In 2007, Marla Bainbridge Martinez went on a holiday that modified her existence.

She frequented Isla Mujeres, a five-mile-extensive Mexican island off the coastline of Cancun, and fell in appreciate with it. She returned for typical visits, assembly other Us residents who had moved there, and started thinking: “They get to reside there. Why not me?” The reply was work — she was a expert at a technological innovation company, and could not just stop and move to an island.

To make this big improve in her existence, she essential a strategy. So she wrote 1: She referred to as it The Escape Program — “my detailed, stage-by-phase prepare on how I would stop my career and move to a Caribbean island,” she suggests.