Matt took the huge step of leaving his 9 to 5 back in 2005, before a nomadic lifestyle was even a thing. He paved the road, and the backpackers trail, for most of the travel websites out there, building a business along the way, which now includes the website, several best selling books, a bloggers academy for up and coming website owners, and a charity that helps teach youth the importance of traveling responsibly. In the last couple years, he decided to make a home base once again, to manage the empire, so to speak, and become an intermittent traveler, facing the same challenges of managing work and real life that the rest of us face.
If you have been with us for a while, or read our about us pages, you know my story, and that I let half of my life get sucked into the corporate race of working endless hours and being on call all the time. I consider myself lucky to have woke up before it was too late, and created Gypsy With a Day Job. Our entire reason for being is to inspire and aid people with demanding work get out and see the world, and live their best life. Perhaps no one knows how to do that better than Nomadic Matt, so we were quite pleased to probe him a bit. So lets get on with it.
Welcome to Gypsy With a Day Job.
Hey everyone! You already know I’m Matt, and I’m a budget travel expert. My job is to help people make the most out of their travels and to help them travel better, cheaper, and longer!
Gypsy: You traveled almost continuously for several years. Now you have a home base, and office hours, running a business. How are you maintaining work life balance, and do you have any tips for our readers on achieving this balance?
Matt: Work/life balance is always an uphill battle. I’m a bit of a workaholic, so I have to really work on finding that balance, otherwise I’ll just plug away on the laptop all day like a zombie. That means I have to plan ahead and make conscious choices about how I spend my time. I have a gym membership to help me stay active (I don’t use it as much as I should, but it’s a start!) and I make sure that I always take breaks to read every day (which, ok, may not sound like a break but I love to read). I’ll also get out to see friends and regularly take in some live music.
Essentially, finding a balance is about knowing your priorities and scheduling them into your life accordingly. Just like I write down my work to-do list, I also keep a mental to-do list of non-work things to do to keep me healthy (and sane!). Try not to just zone out watching Netflix, but spend your free time doing something constructive and creative. It will help you much more in the long run.
Gypsy: Sometimes people who work a lot, and feel they have no choice but to do so, put their desire to travel off towards some hopeful retirement date. They feel they can’t afford the expense right now, or that they can’t afford to take the time off of work. Do you have any thoughts to encourage even busy workers to get out and experience the world now, and why it is important?
Matt: I think the fact of the matter is this: retirement isn’t a guarantee. People are living longer than ever but that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll make it to your retirement (or that you’ll be healthy enough to travel when you do). Waiting to travel seems like the safe bet, but it’s actually the most risky choice. Why not find a middle road? One that lets you focus on work but also makes room for travel? Too many people put travel off until retirement, only to miss out on the opportunity. How many people on their deathbeds wish they worked more? Not many, I’d bet. Now, how many do you think wished they got to travel more? Probably a lot!
Life is too short. We only have this one opportunity. We can make excuses for not traveling or we can change our priorities. I think we should change our priorities!
How many people on their deathbeds wish they worked more? Not many, I’d bet. Now, how many do you think wished they got to travel more? Probably a lot!
Gypsy: One of the things that holds many of us back is a fear, although sometimes unrecognized, of not being in control. We have all these responsibilities. We have to pay the bills and maintain the household, for our families. We have to “stay on top of our game” and in control of things so everything runs smoothly and as we believe it should, for those who rely on us. When we consider travel, we worry what if something happens to us, who will take care of things. When we do travel, there is still an underlying need to control everything, to make the trip perfect.
Do you have any advice for letting go of the “what if” fears, and the need to force a trip to go exactly as planned?
Matt: I love a good routine in my day to day life. It’s what keeps us productive and healthy and, in a way, safe. But it also keeps us boring and leads to us being stuck in a rut. I think we need to flip the script. Travel is all about taking risks. It’s about embracing serendipitous encounters and being willing to accept that things won’t go as planned. It teaches us how to adapt, how to learn on our feet, and adds an important level of perspective.
If we don’t take the plunge we will likely regret it later. Stop worrying about what could go wrong, and start thinking about all the endless possibilities. Think about the freedom you can have. Is it a risk? Sure. But the best things always are!
Gypsy: Secondary question to that: We all know travel plans go awry from time to time. How do you deal with it when that happens? Can you give us an example of a time when your travel plans went completely haywire, how you coped with it, and how it turned out?
Matt: Misadventures are inevitable. Missing a flight, getting pickpocketed, having a bout of food poisoning — these things happen. You can prepare for them, but you can only do so much (short of staying home and hiding!). Just like everything else, you need to accept the good with the bad. Travel is a two-sided coin. You can’t have the awesome without the uncomfortable. You have to earn the awesome by wading through the uncomfortable to get there. That’s what makes travel so rewarding, in the end.
