World of Away in 365 Days: Recent Episodes
Shaun Levi
If you are about to begin your career break in the coming year I want to wish you a heartfelt Congratulations! And I encourage you to savor this moment. For those of you who've been listening and cheering from the sidelines, curious to see what comes next, but not yet ready to commit to your own career break, hopefully you've picked up some solid ideas and have answer to your questions. Whether you're considering World of Away for yourself or are recommending it to someone else, you're always welcome to return to this podcast when you need some inspiration, support and encouragement.
Sometimes we rely on our surroundings to find our bearings, but don't allow your doubts or nerves or the expectations and concerns of others to pull you off course. As you're getting ready to step into World of Away, stand tall on what you've built and look out at the horizon to chart your course towards your destination.
This week you roll up life as you know it and clear a path for your career break. For some that means packing things up and for others it may mean letting go to make room for something new.
Some packing lists to get you started and suggestions for how to pack your stuff:
The Sabbatical Guide's Packing List or Travel Gear Guide
Hobo With a Laptop Digital Nomad Packing List
Packing List for Women Traveling Alone by Hobo With a Laptop
14 Genius Packing Tips to Help You Travel Like a Pro from Good Housekeeping
A Beginner's Guide to Packing Your Home for a Household Move - from TheSpruce.com with great tips even if you're just storing things for a while.
Five Charities That Pick Up Your Stuff
Not everyone is comfortable with goodbye, and when it’s time to leave for your career break you might be tempted to just quietly slip away. But none of us can reach World of Away alone, and farewelling provides an important opportunity to thank people for their support.
This week you make sure folks know what to do when you're not there to do it.
Previous World of Away in 365 Days podcast episodes referenced in this week's podcast:
Week 16 - All About That Base, No Travel
Week 17 - Your Home as a Hub
Week 18 - How You Can Prepare for World of Away so You Can Leave Your Cares Behind
Week 19 - Finding A Home that Best Suits World of Away
Week 29 - Action Plans that Secure your World of Away
Week 31 - Resume-ing
Week 32 - Point of Departure
Week 36 - Why Sabbaticals Make Sense if you Love your Career
This week you sort through the tools and gadgets you plan to use for World of Away.
Outfitter - Lonely Planet's Guide to Gear
The Sabbatical Guide - travel resources
Nomadic Matt Travel Gear Recommendations
PC Mag - Best VPN 2020
Tips for designing a home office (if you're staging World of Away at home)
This week we talk with Catherine Morrison, executive coach, consultant, and law professor specializing in conflict management and negotiation who has taught at Johns Hopkins University and Penn State University. Catherine is here today to share with us her insights about how to manage and anticipate conflict and use it to our advantage.
Recommended resource:
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Shelia Heen
This week we talk with Dr. Kerrie Smedley about the reasonable doubt you may have after you've decided to take a career break and how to feel at ease about your commitment to World of Away.
Here are some additional resources Dr. Smedley recommends:
Self-Compassion.org - Dr. Kristen Kneff's scholarly work on how to use this ancient approach to be kinder to ourselves and get out of the self-criticism habit.
Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life - A classic book on using values and acceptance of discomfort to move toward a richer life.
The Happiness Trap - Another great Acceptance and Commitment approach to help us avoid looking for happiness in the wrong place.
Life is in the Transitions: Mastering Change at Any Age - A terrific new book on the importance of transitions for growth and how to cope with the inevitable stress of transition.
Valued Living Questionnaire by Kelly Wilson, Emily K. Sandoz, Jennifer Kitchens, and Miguel Roberts
Dr. Kerrie Smedley can be reached at kerrie@annvillepsych.com
This week you consider how a side hustle might benefit your World of Away.
Resources to help you find what you're looking for:
50 Ideas for a Lucrative Side Hustle
99 Side Hustle Ideas to Make $500+ in Your Spare Time
7 Side Hustles You Can Do While Working Full Time
4 Secrets of Successful Side Hustles
Become a Tasker at TaskRabbit
How I Built This with Guy Raz - NPR Podcast
Teach English Online
Teach:able
This week you accept and request a little help from your friends.
Virtual Assistants or On-Demand Task Help:
Task Rabbit
People Per Hour
UpWork
Coworking and Coaching:
Focusmate
Regus
Coach.me
WeWork
This week you arrive at an exciting 12-week milestone, time to create your final checklist to help you launch into World of Away.
What if you could reorganize time and reach into the future to steal a few of your treasured retirement days to spend on a career break now? Would you do that? Because you know you can, and you won't even get caught.
This week we meet Dr. Terrah Keck-Kester and discuss stress and burnout and explore some ways to relight your fire.
UMass Center for Mindfulness - website and minfulness resources, books, and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)
A few apps and websites for meditation, sleep, and relaxtion tools and techniques
Calm
Headspace
Mindful
This week we consider how to maintain the mindset you need to reach World of Away.
