In 2007, Marla Bainbridge Martinez went on a vacation that changed her life.

She visited Isla Mujeres, a five-mile-long Mexican island off the coast of Cancun, and fell in love with it. She returned for regular visits, meeting other Americans who had moved there, and started thinking: “They get to live there. Why not me?” The answer was work — she was a consultant at a technology firm, and couldn’t just quit and move to an island.

To make this big change in her life, she needed a plan. So she wrote one: She called it The Escape Plan — “my detailed, step-by-step plan on how I would quit my job and move to a Caribbean island,” she says.