Josh Johnston on Traveling 15 Countries With His Family — While Keeping His Day Job

When Josh Johnston started planning a family trip, the math kept pointing in the same direction: go bigger, go longer or don't go at all.

Johnston, an X-Teamer who had traveled with his wife before having children, wanted to give their daughters — ages three and seven at the time — a chance to see how other people live and to reconnect with friends and family scattered across the globe. In this story, Johnston describes how a year-long journey across 15 countries came together, what traveling with young kids actually taught him and how stepping away from his desk made him a sharper, more reflective engineer.

The Financial Case for Going All the Way

The original plan was modest. Johnston and his wife started by researching a shorter international trip but kept hitting the same wall.

"We started looking at a smaller trip, but saw it was probably going to be too expensive," he says. "But then we realised that if we went for a year, and found someone to rent our house for that time, it would be more financially viable than going for a couple of months."

Renting out their home for 12 months changed the equation entirely. What had seemed like an ambitious, expensive idea became workable. The route they settled on took the family from the U.S. to the Dominican Republic, across Europe and the UK and finally to Thailand and Cambodia — visiting colleagues, friends and family in 15 countries along the way.

One destination stood out above the rest. "The week that we spent with our friends in the Swedish countryside was hard to beat," Johnston says. "And we hadn't seen them for 10 years so it was a very special time."

Traveling With Kids: Smaller Doses, Slower Pace

Johnston had traveled before, but doing it with a three-year-old and a seven-year-old required a different approach. His daughters adapted better than expected — willing and curious even when plans went sideways. But the rhythm of the trip required deliberate management.

"My wife and I learned the value of scheduling a few 'boring days' here and there, and then we were all ready for more adventure," he says. The biggest lesson: enjoy simpler things in smaller doses rather than cramming too much into a single day.

The trip's most memorable detour was entirely unplanned. A Schengen visa complication forced the family to extend their time in England, and they ended up spending two weeks in a cottage in Cornwall. What started as an inconvenience became the moment the kids remember most.

"That's probably the memory that the kids bring up the most too," Johnston says.

It was a reminder that unexpected obstacles on the road don't always mean failure — sometimes they hand you something better than the original plan.

Full-Time Work, Bigger-Picture Thinking

Johnston kept working throughout the year — full days, with a mid-day window carved out for family time and longer evening hours to compensate. He admits it's difficult to measure exactly whether his productivity changed.

What he did notice was something subtler. "The times we traveled between one place and another I often gained a lot of clarity in the work plans I was making, and the areas I was focusing on," he says. "Having those times to step back and reflect on the bigger picture helped me to return to them with a new energy and perspective."

Travel, it turns out, isn't the enemy of focused work — it can be the reset that makes focus possible.

Coming home felt a little strange, but the family moved quickly into a new chapter: a dog, a new kindergarten for the youngest, homeschooling for the oldest. The adventure, as Johnston describes it, simply continued in a different form.

His younger daughter put it plainly not long after they returned: "When are we going to fly around the world again?"

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