Hidden Brain You 2.0: The Mind's Eye
Clearer, Closer, Better : How Successful People See the World by Emily Balcetis
And you can leave Shaun a message about your 12-week checklist or any other comments or questions that come to mind at WorldOfAway.com
This week we talk with Ben Reeve, successful retailer who loves his career, but also loves to travel, and created The Sabbatical Guide website to help out others who share this passion.
Ben's website: The Sabbatical Guide
Forbes article by Heidi Lynne Kurter: 4 Advantages of Supporting Employee's Side Business
Tim Ferriss blog about Mini-Retirements
Cal Newport's book So Good They Can't Ignore You
This week we talk with Stephanie Perry, founder of Vaycarious.com, and Housesitter School, a masterclass available on YouTube that explains and describes how to become a house sitter. This week we learn how Stephanie saved up for her first sabbatical in 2015, an experience that grew into a new life where she is now a year-round house sitter living a life that she loves and working when she has the time.
Stephanie Perry's website is Vaycarious.com
Exodus Summit is a virtual summit September 21 - 27, 2020
TrustedHouseSitters.com
Work Away (work exchange)
This week we tackle the great debate best summarized in the immortal words of The Clash: should I stay or should I go?
This week we answer some frequently asked questions that come my way as people weigh their options for how to design their career break.
Below are some general resources to help you plan a career break
Websites
The Sabbatical Guide
Vaycarious - the gap year has grown up
Remote Year: 6 Modern Sabbatical Ideas
Rejuvenate Your Life and Career With a Sabbatical
Videos
The Power of Time off by Stefan Sagmeister
Housesitting Clients Pick You by Stephanie Perry
Books
Pause: Harnessing the Life-changing Power of Giving Yourself a Break
Escape 101: The Four Secrets to Taking a Sabbatical or Career Break Without Losing Your Money or Your Mind
Sabbaticals 101
The Family Sabbatical Handbook
Lonely Planet the Big Trip
This week you decide what will be your last day at work before your career break begins and what projects you'll aim to finish up before you bid your colleagues adieu.
Do yourself a favor and take some time this week to update your resume or CV while the details are clear in your mind and you have time to examine and describe the projects, skills and responsibilities that you maintain and manage at work. That way if you are invited, or feel inspired, to share your resume during your career break, it's all ready to go!
Resume Tip #1
Resume Tip #2
Curriculum Vitae Tip #1
Curriculum Vitae Tip #2
How to put a career break on your CV or resume
Comfortable as we are with recording snippets of life for social media, it's hard to predict what parts of that weekly, monthly, or yearly album we really want to remember or use again at some point in the future. The same mystery applies to the experiences you'll collect during your career break. One question for the modern age is how do you strike a balance between recording a special experience and living it? This week you consider what details you want to collect and how you're going to record your experiences in World of Away.
LeviShortz family blog from World of Away
Having the right action plan helps shield and protect your career break from events beyond your control that could interrupt or even cancel World of Away.
Travel Insurance
World Nomads
SafetyWing
This week you investigate the financial services you currently rely on to uncover which ones will best serve you while you're in World of Away and which ones won't.
Best banks and credit cards for World of Away
BankRate.com
NerdWallet.com
CompareCards.com
WalletHub.com
Forbes.com
LA Times
Other financial tips
Managing your credit score
Make the most of your credit card rewards
Mint.com - debt management tool
Oh, and here's the shortbread cookie recipe Shaun mentioned. Enjoy!
This week it's time for some unscripted movement as you continue working on your tasks. Set aside a few hours to try out experiences you've planned for World of Away, just so you can feel what's like.
You're officially half way there! And for all of you taking your World of Away or some part of the experience out of your home community and into the larger world, now is the time to start putting your travel arrangements in place.
Travel Guides and Tours
Lonely Planet
Atlas Obscura
Rough Guides
Travel Noire
Urban Events Global
Intrepid Travel
World Packers
Frugal Traveler
Rick Steeves
Responsible Travel
Earth Changers
Kind Traveler
Travel Documents and Vaccinations
US Passports
Visas - general information
Working Holiday Visas
International Driver's Permit - US
CDC Traveler's Health Recommendations
IAMAT Health Recommendations for Travelers
Travel Insurance
World Nomads
Yonder
Allianz Travel
International Volunteer Organizations
Work Away
GVI
Omprakash
Go Abroad
As you ease into the second half of this trek towards your World of Away, you'll be doing more and planning less. We look at strategies to help focus on completing the little jobs that are imporant for your career break, while also working on the big job of finishing thing up within you current career so you can savor World of Away.
Asana.com
Monday.com
Gantt.com
Additional goal-tracking tools:
Strides
Habitica
Toodledo
It is time to give some thought to the daily chores and errands you'll be doing during your career break because these every day tasks are what hold the rest of life together, but they can be easy to overlook, even if you're the person who takes care of getting them done. For some people, housework and errands in World of Away might help them relax and allow them to discover and settle into their new patterns. While others might regards World of Away as hallowed ground and will want to avoid distractions and be very deliberate with what they do each day. And that might require creating different daily routines for World of Away.
