How to Balance Your Life During Travel

Working while travelling can prove to be quite an adventure in itself. Building the right systems and processes has helped me with balancing work and play. I enjoy making the most of my time, this creates a long to-do list of activities and obligations (i.e. Trying to take over the world). Rigid planning can help in certain situations, but flexibility is key when the unforeseen arises. It takes critical thinking and sacrifices to create the life that I want.

How to structure your life for maximum productivity.

I like to live life in quite a structured way. I've spent many years building my productivity system and structuring it in a way that puts a lot of my life on autopilot. I use aspects of professional project management, task lists, journaling, minimalism, time blocking and many more productivity practices. You might think that it gets confusing, but at the core, I've picked and pulled pieces from all sorts of systems that work for me. In other terms, I've built a beautiful Frankenstein's monster.

During one of my bigger transitions, a career switch, I wanted to be as prepared as possible. Up to that point in my life, I hadn't really pushed myself that hard. Wanting to be as prepared as possible lead me down a route of researching productivity techniques.

I found that if you want to be a higher-than-average achiever, you must do things in a better-than-average way. Despite all of the disciplines I've pulled from to build a system that seems to work for me, I learned the best thing was planning. Without planning, you won't have an efficient way to get to where you want to be. Honing in on my planning has allowed me to manage my resources in a manner that fits with where I want to be in life.

I didn't treat my planning as gospel, but rather as a guideline of how to accomplish what I wanted. Of course, there requires a balance of rigidity and flexibility. I would often reassess what was going on in my life to make room for things I felt I was lacking. Too much time studying and neglecting socialization? Create a task to reach out to friends on a consistent basis. Too many distractions? Remove them to create your best working space. Lacking concentration at times? Research how to hack into your concentration and adjust accordingly. Too much time on social media? Well, maybe cut back so you can still get that dopamine rush we all crave.  

While I managed to get to a spot where I felt I was more productive than most others, I never stopped changing and adapting to new and forgotten requirements. I understood that my life was ever-changing and I revelled in the idea of rebuilding my systems to make myself not only more productive but happier.

There is always so much to do

I've been struggling to stay on top of all of the pursuits I'd like to accomplish in life. While I do enjoy staying busy and accomplishing stuff, sometimes I feel overwhelmed with all of it. I often feel the need to enjoy my life while also building myself up and becoming a better person every day.

To be honest, I didn't know how hard it would be to accomplish all I wanted while trying to "work" and trying to enjoy life. Right now I find tasks build up after busy days of adventuring and travelling. It is showing me the most important pieces that are actually getting me to where I want to be.

I'm in the middle of a phase that I think would be considered "rebranding". I'm taking life slowly and being easy on myself if I don't complete all the tasks I want to in a day. I'm learning how to balance this degree of travel and work. While my tasks do build up, I know that a solid few hours of work can get me back on track. I don't want to start missing out on travelling for the sake of writing these blog entries.

How to go with the flow

Not everything can be planned to a "T". I'm finding I sometimes can't do things the way I'd like. Sometimes I'm gone all day and haven't been able to accomplish all I want. This is leading to days of pure work, where I don't do much else but catch up on all the things I want to get done.

I'm learning a lot about how hard it is to plan from afar. I've been having a lot of interactions with locals and fellow travellers giving me recommendations. It's showing me flaws in my planning that I want to fix as soon as possible.

One of the biggest struggles I'm looking to get over right now is both the lack and over-ness of analyzing. When I booked my first accommodations, I hadn't done enough research to know what I was getting into. I booked the same accommodations for one week in a row. In hindsight, I would have preferred to move around a bit more instead of staying in one place. The positive side is that it has allowed me to see this place more intimately than others might. Going forward, I'll be leaving a bit more planning to spur-of-the-moment ideas.

While I do let my work build up, I'm enjoying times of deep focus, deep work, and task-crushing. I've noticed for a while now that I enjoy these types of days. I'm finding that I'm happy with this balance of travel and work. This might not work for everyone, but that's the joy of finding balance, you learn what works best for you.

Sacrifices

If you haven't already read the entry, I've spoken about sacrifices in the past. I feel they are highly relevant to finding balance in travelling. While I'm in the midst of exploring new places and doing exciting things, I'm finding out what is actually providing value to my life. I'm cutting out a lot of "filler" tasks that don't add as much value as I thought. Travelling requires sacrifices to skip what you think you want to do, to do something you actually do want to do in the moment.

Some of the tasks that I've previously viewed as crucial and critical are showing themselves to be not quite as important as I thought. I've made sacrifices to not travel with my harmonica to save weight thus allowing me to be more agile and allow me to focus on other aspects. I'm not spending money on gyms so far, despite the idea I had built that going to the gym to lift heavy things and put them down makes me the happiest (I've lost weight from all the walking and hiking I've done so far).

I've seen tasks become easier to do while travelling too. Socializing comes naturally to me when I put myself in places where I can talk with others. I'm learning more about languages than I could ever do at home through Rosetta Stone and Duolingo. Saving money becomes easier as I've placed myself in a location that is largely cheaper than what I am normally used to.  And last but not least, taking care of my body has been really easy with the prices of massages here!

Learnings

I admit that I can often bite off more than I can chew. This lifestyle often requires sacrifices to get what you want. So far on my journey, I've been learning more about how to balance all aspects of my life. While I know I can never be perfect, I hope to be able to ebb and flow properly to keep myself happy and fulfilled.

Writing this had me realize a few things. First, I'm actually living the future I had planned for. So much time had gone into preparing for these experiences. Second, I'm adapting and taking steps toward a future I really want. I enjoy putting in the time to work on things that make me feel like I'm making the most of my life. Finally, I'm exactly where I want to be. Sitting here with a beach breeze writing and checking off tasks is the dream I never knew I had.

"Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape." - Michael McGriffy, M.D.