Making the Move: A Day in My Life living in Africa

Get ready, because everything is about to change. There's a new way of living life and doing business that will blow your mind. This is a podcast all about the timing of life and the timing of success. It's what we call the Right on Time life. And you are listening to the Right on Time podcast with Amber McHugh. Hey there. Welcome back to another episode. I'm Amber McKeely, your host. And in the last three episodes and in this final episode in this series, we're talking about living life abroad, working abroad, changing paths and picking up, moving part time, full time, whatever it may be. And we dove into what took us abroad, overseas and practical considerations to think about if you are thinking about moving overseas, as well as some more cultural and unexpected things that may come up when you're overseas. And today I wanted to share a little bit of a day in the life on what we experience and how things are different for us when we're living abroad and what things look like. To give you a view, it's going to be different based on where you live and where you're moving to. But I just love when someone gives me a peek into their life and into their world. So if that is you, this is totally the episode for you. One of the things that people ask is, what do you love most about living abroad? And the thing I love most and the thing that I have gratitude for on a regular basis is that when I wake up every day, I. Well, number one, I was thinking like, oh, I see palm trees. That is a beautiful thing when I wake up every day. But my mornings here are my own. What do I mean by that? I mean that we get the kids off to school, my husband goes to work, and then I have a few hours each morning because the way that time zones work out where we are here in Africa, where not a lot of my clients are online yet and the majority of my team is not yet online. So I have this space in the morning where I can either do some focused work if there's something going on, or I can take that morning to meditate, do laps in the pool, get some movement in, read, research something, watch a movie. I don't usually do that, but every now and then I will catch up on a series or something if I was watching something, or I'll do movement and catch up on a series. But I have that whole morning to think, have space, get some soul fuel. And that is one of the number one things I look forward to when we're living abroad. For that beginning of my Day. About six months into being in a new location and in a new country, I'll also start to volunteer. I may schedule hair appointments in those morning blocks, but for the first few months that we're there, I really try and protect that time because I want to ground, I want to explore, I just want to be able to go with the flow. So I don't put a lot scheduled on my calendar for those mornings. There might be orientations to do or other things. So I let those things sort of pop up and I have space for them. But generally I leave a whole lot of space at the beginning of the day when we're in a new location so that I can learn and just get grounded before I start filling up the calendar again. So that morning space is really beautiful for me. Then the kids are at school. I do start to work about 11am here. 11 currently is five hours from New York, so 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 1 actually. So it's still not quite morning yet or not quite hours when people are working when I start working. So then I've got a few hours where I am working and still people. There are not a ton of people that I typically interact with throughout my day that are online yet. So I can do some focus work. I can write, I can read, I can record, right? So there are some focus time. There's then people come online and half of my day, the afternoon and early evening is spent online with Team. This is a time when we have meetings. This is a time when I'll reply to things in Heartbeat or Slack, our online communication hubs. So really make sure during those core hours, the first half of my US Based Teams day and US Clients day, the first half of that, I'm really present, really engaging. A problem that I have though is that it's easy when people are online to just keep going, keep the meetings going, keep the conversations going. They're doing stuff. I'm feeling that energy and that momentum, so I want to keep doing stuff. But I work really hard saying, oh gosh, we've really got to stop the day at a reasonable hour because I also start my day earlier. So usually I'm trying to wrap up around 6, 6:30pm my time. But some of my days do go later. So there are two days a week where I will go later than expected or later than usual because we've got meetings on those days. So they're about two days a week where I'm working a little bit later. But otherwise I really try and stop earlier because the days can get long and I want to spend some time with the family. So we try to do dinner together two days a week. I am not doing dinner with the family. I am in my office space, connecting, working still. We'll do dinner together. It gets dark pretty early here year round. So it gets dark early. We're winding down early. We're reading, we're hanging out, we're playing cards. The girls may have after school activities, so they may get here later. We may need to take them. Audrey, we take her to horseback riding at least one night a week. They may have play dates with friends. We're running them to and from those play dates after school because we are not near people. Some people are in compounds or in apartments next door to kids. We are actually not near a lot of kids right now. So we have to drive them when we take them places. Typically our grocery shopping is done on the weekend or someone here helps us with that. We have a delivery service for food that we don't use a ton. We have yogurt delivery. There are some specialty delivery services here. So our yogurt is delivered maybe once a week. Every couple of weeks there's a specialty yogurt and well, I could. Right. We can have grocery delivery. When we're living in the States, it's a little bit more special here because it's a unique yogurt. So there are a couple of things that we treat ourselves to that are unique to this location where we're living. But otherwise the routines look pretty similar. Our weekends, we're getting movement in swimming in that pool. We do have a pool where I'm swimming laps regularly. There are some exercise communities, there's yoga. But we also take our weekends to go on adventures. Explore the city, go to new places in the city, eat somewhere new, check out a cultural location, go to the local beach, man. Mountains, hiking, waterfalls. Like what is going on in the location that you're in, you really want to try and experience while you're here. So I'd say at least once a month we are going to explore and do something in the city. And of course even small things like going to a new restaurant or a new part of town or finding like the place where we can get the pillow with the mud cloth cover. Like even that is an adventure and an experience. So even the little stuff we count as an adventure and we have a lot of fun around. So I hope this gives you a glimpse of into a day in life and the time zone and the differences around that are my big differentiator and the thing I look forward to when we are living overseas, it makes it hard on the flip side because my west coast family and my west coast clients wake up right just about at 2pm, 3pm in the afternoon here. Like, all right. But then like I said, I'm online at that time. So we just sort of ebb and flow with it and adapt our schedules. I also recommend setting up your schedule for your new country and your new location before you even get there. So you don't arrive in your new location in your new country and you're like, oh, gosh, okay, I've got these, you know, 11pm meetings and 10pm meetings. Oh, and I wish they were earlier, but I didn't update my calendar in time. So this time around I learned from the prior experiences and I updated my calendar months in advance. So when we landed here in Abidjan, there were not a lot of 10pm and 11pm meetings. There were some. Absolutely. And every now and then, once a month, I do have a 10pm But I can handle that. I love it. In fact, it's a meeting with my clients. So I hope this is informative and helps you. I can't wait to hear if you have any tips or strategies of your own as you are living abroad or moving abroad. And it's a beautiful thing. If you have questions about taking taking your business abroad or running a business virtually, check out Amber McHugh.com we work with people all the time on creating businesses that align the lifestyle you want to live. And if you're looking to get your mojo flowing and get some courage and confidence to step into a new way of living, whether it's abroad or something else. You might want to do a photo shoot with us at three Boudoir. The confidence that that unlocks. If you are based in one of the cities that we are in in the US I would highly recommend it. You will uncover things about yourself that will light a fire and give you motivation to step into your next adventure over at 3boudoir.com. I hope you're having a wonderful day. Thanks for hanging out with me. It is always a pleasure. You're right on, Ted. Right on top, baby. I'll catch you in the next epis.