How to Build a Flexible Work Schedule While Traveling
Flexibility is a written SLA with yourself: overlap hours, one deep-work block, and travel days treated as a type of PTO.
[ journal ]
I wrote the hours on a sticky note and stuck it to the monitor: overlap, deep work, travel day. That was the whole SLA. Not a beach. Not a promise that I would “stay flexible.” Flexibility without writing it down is just disappearing and hoping nobody notices.
Overlap hours are the contract with other people. From Aotearoa that often means a late afternoon or evening window against US time. I put it on the calendar as a repeating block so I do not “see how I feel” on Wednesday. If a call has to live outside that window, it is an exception I accept in writing, not a new default. The default is what keeps relocation from turning into a 16-hour day with a nicer view.
Deep work is a separate block, usually morning local time, before the overlap starts eating the day. Headphones, door closed if I have one, phone in another room. I protect it the way I would protect a meeting I cannot miss, because the meeting I cannot miss is the reason I have work to travel with. When I skip it to “get settled,” I spend the evening catching up and call it flexibility. It is overtime with extra steps.
Travel day is a type of PTO. Airports, buses, key handovers, the first grocery run: that is not a shipping day. I used to book a flight and a review on the same date and then write badly at 30,000 feet. Now the travel day has a lighter ticket. Maybe email. Maybe a small fix. Not a design review and not a launch. If the itinerary is brutal, the ticket is empty. I tell collaborators ahead of time. Surprise unavailability is what makes people stop trusting remote work.
The SLA fails when I rewrite it every morning. Three lines, held for the length of a stay, then reviewed. Two weeks is the minimum before I decide a city “doesn’t work.” Usually the city is fine. The hours were a rumor.
Louisiana to Tāmaki Makaurau did not require a new personality. It required a clock I would honor when the light was wrong and the body wanted a nap. Work from the beach is a postcard. A written overlap window, a deep-work block, and a travel day that counts as leave: that is a schedule that can move.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.