I've been traveling (while working) with my little family for the past 6 weeks straight, and I've been getting the same question from folks on repeat: 

How do you balance work and exploring while we’re traveling?

Today, I'm spilling the beans on how we make it work so well.

In April, I hit the road with my family (my husband, myself, our 2 kiddos, and our dog) and said “see ya later” to our house for 6 weeks.

My husband and I are accustomed to traveling and being digital nomads (we've been doing it for 8 years now from all over the world), but this is the longest trip all at once we've taken with our kids (4 and 1 year old).

Earlier this year, we decided to go somewhere else for some of the Spring season.

Why?! Well, we LOVE where we live, but we get snow and cold weather in the Spring on our mountain, and by this point, we’re feeling eager for warmth (yet, still have a couple more months of the cold).

So we figured if we can work from anywhere, why not go somewhere warm for a while, then return to our cabin for Summer. Literally, why not?!

So we just spent 4 weeks living, working, and just doing life at the beach. Then we spent 2 weeks in Tennessee visiting family. 

Here is how we balance our work while traveling:

First, I don’t know if the word “balance” is the right word choice because it isn’t 50/50 and balanced at all, to be honest.

Some days are more work-heavy, while others lean more towards exploring where we are. It just depends on the workload we each have, and it varies day by day.

It also varies based on your situation. For example, with or without kids 😊 

When we didn't have kids, we went on trips where we'd work from our travel trailer as we road-tripped around the country exploring national parks, and we've also done trips where we worked from other countries as we explored different cities for a while.

We'd make a list of the things we wanted to do in an area and do them around our work schedules.

For example, when we were roadtripping across Utah, we would hike and explore slot canyons early weekday mornings, then come back afterwards and work from the campsite at a picnic table. Not a bad workday!

With kids now, it's quite different though - although very doable!

This is what we do and how it works for us (with two little ones)...

Jeff is a remote employee (works remotely for a company), so he has more “normal” work hours, whereas I’m an online entrepreneur who makes my schedule and can be very flexible.

Jeff works a normal workday ending at around 4pm while I’m on mom-duty (take care of our kiddos) during the days. I try to get my work in during baby girl's first nap of the day. Then when Jeff is finished with work, we go explore!

At times, I’ll catch up on a few work things when the kids are in bed for the night, and often Jeff can be flexible with his work to end a little earlier in the day if there’s something we want to do sooner.

The flexibility of remote work is truly the ONLY way we’d be able to up and go do life somewhere else for a while when it works for us.

We've been able to go and do so many things on our own and as a family because of this.

The biggest factor in how we've made it work so well in each life season for us is twofold:

1. We give ourselves plenty of time where we are so we have time to do work and explore and don't feel rushed (this is key)

2. We're flexible.

I think it's so cool that our kids get to see and experience that our work revolves around our lives first and foremost.

Hope this helps as you plan your own adventures 🤎