In less than two years, I was able to travel to many different parts of the world. I have visited 6 continents, 11 different countries which includes Spain, Gibraltar, Frances, Italy, China, Japan, Iceland, Peru, Kenya, New Zealand , Australia and the Bahamas as well as many other places in the United States. It may not sound that impressive, especially to those who travel and blog about it for a living. However, I was able to do all this while maintaining a full time career.

I’m a Chiropractor, so my job requires me to be physically present in order to work. I don’t have one of those work remotely job, cause if I did, I probably would be traveling to different countries all the time. It is hard for me to take time off because I am one, amongst very few that specializes in the Advanced Orthogonal Procedure within the Chiropractic field.

Anyhow, today’s tip is about maximizing your vacations with taking as little time off as possible. A lot of people ask how I’m able to travel the world when I work so much all the time. I work a typical Monday through Friday but with really long hours, with Thursday afternoons off. The advantages to this is that I can just take a Friday off and I can have a 3 and a half day vacation. Now, every person’s work schedule is different from one another, so taking time off may be different for one compared to the other. So plan accordingly.

My suggestion is to figure out what holidays your company close down for. Most places close on the typical holidays, such as Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year. So for some of these, you already have a 3-day weekend getaway. I usually I would tag my vacation time to these days depending on if I want to take a really long or short vacation without having to burn up my vacation days. A lot of these places does not require a long flight to get to, if you plan it out really well.

About 2 years ago, Dan and I toured around different parts of Europe in just 10 days. I had Good Friday off and was able to take the week after off to do a cruise around Europe. We also did short 3-days trip over to the Bahamas a couple times tagging it up to either Memorial Day or Labor Day. The flight from Tampa to the Bahamas was only a few hours, which made it easy to travel. Earlier this year I took a Friday off, flew out to Iceland (7 hours flight) on a Thursday afternoon and flew back on a Sunday. We were able to get a lot done in those 3 days. We also took a trip from Tampa to Machu Picchu in just 4 and a half days. It was on a Good Friday weekend, so we flew out Thursday afternoon, and flew back the following Monday. So in this case, I only had to take 1 day off and was still able to see quite a bit in Machu Picchu, Cusco and Lima.

These are just a few examples of maximizing your vacation time without having to burn through your vacation days. It is possible to travel the world and still maintain a career. Keep in mind, you may get really exhausted on your trips. Usually, we are on a go-go-go on our trips. We get very little sleep and little down time on our trips, but hey you can sleep when your dead. Some of these trips were made possible through different programs that we use such as Go Way, Monograms, and Groupon. These programs were able to accommodate with our tight schedule and made our trips amazing, giving us the best service. Hopefully, this gives you some insights on time management when it comes to traveling! Thanks for reading!

“The Life you have led doesn’t need to be the only Life you have.” –Anna Quindlen