DISQUS

Peckhammer Joel,

We just interviewed a Dr. who has quit his day job and will be spending the next 5 years on the road. He will be travelling by motorcycle. He is estimating his daily expenses to be $50/day in the US, and $20/day in many countries (central and south America, Africa, Asia). When we we talking about his expected motorcycle maintenance expenses, he said, "According to my math, the money I save on vitamin D supplements should pay for tires." The interview will be published in late march or early April on www.peckhammer.tv

Taylor Davidson Depends on the definition of long-term; doing it with a wife and kids is much harder. But even then, it's possible, and my own parents showed me it's possible when I was a kid (I'll tell you more over a beer sometime). It just takes foresight, dedication, planning and a certain capacity for dealing with the unknown.

- It's not really cheaper, or at least wouldn't be for most people; a lot of it has to do with my particular life choices.
- I often crave having a place to chill, but then I get tired of it after a week / month or so.
- Yes, I am working. It's amazing what you can do over Skype and email. Actually my cousin Chris has far more practical experience (and success) in running a virtual office and distributed workforce with his company Boomzap. He could (and should) write the book on how to do it.
- There are many people leading the "location independent" lives as professionals. Check out Lea (@leawoodward) and Jonathan Woodward at Location Independent to see an example of people that are doing far, far more than me. Christine Gilbert has also previously written about how to work remotely.

Three takeaways:
- Traveling every day does not work. The transaction costs of moving around every day really limit productivity. Be careful about scheduling calls and deadlines around travel schedules, especially one that lock yourself into destinations every day. You are in control of creating your own schedule, so you have only yourself to blame if you create a harried, hassled life.
- You're not on holiday. When you travel you feel the need to go out and explore and see the places you go, to do the sort of things you would do if you were on vacation. But you're not on vacation. It's life. Make sure to find ways to do the things you would ordinarily do (sleep, workout, relax, blog, stay in, etc.) so that you find some ways to keep life normal.
- Trust your gut. When you're completely location independent you will often find yourself with too many choices, too much flexibility, too much unknown (where should I go today? should I stay at this hotel? what town / hotel should I stay in tonight?). You'll never have perfect information on how your choices will turn out: trust your gut and go forward instead of worrying about what could have been.

If you're looking for practicalities, Lea has a particularly good list of tips from their experiences.

I'm interested in your ideas about tips and challenges; the most fun would be coming up with ways to challenge people's assumptions of how live has to be lived. I'm always up for ideas :)

Taylor Davidson Thanks man... while I've always understood that our society over-values consumption and material possessions (although I still make those mistakes myself from time-to-time), it's taken me way too long to realize the value of experience and relationships.

Just working on catching up :)

Aaron Brazell Well, hopefully it means that we have more transparency into our elected representatives. Hopefully it means that the Senators can use Talkshoe, for instance, for Townhall meetings, or use Qik for realtime videos or use Twitter to talk to us in our medium. Not everyone will use it, but those who do will have a higher level of trust and transparency with their constituents - just as we've seen with companies like JetBlue or Southwest.