If you work a full-time job, you may be wondering how you can possibly travel and still be successful in your career. Well, it’s not impossible. You just have to plan ahead and be smart about the decisions you make (both in regard to your career and your travel plans).
With this in mind, here are several tips you can use to have success in this part of your life.
- Find Careers With Flexibility
The first step is to find a career that gives you the flexibility to travel more than your traditional clock-in, clock-out, 9-to-5, corporate America desk job. You need a job where it’s possible to spend some time working remotely. Thankfully, these jobs are far more common today than even just a couple of years ago.
While you can always find a full-time remote position, you should note that many of these jobs still require you to put in a full 40 to 50 hours per week. So while you might be able to work from anywhere, this doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll have a lot of time to explore your new locales.
A better option is to find careers that offer both remote working abilities and the flexibility to set your own hours. For example, you could study to get your real estate license online. Once you have your license, you can essentially choose how much you work by only taking on the clients you want.
Another good option is freelance writing. You can make a six-figure income as a writer and work whenever and wherever you want.
- Plan Your Calendar in Advance
If you want to make time for more travel, you have to carve out the space in your calendar. The further in advance you do this, the better.
While there’s something to be said for spontaneous trips – and a last-minute deal is often too good to pass up – planning your calendar out six to nine months in advance makes it much easier to fit work projects and professional obligations around your travel schedule than the other way around.
- Tack on Travel
Traveling for a business trip? Going out of town for a friend’s weekend wedding? One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to integrate travel into your calendar is by tacking personal travel onto the front or back end. This cuts down on travel time and costs, which makes vacationing more practical. You’ll waste less time on airplanes and more time enjoying sights and sounds.
- Be Strategic With Holidays
There’s no better way to maximize your travel time each year than by strategically planning around holidays and long weekends.
For example, let’s say there’s a Monday holiday, such as Labor Day. If you combine the holiday with the weekend, all you have to do is tack on two vacation days and you can book a five-day trip.
Another good strategy is to sandwich vacation days in between weekends. This allows you to schedule a nine-day trip while taking off just five days (Sat, Sun, Mon, Tue, Wed, Thur, Fri, Sat, Sun).
- Be Willing to Travel Solo
If you’ve ever tried to plan a trip with someone else, you know how challenging it can be to coordinate schedules and itineraries. If you can easily plan a trip with someone else, great. But there’s nothing wrong with traveling solo. Once you get comfortable with the idea of solo travel, a whole new world of opportunity emerges. Try it at least once and see what you think.
- Travel to the Right Places
There’s a time and place for traveling halfway around the world and seeing exotic, bucket-list destinations. However, if you’re limited by a full-time job, be more strategic and travel to more accessible locations more frequently. If you’re in the U.S., this includes domestic destinations, as well as Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Canada, Iceland, etc.
Adding it All Up
It’s possible to be successful in a full-time career and still manage to travel for several weeks out of the year. All it takes is some intentionality and a willingness to get your priorities in the right places. Hopefully, these tips allow you to spend less time chained to a desk and more time traveling the world.