Lea Woodward is a well-known blogger and Location Independent (a term that she coined). Her blog has been a great inspiration to me and many others. I told her about Project Getaway and the fact that many of us read her writings and she was kind enough to agree to an interview.
If you had to stay in one place for 5 years, where would it be? Why?
Hmmm, tough question. It would probably be Cape Town in South Africa. It was one of the places we felt most at home in and has the variety and vibe we like. It's a beautiful country and has many of the things we're looking for in a place to call home.
Describe your perfect day
I'm fortunate that I have an almost perfect day every day. We've built our business and our lifestyle so that we can spend each day doing mostly what we choose.
As we have a toddler, this involves spending much of the day together as a family. We eat all our meals together and then my husband and I usually work in the evenings. That said, I like carving out more time in the day to do some business since evenings are not my most productive time, so my perfect day would go something like this...
Gym, eating a big breakfast and then getting an hour or two to do some work before lunch. A family trip in the afternoon followed by dinner out and then a couple of hours of work/emailing/social media before a movie.
What are your top productivity tools?
Gmail - I'm a big Gmail fan and send emails to myself - organised with the multiple inboxes labs functionality - to manage my tasks and to do lists.
Google Calendar - I love the ability to manage several calendars in one. I have a number of calendars for different aspects of our business - such as Content Scheduling, Marketing Events, Live Workshops etc. - which enable me to see, at a glance, what's coming up each month.
Self discipline - the most useful tool there is! I've found that because my time is crunched since parenthood, the time I do actually get to work requires me to be extremely disciplined if I want to get anything done. If I only have 2 hours in a day to do what I need to do, it's foolish to spend an hour of that on social media, frittering away that time. So self discipline has been a crucial tool in keeping me focused and on task.
What does your daily work routine look like?
It changes frequently, depending upon what we're working on, but because we're gearing up to a big new venture in 2012, I'm currently doing a lot more work during the day while my husband does the lion's share of child care.
I usually get 3-4 hours of solid work done in the morning after breakfast, then a few hours of family time before starting again at around 9pm when my daughter has gone to bed. Despite being a night owl, I try to be in bed before midnight because I know I'll be disturbed by a toddler wanting to come into the bed at about 6am every day!
What was the final trigger that made you switch to this life style?
My husband was made redundant from his job in 2006 - it was the third time he'd been threatened with it in 2 years and we were fed up with the instability of a supposedly secure job.
We decided to go it alone and then somehow, quite randomly, hit upon the idea of living in a lower cost country to reduce our living costs without having to compromise our lifestyle.
What are the top 3 challenges in an location independent life style, and how do you solve them?
Creating a steady, guaranteed income - focus on creating an income you can guarantee and diversify your income streams to reduce the reliance on any one single stream.
Too much choice - the fact that you can live and work from anywhere opens up a vast array of choice. It can be really difficult - crippling, even - to decide where you want to go next. We've made plenty of destination mistakes - heading to places which just weren't right for us at the time. These days we're much more realistic, and less romantic, about what life will actually be like in each new place we decide to visit.
Traveling can make it hard to maintain routine and habits, like exercise. Do you have any tricks to overcome this?
Start back with your usual routines as soon as possible so you don't give yourself the chance to fall out of them. When you're exhausted from travelling and struggling to overcome jet lag, the last thing you often feel like doing is exercise but the sooner you get back to it, the more quickly acclimatised you'll become.
Do you feel that this life style has negative consequences, for instance regarding friendships?
That's not been our experience. In fact, when it comes to friendships, the opposite has been true. We've naturally gravitated towards people who, these days, share a similar mindset and have met so many new friends online and in our travels.
We found that many of our old friends just didn't share the same mindset we began to develop and so it became easier to let some of those friendships take a backseat. You'll find that the friendships you want to maintain, you'll find a way to do so regardless of where you are.
Do you see yourself leading this life style when you get older? When your kids grow up? Or does it feel like a temporary adventure?
I think our style of travel will evolve and change - as it has done already - but having had this taste of entrepreneurshop and freedom for the past few years, I would find it very hard to go back to a more conventional lifestyle now.
There's no reason why we can't continue to live this kind of lifestyle until we no longer want to - but I'm sure we'll continue to tweak and adapt it to suit our needs.
Read more of Leas material on www.leawoodward.com
