A little less than a year before our departure, I took a promotion to VP with my employer. The company is fully remote, so the only real question was around time requirements as we continued to create our plans to take to the road for two years. We also have two young girls and I wanted to be intentional with my time as we set out, making sure that I was not always tied to my computer. 

Personal alignment is a big part of my life and my family’s life. There are things I am deeply bound to and when something does not align for these factors in my life, I have to reassess how. I’ll admit that I had questions about how this role aligned with the new future that my family was creating and progressing towards on a daily basis.This process of discovery will not happen in a vacuum or just one time and so we will be on this journey together. One of my first realizations was a traditional schedule would not work, or align, for me and for the family. 

THE TRANSITION – Recreating my Schedule

When I decided to take on this role, ironically we were on a week-long camping trip at Jellystone’s Golden Valley in Bostic NC for Halloween. I had had some practice with balancing remote work life while traveling during the summer. For the prior two summers, we had set out for 2-4 weeks to travel first west and then south from our home in NC. Ever since the pandemic, I had been very intentional with my work schedule and my role at that time allowed me that freedom most days. You can see my typical work schedule below, although it changed a bit with the new role. And I didn’t follow to a tee everyday – some days we went out to explore longer and I made up for it on other days. I don’t mind work a couple of hours early on weekend days in order to have more freedom throughout the week. 

One of the first things I did when I began my transition was block off my Fridays as ‘Focus/Free Days’. We use an email and calendar system called Front, which I really do love, that allows my whole team to see my calendar and allows me to disable the ability for anyone to add a zoom call by blocking off any particular day. I wanted my Fridays free in order to have the option to for a focus day at work or a free day to do as I pleased. I have slack on my phone so I can be available for emergencies. 

Typical work schedule while traveling:

Wake up: 4am

Read/Work: 4-6 am

Workout: 6-7

Breakfast: 7-8am

School work with girls/additional work: 8-11am 

Lunch: 11-12

Work: 12-2:30 (Zoom calls)

Break and then explore: 2:30-5

Cook and Eat 5-6:30

Relax til bedtime (maybe send someone off emails or slacks)

Bedtime: 8:30pm

While getting up at 4am does not align for everyone, it just helps me create the freedom I want later in my day so we can take advantage of the opportunity to explore while we are traveling. With young kids, you can likely recreate this schedule to stay up late and wake up late if that works better for you. I also create space to work early on weekend mornings and sometimes even a full day. This allows us to visit key tourist sites during the week when they will be less busy. It also means I get quite a bit of uninterrupted time to work, without the team pinging me with their needs. Again, this may not be the solution for everyone, just ideas to explore.