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How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

alexp.github.io

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Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#51

Post by kalleboo »

_delirium wrote: post #28
mercer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way I see it, one doesn't need to actively travel constantly to be traveling. When I was dealing with a difficult project, I just stayed at one particular hostel for two months, and settled into a routine. It was an odd one, of course, but it still became a routine, and I could finish the project.

The successful travel/work people I know do it in that style, moving between cities on a monthly or bimonthly basis, not daily. They'll typically spend 1-3 months in a city, renting a place on AirBnB or a local rental site, then move to another city. That removes a lot of the problems discussed in this blog post, like not knowing if you'll have internet access tomorrow, and not being able to guarantee you can spend 8…

I've been "homeless" for nearly 2 years now, and this is how I do it. Stay somewhere for 1-3 months in an AirBnB or with a friend/relative, and keep the sightseeing/carousing about to weekends and half-week vacations.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#52

Post by kalleboo »

seiji wrote: post #44
RyanZAG wrote: post #3

Far 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…

How do you do an eight hour stretch? At best I can work for two hours without needing food or a bathroom break. Imagine you're working in public space. To take a break you have to pack up your laptop, power adapter, water bottle, phone, headphones, go put them in a locker (or just carry them), visit a wc, eat, take a break, go get bag out of locker, find another place to sit with power, set up computer, power adapter…

I wish "hourly office rental"-type places were more common for this use case. It would also help with all the people hogging seats at Starbucks.

Personally I love the internet cafés in Japan - you get a private booth, free drinks, some even have showers. They're well-equipped enough that some people down on their luck even live in them permanently. I wish that model was more widespread internationally.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#53

Post by hawkharris »

Alex, you're a very skilled storyteller. I enjoyed reading the post.

I have one small piece of constructive feedback: your use of commas was a little confusing at times, and it slowed down my reading.

Commas can be tricky, and I sometimes struggle with them as well. Here's a quick guide that I find useful:

http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/commas.asp

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#54

Post by joonix »

VLM wrote: post #20
ronaldx wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a whole layer of difficulty between remote working-from-home and remote working-while-travelling. A good office provides a suitable environment for almost anyone to work in. This will cover a lot of seemingly minor stuff - a desk, an ergonomic setup, sufficient clean bathrooms, a coffee machine, a place dedicated just to work, a dedicated telephone line, comfortable temperature/atmosphere, a motivational work…

Group projects at university are an interesting learning lab for this problem. Did you prefer to work in a conference room/lab/unused classroom, or were you the guy who preferred to sit on the lawn? Aside from personal preference, how did it feel when the other group members "forced" you to work somewhere uncomfortable? My experience is .edu is not any different than .com. The main problem is in .edu everyone logical…

The people who actually ended up doing the work never wanted to be on the lawn. Those who saw the meeting as another chance to hang out did.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#56

Post by joonix »

kalleboo wrote: post #52
seiji wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you do an eight hour stretch? At best I can work for two hours without needing food or a bathroom break. Imagine you're working in public space. To take a break you have to pack up your laptop, power adapter, water bottle, phone, headphones, go put them in a locker (or just carry them), visit a wc, eat, take a break, go get bag out of locker, find another place to sit with power, set up computer, power adapter…

I wish "hourly office rental"-type places were more common for this use case. It would also help with all the people hogging seats at Starbucks. Personally I love the internet cafés in Japan - you get a private booth, free drinks, some even have showers. They're well-equipped enough that some people down on their luck even live in them permanently. I wish that model was more widespread internationally.

Regus does it. Of course it's much more cost effective to get a monthly rental if you'll be using it frequently.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#57

Post by spaboleo »

I am really wondering how you communicate with your customers?

Do they know that you are living in places where most of them might even can only dream of going to for vacation? Or do you just simply "not tell them"? How do you handle call requests then? Or situations where the customers just invites you over to discuss the project in detail in person?

And what are their reactions like when you tell them that you currently are living just a stone's throw away from a beautiful sandy beach? What is the quota of lost jobs due to that?

Thanks!

Otherwise really insightful article. I enjoyed it :) And being a frequent traveller myself I would recommend you to stay longer in predefined places. Like you said...catering for the logistics (accommodation, internet access, checking out the neighborhood, finding grocery stores/restaurants) all that is yet interesting but really tiering and time consuming. It is a better choice to stay somewhere for 3 months, plan ahead for the next location during that period and use weekends or other "time-slots" of your choice to explore the region. If you want to travel to a place that would require you to have more time than a regular weekend offers, you should take a vacation. Which would require you to work the time on weekends the weeks before and of course one should stick to a set number of days off per year in addition. It's the student-dilemma...when there is no one micro-managing you, people tend to slack-off. So you should keep yourself accountable towards yourself in that situation. Like you were employed, but by yourself ;)

Oh and another question: What is your girlfriend doing that she has the time and financial backup to do this with you? Is she working in the same field?

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#58

Post by dageshi »

Having done this a bit, the answer is in my experience, figure out a good location in a particular country, in Thailand I'd say Chiang Mai, in China perhaps Yangshuo, Cambodia Siem Reap or Sihanoukville. Get yourself a cheap place/room for a month or so, do some serious work then when you've completed whatever it is you're doing do some proper traveling.

Trying to do it all at once is mostly a killer. That's not to say you can't do maintenance and smaller tasks while actually traveling, but really building anything meaningful actually requires a lot more concentration in my opinion.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#59

Post by dennybritz »

Your blog should have comments. I've done this as well, I've lived in Thailand for 6 months and Japan for a year, and other countries for longer period of time, mostly doing remote freelancing work.

I somewhat disagree with your first point (I've been getting good and big projects), but I completely agree with the second one. There is a lot of mental baggage when you have not "settled" down and don't have established habits. I am starting to think that a more effective way would be to do several weeks of focused work, 1-2 week travel, rinse and repeat.

Re: How I thought I wanted to become a digital nomad

#60

Post by agibsonccc »

Great story. This is something similar to what I'm close to building for myself. I had wondered what it would be like if I had actually achieved it. That being said, if I rotate places I would try to stay for a decent chunk of time. I couldn't imagine constant travel. It's just not productive if only for the fact that travel itself tends to limit ability to do work. That doesn't count the cognitive load of establishing a somewhat productive routine.
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