Nigel Marsh, the author of Fat, Forty and Fired, gave a great talk at the TED Sydney conference that addresses something many long term travelers deal with — how do you balance your life and the need to work and earn money?

As Marsh notes, “I found it quite easy to balance work and life when I wasn’t working.” That’s a sentiment almost any long term traveler can relate to. But what happens when you come home? When you’re no longer on the road, even if it’s only between trips, it’s easy to get trapped into thinking that life is nothing but work and drudgery and only travel is real living.

Travel becomes your escape from a life out of balance.

It works; travel can be a very effective escape. In fact, many people work very hard to turn their traveling into a full-time experience, but that usually involves working on the road, which often has mixed results — turns out it’s hard to earn money on the road. Chances are your travel blog isn’t going to earn you enough money to travel, there are exceptions, but the odds of you becoming one are slim. Even if you’re lucky enough to work in a field that allows you to be on the road and still earning money, you’re still working. You’re stilling going to have to find a balance between work and your life.

Marsh argues, that it isn’t some radical upheaval — another long trip, another new place — that we need but that “with the smallest investment in the right places you can radically transform your life.”