This week you choreograph the knowledge and skills you want to learn during your career break.
This week you take a look at ways to stay healthy while you're doing what you have planned for World of Away.
This week we take a look at how you have arranged your goals, itinerary, finances, network, and housing for World of Away.
This week we explore what type of home best suits your World of Away. The links below can help you in your search.
Homestays: short, medium and long-term
HomeStay.com
Airbnb
Servas
Couchsurfing
Home exchanges
Homeexchange.com
LoveHomeSwap
HomeLink USA
International Vacation Home Exchange (IVHE.com)
SabbaticalHomes.com
Mapping
Google Maps
Mapquest
This week we continue our series exploring living arrangements in World of Away and look at how to set things up in a world away from where you are now.
Some resources to help you prepare your household for your departure to World of Away:
Home improvements
CostHelper is an online tool that provides estimates for projects
CostvsValue compares average remodeling project costs with the value retained at resale
This week we continue with part 2 of a 3-part series exploring how you will be living in World of Away by taking a look at how to use your home as a hub so you can reach the full extent of your World of Away.
This week we start exploring how you will live during your career break by focusing on how to take a career break while living at home.
Leaning on the wisdom gleaned from our last three guests, we review the landmarks to follow to help get to World of Away And here is an interesting TED Talk by Stefan Sagmeister, graphic designer and founder of Sagmeister Inc., who takes a sabbatical every seven years. The power of time off by Stefan Sagmeister
Today we talk with a mid-career IT professional who has already had one career break and is in the process of planning her next one.
This week we talk with an Academy insider, a tenured professor who serves on a University sabbatical review committee and has taken several career breaks of his own.
Today we talk with Jake Crome, a chemical engineer who took a six-month career break from his first full-time job out of college to hike the Appalachian Trail. Jake was the first person at his company branch to take a career break and during the interview he describes the practical approach he used to design his career break. Pay special attention to how Jake uses transparency, flexibility, and knowledge of his company to his full advantage as he negotiated his leave.
It can be hard to predict how your professional peers will react to your career break plans so before you initiate a formal conversation at work, we review some options for how to configure your break within the context of your current career.
Links to sites with guidelines for writing sabbatical proposals:
Harvard University (first institution in America to establish sabbatical for faculty)
Corporations that offer employee sabbaticals (Inc. article by Amanda Pressner Kreuser)
If you're on track to launch your career break by the end of this year that puts you at 42 weeks from departure, about 10 months away. You have time to get everything done, and you need to start recruiting help to get everything done. So build a fan club, that core group of people you can lean on.
Energize your desire to go to World of Away into a demand to make the experience happen.
If you want some ideas for designing your World of Away here are some links to companies and organizations that sponsor extended travel and volunteer experiences:
Remote Year
Volunteering Journeys
Go Abroad
Road Scholar
This week you pull together the financial pieces you have been developing in Weeks 5 thru 7 and you assemble your World of Away budget.
This week you consider how travel will facilitate and contribute to World of Away and you incorporate this final piece into the budget you've been assembling these past few weeks.
Some companies to consider to help schedule and design travel include:
Intrepid Travel
Airbnb Adventures
Remote Year
This week you explore the cost of living in World of Away, building the second part of your budget.
Tools to help you out:
Cost of Living Calculator (U.S.)
Cost of Living Calculator (International)
This week you spend time saving money.
Additional resources to help with budgeting
The Budgetnista
Be The Budget
Best Travel Savings Account (USA Edition)
Sabbatical Calculator
This week, we gather up those lists of goals and activities you tabulated last week and use them to help guide your selection of where to place your World of Away.
This week you begin writing down your ideas for World of Away - the exciting, scary and even the crazy ones - write them ALL down. Or take dictation, create photographs, paint pictures, record videos. Use whatever idea generation and collection processes you prefer. Give each idea the chance to be listed. Use the links below to help get you started or to offer some new ideas for designing your World of Away. Have so much fun!
This article by Dani Mansfield describes creative thinking methods
Steven Johnson's video describes how great ideas evolve, and may offer some good ideas for how you design your World of Away
This week listeners shore up their determination for taking a career break, going to World of Away, by making a promise that they really will do it, including writing it down and signing it. It may feel a little odd to write out a promise to yourself. But putting it in writing is a declaration that you really mean it, you are determined to go to World of Away.
World of Away in 365 Days is a podcast that presents a fun and simple weekly schedule to help you design a rewarding career break adventure. It’s for folks who want the experience of a lifetime, but don’t know how to make it happen. This podcast will help you not get lost, not get discouraged, and by following a week-by-week schedule, not give up. Consider it your companion, a friend who will help you prepare and launch your adventure. Through stories that will feel familiar, you’ll find the strategies you need to design a career break that will work for you so that by year’s end, you’re ready for your World of Away. Let’s get started.