Freeing yourself from the daily grind

Now is the time of year when most Americans start to daydream about travel.  It is, after all, cold outside; the holidays are over.  We're all faced with the goals and challenges of a new year, and we start to dream about the exotic, faraway places we've always wanted to visit.

The problem, of course, is that the American workplace isn't exactly set up to provide us with lots of time off for our dream trips.  Thus, my principle for getting more time off has always been this: Travel time is something you have to create for yourself. 

In my book, Vagabonding, I examine several strategies people use to make time for travel. Short of simply asking for more vacation time, many people negotiate long-term leaves of absence or sabbaticals (paid or unpaid, depending upon the situation) to enable travel.  Others fine-tune their careers so that they are doing seasonal or contract work, which frees them up to travel between work engagements.  Still others will quit a job and then work a long-term travel stint into their life before accepting a new job.

With the advent of new communication technologies it has also become possible to adopt what has been called a "global mobility lifestyle" — which allows you to redesign your work life in such a way that it can mix in with extended travel.  Entrepreneur and Princeton University guest lecturer Tim Ferriss has written a book about this, The 4-Hour Workweek, that will hit bookstores in April.  I contacted him by e-mail to get some perspective on making your work work for you (instead of the other way around):

What are the biggest misconceptions people have about work, and making time for travel?

Tim Ferriss: The biggest misconception about work is that you have to spend most of your life doing it. 

Take a step back and ask yourself a few questions: How do decisions change if retirement isn't an option? What is the exact dollar amount per month you need to live a well-off mobile lifestyle?  The idea of sacrificing 20-30 years in the prime of life should be seen for what it is: absolutely unnecessary.

I've spent the last four years traveling through more than 25 countries interviewing people who have automated income or escaped the office, often without quitting their jobs.  Some of them negotiate "working from the home office" while actually trekking in Africa or touring in Europe, satellite phones and Quad-band Treos in hand. Others create simple virtual businesses that enable them to quit the grind and take one-to-three-month "mini-retirements" a few times per year.  These people range from Lamborghini-driving 21-year olds, to single mothers who make $40,000 or less per year.  Once you control the most valuable currencies in the digital age — mobility and time — $40,000 can get you more luxury lifestyle than a $500,000 per year investment banker who can't escape the office.

True liberation isn't just more time off.  It is forever breaking the bonds that confine you to a single location. 

So what is the best way to negotiate your way into a mobile work lifestyle?

TF: Whatever you negotiate with a boss, the ground rules are the same: make yourself as expensive as possible to lose — and ask at the right time. 

It has to be less painful for them to say "yes" to your request than to risk losing you.  Thus, get them to invest as much as possible in you, whether community college training courses (software, selling, database management, whatever), mentoring with senior staff, or otherwise.  Demonstrate an upward curve in productivity and then make your request at a time when it would be a disaster to lose you, such as during seasonal crunch time, after other employees have been lost and the company is understaffed, or when a project requires skills only you possess.  Don't ask for the time off (or remote work) to start just then; just make them give you an answer when they can't afford to lose you.  This gives you all the leverage. 

For negotiating a remote working arrangement specifically, there is a great sequence many of my case studies use, called the "hour-glass" approach because it begins with a long period out of the office, returns to a short period, then expands back to a long period.  Here's how it works:

1) Use a pre-planned project or emergency (family issue, personal issue, relocation, home repairs, whatever) that requires you to take one or two weeks out of the office.

2) Say that you recognize you can't just stop working, and that you would prefer to work instead of take vacation days.

3) Propose how you can work remotely and offer, if necessary, to take a pay cut for that period (and that period only) if performance isn't up to par upon returning.

4) Allow the boss to collaborate on how to do it so that he or she is invested in the process.

5) Make the two weeks "off" the most productive period you've ever had at work. 

6) Show your boss the quantifiable results upon returning, and tell him or her that — without all the distractions, commute, etc. — you can get twice as much done.  Suggest two or three days at home per week as a trial for two weeks.

7) Make those remote days ultra-productive.

8) Suggest only one or two days in the office per week.

9) Make those days the least productive of the week.

10) Suggest complete five-day-per-week mobility — the boss will go for it.

My book contains full scripts for negotiating with bosses.

Many people often can't stop thinking about work minutiae, even when they're far away from the traditional office setting.  How do you get your mind, and not just your body, out of the office?

TF: There are two requirements to get the mind out of the office: allowing alternative activities, and reconsidering the concept of time. 

Sitting on a beach and sipping margaritas is a relaxing recharge for two or three days, after which it's just plain boring.  Lacking an external focus, the mind turns inward on itself and creates problems to solve, even if the problems are undefined or unimportant.  Office-think is the default mode for most people.  Plan some leisure activities that push your limits and require focus, like diving the Blue Hole in Belize or climbing Mt. Fuji in Japan.  Remember that subtracting the bad does not create the good.  It leaves a vacuum.  Decreasing income-driven work isn't the end goal.  Living more — and becoming more — is.

Then there is the question of time.  In the experience of those I've interviewed, it takes two to three months just to unplug from work routines and become aware of how much we distract ourselves with constant motion.  Can you have a two-hour dinner with Spanish friends without getting anxious?  Can you get accustomed to a small town where all businesses take a siesta for two hours in the afternoon?  If not, you need to ask: why?

Learn to slow down.  If you create a mobile lifestyle, whether through a remote work arrangement or entrepreneurship, escaping the "too-weak vacation" world is as simple as using a few common technologies and believing it can be done.  The alternative to binge travel that I recommend — the mini-retirement — entails relocating to one place for one to six months before going home or moving to another locale.  This forces the growth-inducing introspection most of us have never had time for.

Above all, remember three things.  First, life can end at any time, so don't postpone it.  Second, if it doesn't end, the average person works 500 months in their lifetime, so there's no rush to get to the office.  Third, people have short memories and are too busy thinking about themselves to worry about you. 

Take the journey and leave the office behind.

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The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss is available for preorder at Amazon.com.