People hear “I split my time between Auckland and Tonga” and they picture one of two things.
Either I am some jetsetter sitting on an island like a five star resort, laptop by the plunge pool, cocktail in hand. Living the dream.
Or they think I am based in Tonga and just pop over to Auckland for short stints. Like New Zealand is the side trip.
Both are miles off.
I run a marketing agency. Clients across NZ, Australia, and Tonga. A team of four. Three offices. The team office on Queen Street in Auckland. My home office in Auckland. And Tonga. All three are real. All three are where the work happens. The only difference is one of them has a generator and a Starlink dish instead of fibre.
I made the decision years ago to run everything in a browser. Google Workspace, project management, CRM. Nothing tied to a building. Nothing that needs me in a chair in a specific room. That one decision is the reason all of this works.
Before Starlink, working from Tonga was a fight. Slow internet. Expensive. Video calls were a negotiation with the bandwidth gods. You would start an upload, make a cup of tea, come back, and hope. Starlink fixed that. It is fantastic. The only time it drops is if the power goes off, and when that happens I run out, fire up the generator, and the office is back up and running within ten minutes. Works like a dream.
Tonga is one hour ahead of Auckland. That means my mornings are real slow. And I love that. No traffic. No commute. No rushing out the door. I get two hours back every single day that I would lose sitting in a car in Auckland. Two hours. That is ten hours a week. Those hours are mine now. I use them. I get deep work done before anyone in NZ has even opened their inbox, and by the time my team hits their afternoon, I have already had a full day. I cook dinner while I am on the phone with clients because there is no mad rush. There is no scramble. I am already where I need to be. Working late is not a problem. It is just what I do. And even when I am deep into something at 9pm, I pop outside to feed the cows and the pigs and play with our dogs on the plantation. That is my version of a break. Try getting that in Ponsonby.
And then there is what Tonga does to my brain. This is the part I was not expecting.
Auckland runs hot. Everything is urgent. Everyone is busy. There is always another meeting that should have been a phone call, another task that apparently cannot wait, another notification pulling you sideways. The city vibrates at a frequency that my ADHD brain locks onto and then cannot let go of. I run at about 150% all the time. In Auckland, the world matches that speed and piles more on top.
Tonga strips all of that out. Not because people there are slow. They are not. The country works. Businesses run. Things get done. But the pace is different in a way that is genuinely hard to explain until you have stood in it. The afternoon heat slows everything down. Meals go long and they are full of people. The ocean is right there and it is always an option. And somewhere in that shift, my brain finally goes quiet enough to think properly. I have written more, planned better, and made sharper decisions from Tonga than from any desk in Auckland. Not because I am doing nothing. Because the noise drops away and there is finally room.
The generator does break sometimes. The hardware shop does not always stock what you need and the next option is a container from New Zealand. But that is just life in a different place. You adapt. You get creative. And you develop a patience that, honestly, makes you better at everything. Most of my clients do not care where I am. They care that the work gets done.
But the reason I keep going back is not the business. It is the ocean light through the window before anything has demanded my attention. It is the particular quiet of a Pacific morning before the heat builds. It is my husband’s family. The kids soaking up something from that connection that no amount of Auckland living could give them. My youngest switching between languages in that house without even thinking about it. Every time I go, I come back sharper. Clearer about what matters. Less attached to the noise. Tonga changed my relationship with time. Not made me slower. Made me less afraid of space. Auckland tells you every gap in your calendar is a failure. Tonga tells you the gap is where the thinking happens.
I run a better agency because of Tonga. I make fewer reactive decisions. I hold things lighter. I work from intention, not urgency. That sounds like something off a retreat brochure. It is not. It is the practical result of spending real time somewhere that will not let you confuse being busy with being productive.
I built everything in the cloud from day one. I hired people I trust to move without me in the room. I told my clients how I work before it became an issue. Not defensively. Just straight. Here is my response time, here is who to call, here is how it works. And when the power goes out and the Starlink drops and the generator takes a minute to kick in, I handle it, say sorry, and move on. The sky does not fall.
I am not selling this as a lifestyle. I am not building a course about it. I am telling you because people see an agency owner posting from Tonga and assume it is a holiday. It is not. It is a choice. A deliberate, noisy, imperfect, beautiful choice about how to build a life that fits the work I love, the place I love, and the people I love.
You do not have to go to Tonga. But you might want to ask yourself what your version of it is. The thing that forces a reset. The place that cuts the noise. The decision that looks completely impractical from the outside but makes everything run better on the inside.
Those things are worth building for.
