A Week-In-The-Life of Lea & Jonathan Woodward: Location Independent

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Lea and Jonathan Woodward are originally from the UK, and enjoy careers that allow them to be location independent. They tend to spend up to three months in any given destination, and they enjoy renting furnished apartments as opposed to staying on the hostel circuit. Since 2007, they have spent at least a month in Panama, Buenos Aires, Grenada, Toronto, Thailand, South Africa, and Dubai, while enjoying shorter trips to other places in between. Please enjoy a week-in-the-life of Lea and Jonathan Woodward, as written by Lea.

This post was originally published in 2009. It has since been updated for accuracy of links and content. 

A week in our life on the road will vary depending upon whether we’re in full-on travel/sight-seeing mode or just an ‘average’ week spent living in another country & running our business from wherever we are.

To give you an idea of the latter (an average week spent running our business from wherever we are), here’s what a week looked like in South Africa where we spent 9 months of last year in Cape Town:


*Monday:*

The coast of Cape Town, South Africa; photo by Lea and Jonathan Woodward

For us, Mondays usually means “Marketing Mondays” which is where we spend that day focusing on marketing efforts for our business projects – so it is largely a work day.

We are both late risers although the lure of a jog on the beach at False Bay, Cape Town meant we were usually there by about 8.30am. After a 20m jog and 10m of slow walking (a type of active meditation), we’d stroll home which took about 5 minutes.

After showers, checking emails & faffing online for a bit, we’d grab our laptops and head to our favourite cafe at about 11am – a little organic tea house which served excellent scrambled eggs on freshly made sourdough bread. The internet cafe a few doors up the road had a great wi-fi service which also worked in the cafe so we would spend most of the morning working from there.

With a break for a late lunch (again at the cafe), we’d continue doing some work for a couple of hours into the afternoon before heading back to our apartment and then out to the beach for a short walk.

We’re not “going out” people in the evenings so most of the time we’ll stay in, cook dinner for ourselves, grab a DVD and do some online networking.

*Tuesday:*

Jonathan Woodward working location independently

After a day of work on Monday, our mornings typically stay the same so we don’t usually “get going” till about 11am every day.

Tuesdays for us is “client day” – where we aim to get any client work completed. If we don’t have anything scheduled, we would usually grab our bikes and cycle to the nearest supermarket to stock up on some food. It was only about a 20m bike ride but against a pretty strong Cape wind it often felt longer than that!

We’ll usually stop for another coffee & piece of cheesecake at another favourite cafe near the supermarket (sustenance for the ride home!!!) and then head back home again. We may then head out to our other local cafe just to say “hi” and do some more online stuff before heading home to cook dinner.

*Wednesday:*

A row of beach houses in Cape Town; photo by LI Location Independent

By the time it gets to Wednesday, we’re normally ready for a bit of adventure or exploring so we’ll plan to do something a bit different.

Where we were in Cape Town this often meant heading to the Cape of Good Hope for a walk and some stunning scenery, heading to Boulders Beach to see the penguins or heading to the beach to watch the surfers brave the freezing cold water & sharks!! In whale season, it would mean heading along the coast to see if we could spot any more whales frolicking within about 30m of the shoreline.

Unless we rented a car, we’d usually take the commuter train which runs all along the False Bay coast, is dirt cheap and, as long as you’re careful, is relatively safe.

We would probably have an early dinner out and then head home – catching the last train home at about 7.30pm.

*Thursday:*

This is usually another day of work having had Wednesday “off” so the routine is very similar to Monday – and we’ll spend the day focusing on our various projects, most of which feel more like fun than work.

*Friday:*

Ocean and rocks on the Cape of South Africa; photo by Lea and Jonathan Woodward

Fridays are usually “play days” as we tend to remember at the last minute that if we don’t do things today, we’ll end up doing them on the weekends when everyone else is doing stuff and things are twice as busy.

Again, it depends where we are and what there is to do but we’ll usually start off with a slow morning again and aim to head out after lunch somewhere. If we’ve hired a car, we might head to the Winelands, a beach on the other side of the Cape, a walk up Table Mountain or Lion’s Head or somewhere we’ve not been before. There are so many things to do in and around Cape Town that it’s easy to find something.

On a Friday evening, we might head into the city for an early evening drink and some people watching on Long Street but usually only if we’ve hired a car.

*Saturday:*

Often a work day, since everyone else is playing and busy-ing everywhere up. Our daily routine is pretty much the same as our other work days – so we’ll head to the cafe (as long as it’s not too busy) and get some work done there.

*Sunday:*

A lazy day with no morning run. We might organise an impromptu Braii (BBQ) with some friends or head out somewhere for lunch. There’s usually no set plan for a Sunday, we’ll just do what we feel like on the day – which may mean more sightseeing, some work or just chilling around our apartment.



Lea and Johnathan Woodward are the creators of www.locationindependent.com, which they are designing to be the “go-to” resource for people who wish to live and work anywhere they choose. They have just enjoyed the birth of their first baby in the UK, and are letting the dust settle before heading off to their next location independent locale.

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3 thoughts on “A Week-In-The-Life of Lea & Jonathan Woodward: Location Independent”

  1. Ahhh….beautiful Cape Town. What a great place to live – so scenic.

    Thanks for the interview – great to learn a little bit about the people whose blog you read….indirectly.

    Reply

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