How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
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How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
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Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#2"Even though it might be obvious, during my travels I found out the hard way that creative, meaningful work, requires some routine. Changing your location once a week, working from benches, hammocks, cafes, bars and hostel floors is a cool way to fund your vacation, but it certainly doesn’t help you when tackling hard programming problems."
And this is what I've also found. In order to be able to do anything of any significance you need to make the rest of your life as routine as possible in order to minimise distractions. Continually moving around requires you to do a lot of extraneous work merely to reproduce your labour.
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#3Far as I can tell, the argument here boils down to "can't concentrate on coding while traveling". When put in a simple statement like that it becomes very obvious that the statement depends entirely on the person. Many people have little difficulty opening up their laptop and forgetting the rest of the world for an 8 hour stretch, and this would be the type of person who would do well as a digital nomad. If you need peace and stability in order to code - and many, many people do - then it's a bad choice.
I've also found you need to be very comfortable with email and text communications, and you probably need to be good at getting your point across and discerning the point of others as it's more difficult to communicate technical issues without being in person - but obviously very possible, as the number of very good technical blogs can attest to.
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#4"Even though it might be obvious, during my travels I found out the hard way that creative, meaningful work, requires some routine. Changing your location once a week, working from benches, hammocks, cafes, bars and hostel floors is a cool way to fund your vacation, but it certainly doesn’t help you when tackling hard programming problems." And this is what I've also found. In order to be able to do anything of any s…
This is absolutely true, and I believe why many companies that understand this are averse to remote working. Yes, commute time is a waste, but getting into an environment and mindset to do serious work requires you to get into your "routine groove".
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#5Having been semi-location independent for 4 years now, I have come to a similar conclusion.
The theory of decision fatigue -- that you get exhausted by making a certain number of decisions -- seems to be true to me. And the thing is that when you are in a new place, there is a large number of decisions to make about petty things like where is the nearest supermarket, where can I work out, how do I get proper internet etc. Whenever I've set up in a new place, my productivity suffers severely for a week or two. After that, I'm okay but if you travel a lot, that becomes a real price. And it's not rewarding the same way that other guilty pleasures are, it's just annoying.
I remember walking to the "office" in Bangkok one day, having been there for three weeks. I pulled out my iPod for the first time since I arrived. It struck me that this was a sign that I was familiar with my surroundings. I didn't need the full mental capacity just to navigate, I could run that process in the background and allow myself to listen to music. I am not sure what you can conclude from this but I think that it's likely that I had consumed a lot of energy up until that point, which I then didn't have for programming.
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#6"Stay in one place for a while" is fantastic advice. One week is barely enough time to get settled - every time you move you need to find stores, amenities, cafes etc. Two weeks is much better (and you'll appreciate the place more), but even longer is better if you really want to get work done.
A nice room is great advice too - makes a huge difference to your happiness if you can wake up each morning to an amazing view & sunshine in a good location, compared to a small cramped hotel room in a sketchy area. Obviously you have to go with what you can afford, but a cheap AirBnB can be dramatically better than a hotel sometimes.
The downside of getting a 'real job with an office' is that you might not be able to negotiate that 2 months annual vacation, or to get the vacation at times that suit you. You'll have to prioritize what you really want.
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#7"And to be completely honest, it’s just not enough. I believe that working with a team of people that are more experienced and smarter than yourself is crucial for your development, and as a freelancer, doing minor gigs involving some MVC/CRUD application programming, you just miss out on a world of possibilities to grow and learn."
I've experienced this as well, it was my main grief with working by myself and on the road and ultimately led me to join a company again part time. Sadly the team I joined isn't really what I expected from a team, so I'm already on the lookout again :(
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#8Being and having been a digital nomad for the past several years, it can become tiring having to switch up location and work setting so often. While living in Rio de Janeiro, I often wondered how people who are from there work in office buildings in the wealthy neighborhoods (which are a stone's throw from the beach), deal with knowing that fun and sun is literally 5 minutes away at any given moment, that people are always on the beach enjoying themselves while you have to be stuck up in your office with a possible view of the sea.
In any event, I wasn't one of these people as I could take a break when I wished and hit up the beach, etc. It was great...until the project that kept me financially stable went under. Instead of looking for more work, I sacrificed the need to work more for the free time (and ability) to very cheaply or freely enjoy myself in my surroundings, eventually tiring of demanding little of myself after a few months (you can only be young-ish and 'hang' for so long). It's great living in a beautiful place, but even better when that place is very affordable (or, in the least, when you've found a way to make it affordable...almost an art in itself).
In the Bay, I almost never went out because everything cost money and therefore my friends only did things that cost money. Being poor in US standards was social suicide.
In Brazil, I was going out 4-5x per week! My average night out in Rio I'd spend about US$5, maybe $10 (drinks included, try doing that in SF!). Plus, there just so much to do for free, from hiking to beaches, to free concerts and art exhibitions...you name it. Things that other young people are also doing, mind you. In developing nations, or even economically strained ones (I'm in Portugal now), where most people are on a budget, I find the amount of fun and interesting things to do, for free or cheap, increase. Not only do the events and activities increase, but the number of people doing them increase, too.
Being a digital nomad, with at least one stable project, in places like these is where the 'good life' is. But when that stable project goes bye-bye, the sense of the good life goes with it, no matter where you are.
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As an aside, having just read the article, I saw that it's a minimalist blog (post) on github.io, which I'm not familiar with. From their landing page, I don't see any offer for blogging.
On Wordpress, I couldn't find any theme like this but on HN I come across these types of entries somewhat often, though this is the first I've seen from github.io. Anyone know how I can get a free one like this, where there's just a white page and words, via any blogging service?
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
#91) get a remote-friendly job that fits your skill set and ambitions. Move every quarter or so. Stay in one place for a while.
That's kind of the best of both worlds. It's actually pretty tiring travelling AND working at the same time. You will have a large amount of context shifts which will destroy your productivity.
I also wish remote work is more common. While it usually works when you know a company really well (e.g. small company with known, trusted colleagues), not many companies are actively trying to make remote work possible.
Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad
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