Our overriding goal was simple: live in Mexico for 2 months, and see how well we can keep up our family and professional endeavors. In case you missed my initial mention of the trip, this was not a vacation. In every aspect possible, we wanted a sustainable lifestyle- something we could have kept up indefinitely.

Make Money

Financially, our goal was to come home with more money in our bank account than we had when we left. Grabbing cheap airfare and subletting our apartment got us off to a great start; working for the duration of the trip carried us through successfully.

Be More Productive

Despite potential tropical distractions, I was actually able to focus more on my work than usual. Creating a wide-sweeping auto-responder on my email and leaving my cell phone at home (kind of– more on that later) drastically cut down on less-than-vital communication. No TV. No newspapers.

Authentic Living

As part of the “make money” goal, and due to a desire to have a more culturally “authentic” experience, we kept our accommodations pretty simple. Unfortunately, we took it too far. It’s true that most Mexicans (at least in the towns we visited) don’t have air conditioning, microwave, washer/dryer, and drinkable water. In that sense we lived somewhat authentically, but it wasn’t sustainable for us. The simple fact is that if we moved down there long term, we would have those modern conveniences, and we would bring our car. Dealing with a toddler who has diarrhea and a severe diaper rash when the nearest laundry facility is a 15 minute walk away is not something my wife and I care to go through again.

Time Together

This one was easy: the lack of social commitments and the fact that I worked at home most of the time made it possible for me to spend a ton of time with my wife and daughter, both one-on-one and as a whole family.

Unfortunate Surprises

This was our first experiment in living the vagabond lifestyle, and based on the above points we’d call it a success. However, it wasn’t all roses, particularly for my wife. There were a few hard and unexpected lessons learned:

• Rather than adapting to all the lifestyle differences over time, each stomach bug we caught, meltdown that our daughter had, and giant flying cockroach I had to kill had an accumulative negative effect that sapped our adventurous spirit and left us all a little anxious to get back to home base (I partially blame “Authentic Living” from above). At this point I’m just not sure how well we could pull off doing this for 6 months at a time.
• Raising a busy toddler on the road was just plain hard. We didn’t have our usual support network of friends and family. We only spoke a little Spanish. There were times when my poor wife thought she was going to lose her mind from lack of simple and easily accessible activities that wouldn’t leave her exhausted. Sure, a trip to the beach is blast for everyone, but it takes a lot of work.
• My laptop had a major problem, and trying to solve it in rural Mexico was the pits. Slow and intermittent internet connectivity got really annoying too, although I can’t say that it had much of an effect on my overall work productivity (fortunately).
• Our increased time together as a family had the unintended side effect of further blending our roles and making us more dependent on each other than we usually are. That’s actually a wonderful thing to some extent. I think married couples need to be more interdependent. However, now that we’re back in the States, reinstating our usual routines and roles is going to take some adjusting.

And so the big question is: will we do it again? We both say yes, but our timelines differ. If you’d like, you can help us out by recommending our next destination- just leave it in the comments.

For a full travel travel log with lots of photos, check out the site Chelsey made just for this trip, as well as a few posts on Jed’s personal blog.

• I do very little real-time collaboration with others
• I’m a morning person
• I’m terribly unproductive and easily bored from about 2:30 – 6:30 pm.

Wake up at 4

Yes, that’s 4 am. For some reason that I can only guess at (sleep cycles?), this is easier for me than waking up at 6, and has some major advantages:

• Zero distractions. Not from co-workers. Not from family. Not from prime-time television. Nobody calls you. Nobody is on IM.
• Similarly, it’s really easy to focus at 4. It sounds crazy, but it’s true. I find myself saying “okay, I did not wake up at 4 am to surf the web.”
• The work day is never totally lost, even if you “take the day off.” My friend (the same one mentioned above) invited me at the last minute to a Cubs game. Under normal circumstances it would have blown a big chunk of the work day. In this case, I was pretty much done with work anyway. When my wife is sick and I need to take care of our daughter, I still get a few focused hours in and can then be a dad for the rest of the day.

