There is a strange thing about modern working life.
On paper, many of us have it easier than previous generations. We have faster computers, better communication, flexible working, online shopping, food delivered to the door and the ability to work from almost anywhere.
Yet plenty of people feel more tired, more rushed and less in control of their time than they expected to.
Work no longer necessarily ends when work ends.
The laptop might close at five, but there is an email notification at seven. A message arrives while you’re cooking dinner. Someone needs something tomorrow. Your phone reminds you about an appointment. A news story catches your attention. Then there is the endless comparison with what everyone else appears to be doing.
This all creates a background level of urgency that can be surprisingly exhausting.
There is also the problem of decision fatigue.
What should you eat? When should you exercise? Should you change jobs? Should you save more? Should you travel? Should you buy a house? Should you be doing more with your evenings?
Even leisure can start to feel like another task to optimise.
This is perhaps why the phrase “escaping the rat race” resonates with people who are not actually trying to escape work.
They may enjoy their jobs. They may have good salaries, comfortable homes and perfectly respectable careers.
What they want is a different relationship with time.
That is one reason taking several months away from normal routines can be more revealing than simply booking a two-week holiday. A holiday is designed to be temporary. You know when you are going home, so there is no need to question the structure of your ordinary life.
A longer break gives you enough time for the initial excitement to wear off.
You find out what you actually enjoy doing when nobody is asking you to be productive.
For some people, that might mean travelling slowly along the canals. For others, it might mean reading, walking, working remotely from a different environment, or simply having fewer commitments competing for attention.
Life aboard a narrowboat certainly doesn’t remove responsibility. There are locks to work, water to manage, plans to make and the occasional mechanical problem to deal with. It is not a permanent retreat from practical life.
But the responsibilities are often tangible.
You can see where you are going. You know what needs doing. You make a decision and move on.
That can feel very different from spending an entire day responding to things that seemed urgent when you woke up.
Perhaps the answer isn’t to abandon modern life altogether.
Perhaps it is to interrupt it occasionally.
A few months away can be enough to discover what you miss, what you don’t miss, and which parts of your old routine you were carrying simply because you had never stopped to question them.
You don’t necessarily need a new life.
Sometimes you just need enough time away from the old one to see it clearly.
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