pants.
Hey, Angela! I’m going to open up the application process for 30×500 very soon: http://unicornfree.com/30×500-s2012/
Bless your heart and your sandy toes!
Thanks for this very true, helpful and extremely articulate take on the ‘location independent’ lifestyle.
I’ve done it and felt the not-so-fun pull of ‘I’m in London and I have to work’ and ‘I’m in London, I should be checking shit out!’ After a year of nomadism, staying in places for weeks or months at a time, I’m happy to be in one place.
I also noticed how many decisions had to be made, how much energy goes into figuring basic stuff out and how much of that energy I’d rather be spending on my creative projects.
I know, first world problem, but it’s not very pleasant at all.
I like your idea of work, work, work, then PLAY! Not so different than a regular work week.
Here’s my novel new idea: take vacations like ‘normal’ people. After years of working while traveling, I think I’m going to try for a beach vacation with no laptop at hand.
Thanks again for this wonderful post.
Yo Amy, thanks for keeping it real.
When you’ve got work to do, go to work! With a desk! When you want to go to the beach, do the BEACH!
Whoever thought it was a good idea to combine Work and Beaches must have been insane.
Really. I bet the same guy recommends checking email during sex.
Yes! This is so brilliant. And really helpful.
I’m going to art school in France this May for 18 months and I’ll need to work (freelance web design) while I’m there. I also intend on taking some fun side trips since hey! I’m already there, I might as well. I’d been wondering about the work-fun balance and this method makes so much sense to me.
I’m all for happy glitter and magic, but it’s so refreshing to have practical work tips laid out for you. Thank you.
This is so funny and SO true!
Although I’m not traveling at the moment, I’m an American ex-pat in Brazil – and I face this dilemma every day.
Friends: “Let’s go to the beach!” Me: “I gotta work…”
Friends: “Wanna go out tonight?” Me: “Can’t – I’m teaching English class.”
I haven’t quite hit a healthy work-fun balance yet (mainly because in addition to “regular work,” I’m creating my own product so that I do have more away-from-keyboard freedom!) – and I often feel guilty that I’m not enjoying the country more. I’m in BRAZIL, for goodness’ sake! People HONEYMOON here!