Siesta

We in the U.S. haven’t quite figured out what much of the rest of the world already knows: there’s power in a mid-day nap. Think it’s not for you? Try waking up at 4- you’ll find it pretty easy to doze come 12:30. I can really feel the difference on days that I don’t nap. Even 20 minutes helps a lot.

Afternoon is the new evening

I hit the gym now in the afternoon. I have the place to myself. I even saved money by getting a “matinee” membership. And my life is just a tiny bit more pleasant now that I’ve removed the awful afternoon unproductive boredom slump I’ve been dealing with for the past several years. Instead, my daughter and I go chase the pigeons in the park and sometimes I cook dinner.

Wednesday is the new Saturday

Although Tim (in his 4HWW book) applies the “break up your work and play” principle to long-term career planning and mini-retirements, the same principle can bring benefits on a micro level. Why save your weekend for the weekend? Chelsey and I save tremendous hassle by getting shopping and other errands accomplished during uncrowded Wednesday mornings. Working on Saturday has the same “uncrowded” benefits.

Lights out at 10

Except for Tuesday and Saturday nights, we get to bed early. Everything in life has some tradeoff. If you’re a party-hard single college student, following this schedule will probably destroy your social life. But I bet your grades would be awesome.

Mind Tricks

In closing, I have to admit that underlying concrete benefits is an intangible sense that you’re a sort of a step ahead. There’s just something gratifying about hearing my daughter wake up and knowing I’ve already accomplished my most important task for the day. And the same feeling when I ride my bike home from the gym at 3 and realize the rest of the world will still be hard at work for several more hours. It sounds kind of silly, but it’s there.

Three 4HWW principles in action: breaking conventions,  play and work more frequently interspersed, and shooting for minimal effective load. The benefits of this schedule can be realized no matter your situation, but for a family man like me, it’s been almost perfect. It’s been three weeks now and I don’t see myself changing it anytime soon.

Please share your schedule ideas in the comments.

12 years ago I was really in to rock climbing. In modern climbing there are two roles: the lead and the belay. Let’s take our cues from Wikipedia and fill out this analogy as it applies to 4HWW and families.

Lead Responsibilities

The lead sets the pace. They are responsible for placing anchors along a route, or securely clipping in to existing ones. They look ahead, planning the next steps towards safely reaching the goal. In a 4HWW family, the lead is the person designated as primary income provider. They must keep the money flowing in, and drive the implementation of “muses” (see the FHWW book ).

Belay Responsibilities

“It is extremely important for the belayer to concentrate on the climber’s situation, as they literally have the climber’s life in their hands.” Belaying is serious business. I’ve been a part of adrenaline-rush-inducing falls as both a lead and a belayer. It forms a special trust between climbers that I imagine is similar to sky-divers packing each others chutes. When the lead calls for more slack, the belayer carefully gives it, but is quick to take it up should the lead fall. The belayer does the same for a 4HWW family. They take primary responsibility for:

• care of the children
• finances, monitoring the amount of “slack” the family has
• day-to-day logistics of living

It’s not just lip service to say that the stay-at-home spouse fills a more difficult role than the breadwinner.

Communication

It’s easy for a lead to get tired and rely too heavily on a belayer, ultimately resulting in a failed attempt. Likewise, (and especially when kids are in the picture) it’s easy for the belayer to become exhausted and distracted. If either scenario occurs too frequently, then a serious adjustment needs to be made; you simply might not be ready for the “climb” you’re attempting. Needless to say that constant, open, clear communication is vital.

“But I just want to climb…”

If you’re a career-driven professional, you might be reading this and thinking “I don’t ever want to belay (in a family sense).” That reaction is probably more likely if you’re not married with children. When you think of rock climbing, you think of actually climbing. You don’t hear people say “yeah, I’m a professional belayer.” But every climber belays. Roles can change in a family, and they don’t always have to be starkly divided. In the spirit of really going for it, we will be pushing this division, to the extreme over the next several months, but it’s not going to be like that forever.

Whatever your situation, just remember that the goal of 4HWW is to work less and spend more time pursuing your dreams. For many of us, those dreams include more time with our families. If you’re not in to that, this series of posts probably isn’t for you

* photo of Maple Canyon (one of my old favorite climbing spots) taken by susanica