I’ve gotten lost in a jungle, I had a bus break down in the middle of the Australian outback (sitting around hoping a car is going to come is not that fun), I’ve been in Thailand during civil unrest. Stuff just happens. There’s not much you can do about it — though I always make sure I have travel insurance, just in case.
In the end, you just have to learn to roll with the punches and the more you travel, the easier you get at doing that!
You can’t have the awesome without the uncomfortable. You have to earn the awesome by wading through the uncomfortable to get there.
Gypsy: Another dilemma that some of our readers encounter when they travel, is that their travel times are limited, as they may only get 2 or 3 weeks of vacation time a year. So they come up with neatly packed itineraries filled from morning until night. They want to see and do everything after traveling all this way, as they will be back at work soon, and they may never get back to this great destination. Sometimes they end up back at work more tired than they were before they departed. Do you have any advice to overcome this drive, and balance a vacation so that it is still fabulous, but they also return to work refreshed and relaxed?
Matt: This is one of the most common things I’ll see when people email me asking for help. And I get it — I used to do it myself! But the more I travel, the more I’ve come to realize that less is more. Slower is better. Why fly to Europe just to spend your days on the train and your nights cramped in a new hostel every other day? It’s madness!
Focus on quality over quantity. Nobody cares how many countries you can say you’ve been to, and nobody cares about how epic your Instagram will look. At the end of the day, you need to put yourself first. That means traveling slow. It means soaking places in. When you aim for quality over quantity you have better experiences. Trust me!
Gypsy: If you were suddenly responsible for 2 or 3 adolescent children, their welfare and upbringing until they grew up, what 3 destinations would you feel it was most important to take them and experience, and why?
Matt: I think I would go with New Zealand travel, Costa Rica travel, or traveling to Thailand.
These destinations all have beautiful natural offerings — mountains, jungles, beaches. Instilling a sense of wonder for the natural world is vital, as the next generation is going to inherit the environmental mess we’ve created. Helping kids appreciate the natural world will go a long way (I hope) in giving them the perspectives and tools to look after things when we’re gone.
Costa Rica and Thailand also offer insight into distinctly different cultures and languages, which I think is important when it comes to broadening one’s view. If you go somewhere where the people look different and sound different, but you still see that they have the same hopes and dreams as we do then you come back realizing that we’re all not so different after all. And that is an important message.
Gypsy: After all of your travels, are there still places that you have never been that call to you, that you feel you must get to? Are there places in the world that you just can’t get enough of, that you want to return to over and over?
Matt: Of course! I still haven’t been to India, Russia, most of China, Nepal, Bhutan, Brazil, the South Pacific, Egypt…..the list of places I want to go is as endless as the list of places itself. As for places I love to go to back to? I can never get enough of Paris, Amsterdam, Thailand, Sweden, Japan, or Iceland! (Just to name a few.)
Gypsy: What do you think your travels have taught you about yourself? Is there a particular place or experience that really caused introspection or a re-evaluation of how you viewed the world, or yourself? Do you think you are a better person because of your travels?
Matt: My travels have definitely changed my perspective and opened my eyes to a lot of things. Travel doesn’t make us better than anyone else, but it has the potential to make us better than we were if we embrace the obstacles thrown at us and use it as a learning tool — inwardly and outwardly.
To this day, it was my first trip to Thailand in 2005 that changed my life. Meeting backpackers and full-time travelers for the first time was a revelation. It completely shifted my world view and opened doors that I never knew existed. That trip led to me being where I am today, and it even encouraged me to start a charity to help underserved students travel so that they, too, could benefit from the perspective that travel brings.
Travel is one of the best tools out there for growth and personal development. Don’t let it go to waste!
Travel doesn’t make us better than anyone else, but it has the potential to make us better than we were if we embrace the obstacles thrown at us and use it as a learning tool — inwardly and outwardly.
Whether we like it or not, the truth is that most of us have to work, pay the bills, and take care of the household. Despite that, maintaining work life balance is possible, as is seeing the world, and living your best life. None of us want to be the guy who looks back at his life wondering why we didn’t get out and see some of the wondrous world around us!
We thank Matt for taking the time to share a bit of what he has learned with us.
If you would like more insight from Nomadic Matt, be sure to check out his website through one of the links in this story.
In particular, you will find tons of information to fit any destination that you want into your budget!
You may even want to join the forum!
You can also follow Matt on Facebook.
You can also follow Matt on Instagram.
If maintaining work life balance is a topic of interest for you, then you may want to check out some of our other articles on our work life balance page.
