Why You Should Set an Intention for a Family Workation

I’ve written about how to choose the city and neighborhood to live in when taking your family on a digital nomad adventure, but for this post I want to take a step back and talk about something that will help you plan your workation AND survive it: Setting an intention.

If the idea living your life in another state or country is really exciting to you, that’s awesome! But have you thought about WHY you want to workation? What’s the core reason you want to go? What’s your intention?

Why an intention is important
Setting an intention will help you quickly filter through the endless decisions for planning a workation: Where to live, when to go, where to work, what to do once you’re there, etc. It will also help center you when the going gets tough; whether you hit a roadblock while planning or something goes wrong while you’re traveling, coming back to your workation intention will remind you of WHY you’re embarking on this adventure and what your core goals are.

Coming up with a workation intention
Why do you want to become a temporary digital nomad with your family? What do you want to learn, experience or achieve? What do you hope to change or discover on the journey? For example:

• Do you want to live in a place where you can experience nature and outdoor adventure?
• Is it important to expose your kids to a new language or culture?
• Do you want to learn more about where your ancestors came from?
• Do you want to spend more family time together, free from your typical schedules?
• Do you want to skip a season in your home location and experience a different environment?

Spend some time thinking about this; it might not come right away. Talk it over with your spouse/partner or even your kids.

Next, write down your intention on a card. You may want to put it on your fridge so it’s a constant reminder of what you’re working toward. When you start feeling overwhelmed by the planning or when you get really nervous the day before you leave (I do!), come back to your intention.

My intention
We live on 85 acres next to the Mississippi River. Our driveway is almost a mile long and our nearest neighbor is a half-mile away. Culturally and racially, it’s a pretty homogeneous area. So our workation intention is always the same: to flip our lifestyle.

When we workation, we seek to live in a large, bustling city that’s noisy, smelly, crowded, and rich in culture, diverse in people, and deep in history. We want to show our kids that different isn’t scary; that it’s fun and interesting to be surrounded by people who don’t dress like you, look like you or speak like you. That making mistakes is ok and embracing the unknown can be fun.

In practice, flipping our lifestyle helps us narrow down the cities we choose to live in and what we do for fun on our workation. For example, we don’t spend much time in rural areas. We expose ourselves to different foods and we rely on public transportation. We visit museums and outdoor markets. We’re honest with our kids when we get lost or don’t understand local customs. If we’re faced with a decision about how to spend our money or time, we ask “What’s the opposite of our lifestyle at home?” and choose that answer.

Spend some time thinking about your own intention for a workation or any type of trip. Then, when you run into problems like missing a museum you really wanted to visit, or having to switch child care, or dealing with mice in your house (all experiences we’ve had), they become less important when you stay focused on your intention and the true meaning of your travels.

For more help planning your workation, check out my free resources and worksheets.