The world is a big place, beautiful and stunning place. And with the modern air travel, we can now be almost anywhere within a day of departure. That offers you the opportunity to see some truly stunning places – like Machu Pichu, or perhaps the Taj Mahal.
There is only one problem for most of us. Though air travel might have become easy as well as cheap, that won’t make much of a difference if we don’t’ have the time to actually embrace these new opportunities. The main culprit, of course, is work, but there are plenty of other things that make it hard to find the time to travel.
To help you with that, here we’ll explore some of the best ways to win more time.
Actually, use your vacation days
It turns out that a lot of people don’t use all of their vacation days. Obviously, that’s the first place you can start to increase the amount of time you travel. Worried that doing so would end up harming your job prospects? You don’t need to be. It turns out that people who use all their vacation days do better than those who don’t.
Your boss doesn’t see it that way? Then perhaps it’s time to start looking for a new boss! In fact, that’s a perfect opportunity to find another way to travel more.
That in-between space
Another great way to get some time to travel is to switch jobs and ask if you couldn’t possibly start a little later as you’ve got some personal things to take care of. You wouldn’t be lying, either. Travel is personal.
You should definitely ask. Find out if there’s a big emergency that they want you to deal with right away. Another good question is, ‘what is the start date?’ that one will give them pause and most, when they consider carefully, will admit that it isn’t actually right now and that if you come a week or so later, that won’t be a disaster.
Workation
Why not combine your work and your travel for a while? More and more companies are open to the idea that their employees work remotely on occasion. So why not combine a few weeks of remote work and your vacation days into one large package so that you can go away for much longer.
Initially, you can do it as a proof of concept. Then, when your employer sees that just because you’re working from a beach in Thailand your work doesn’t suffer, you might be able to go away for longer stints.
Become a freelancer
If you work remotely as a freelancer it really doesn’t matter where you sign in from. As long as you can come online you’re generally golden.
Do note, you don’t have to become a full-time freelancer for this to be an attractive option. I have a very good friend who works part of the year in a company and the other part of the year as a world-traveling freelancer.
How does he do it?
Easy, he works in a seasonal industry. He’s got a gig set up where he only works in his hometown during the height of tourist season. Then, when they don’t need as many people anymore he goes away again. It’s a win for both him and the company. And yes, there are plenty of opportunities where you can freelance some of the time. For example, you can try writing for a college essay services or a place where students can buy a Ph.D. thesis online such as SupremeDissertations.com which doesn’t have as much work during the summer months when the students aren’t there.
Business trips
Another way to get more time away is to stick a vacation onto a business trip. That way, you’re going to save money on the journey and at least the flight time won’t count as part of your leave. That means more days that you can be in some far away location.
Of course, you don’t get to choose where you’re going to go. That’s a little bit unfortunate. So you’ll have to see what business trips let you go to some attractive location. But if you do get lucky, it’s a great way to save money and time – particularly if you can manage to include a weekend.
There are a lot of ways to get your travel on
All you need to do is be a little bit creative and have the courage to ask for a few special arrangements. If they say ‘no’ then you know where you stand. And you know it might be time to find a more flexible employer. After all, we’re their employees, not their slaves.
