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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

#121

Post by enraged_camel »

kristiandupont wrote: post #5

Having 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…

>>Whenever I've set up in a new place, my productivity suffers severely for a week or two.

The language you are using here - specifically the word "suffer" - is indicative of a certain type of (generally Western) mindset where productivity plays a big role in a person's happiness and satisfaction.

I went on a two week vacation to my home country of Turkey back in July. For the first few days, it felt really odd to not work. I would wake up in the morning, have breakfast, fire up my laptop on the patio of my parents' house, and then... stare at the screen. After screwing around on HN and other sites, I would realize that it was 2pm and that I had "wasted" half my day. And I would feel bad about that.

After a few days though I realized how absolutely ridiculous that mindset was. I was on vacation and I was not supposed to be producing anything. I was supposed to be relaxing. It was like flipping a switch - I made a paradigm shift and spent the rest of my vacation "doing nothing." It felt great!

If I ever find myself in the author's situation where I have sufficient savings and am sitting on a beach in Thailand, instead of trying to continue working and getting stuff done, I'll just check out mentally and enjoy life.

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

#122

Post by trumbitta2 »

wslh wrote: post #35
Vivtek wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man, yeah, decision fatigue. I've been a freelancer (web work and later technical translation) since 1996 and we've moved, kids and dog and all, from Indiana to Puerto Rico to Budapest, at will - and the one thing that makes it difficult is that you're always asking, "Should we be staying here or going somewhere else now?" It never stops. The kids are having allergy problems? Let's move to the Caribbean! The Carib…

It seems like there is no perfect place. New Zealand or Australia? they are in a difficult time zone. One alternative is having two fixed locations and moving on winter.

Cagliari, on the southern coast of Sardinia, a southern big island in Italy, is the perfect place: startups, astonishing sea, tens of beaches, hot summers, max 2 winter days at near zero (Celsius).

I live there, I know how it is ;)

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

#123

Post by malandrew »

atmosx wrote: post #110
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…

There are two problems: 1) You might very good with text communications, as all hackers are. But your clients, especially big corporate players from which you'll land a $$$ job, might not be. And they will not level with you since they can have someone that fill their requirements. 2) Theoretically you can open your laptop while snowboarding at the French Alps and write the Linux Kernel. But it's certainly much more…

I used to always use a 17" macbook pro and it was always very very comfortable moving from it to a 27" display. However, I found that since going from the 17" to a 13", that my level of productivity has increased greatly because I'm now forced to tackle problems that require greater automation and finesse with keyboard only navigation. Given OS X's horrible support for X-windows and the truly useful window managers like XMonad, dwii, dwm, awesome, etc, it's simply not that convenient moving between a 13" and 27" screen. There is too much setup and change to your workflow to make that switch regularly for any programming activity that involves user interfaces (e.g. HTML/CSS) beyond a terminal or ncurses.

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

#124

Post by malandrew »

virtualwhys wrote: post #67
_delirium wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The most cost effective way I've managed to pull off the expat existence is to find the equivalent of Craigslist in the country you'd like to visit; then arrange a 3 month rental (the usual visa limit, on an American passport at any rate), sorting out high-speed internet in advance (i.e. if no connection in place already, contact local ISP and get technician visit/installation for day after you arrive). Next, get a l…

There needs to be a service where you can just buy/rent a packet with all the essentials. Sim cards are just one of the many things that could come in such a package to save you a lot of time. My GF when she travels has often sought out exchanging used pre-paid SIM cards for the countries she goes to as a way to avoid all the bureaucracy that often surrounds their acquisition. It would be great if you could do this with bank accounts too by simply handing it over to another person. Just withdraw all the money and hand the debit cards and other account information to another person. So long as the bank rules don't allow accounts to go negative, there is no reason to tie identity to bank accounts.

TBH, I've really come to the conclusion that borders are bullshit and I can't wait until they are increasingly viewed as an anachronism like they have come to be viewed within the EU. They create a number of inefficiencies in many many systems and the truth is that the only necessary system that really needs them to function under the current model is taxation to support public infrastructure within a region. However, even that can be solved by only taxing everything that is immobile, such as land, buildings, businesses that need to exist in a certain physical location for prosperity, such that both those that live in a place and those that visit a place, pay directly for the use of all the public services in that place via the infrastructure that accommodates them (places to sleep, eat, work and be entertained).

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

#125

Post by malandrew »

The best way to do meaningful work while living as a digital nomad is to contribute to open source. IRC, mailing lists and Github issues provide all the conversation and decision making infrastructure necessary to make the same architectural choices needed to build something with the same level of substance and depth as any project being tackled in an office environment.

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

#126

Post by malandrew »

personlurking wrote: post #8

Being 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…

I can totally relate. I'm living in SF now and previously lived in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Both SF and SP have the issue that going out always costs a lot of money and time, whereas in RJ, it was fast and cheap to spend time with friends.

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

#127

Post by kolinko »

enraged_camel wrote: post #121
kristiandupont wrote: post #5

Having 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…

>>Whenever I've set up in a new place, my productivity suffers severely for a week or two. The language you are using here - specifically the word "suffer" - is indicative of a certain type of (generally Western) mindset where productivity plays a big role in a person's happiness and satisfaction. I went on a two week vacation to my home country of Turkey back in July. For the first few days, it felt really odd to no…

Well, there is vacation, and there is "digital nomadism" that kristian and bartek are talking about.

If you go for holidays, you can tuck away your laptop and just rest, but if you plan a year long work&life scenario where you work remotely from another country, your productivity matters.

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

#128

Post by malandrew »

personlurking wrote: post #109
raverbashing wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In Brazil, I was going out 4-5x per week! My average night out in Rio I'd spend about US$5, maybe $10" That is certainly not nowadays... Even though yes, this may be doable in some places still (if you keep yourself to drinks and maybe some food for sharing)

This is in the last few years up this year, so it is nowadays. It's easy to keep it cheap, but many people have standards of living which say that a night out should be at nice bars and clubs. For example: Buses that run most of the night (roundtrip) - about US$2.75, Beers (four Skols from supermarket) - about US$3. That's US$5.75. Meet your friends near the beach, in Lapa, at someone's home or at some predetermined…

Yup. The rent in Rio de Janeiro is high, but you can really enjoy yourself at night for less than $20

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

#129

Post by mooreds »

malandrew wrote: post #125

The best way to do meaningful work while living as a digital nomad is to contribute to open source. IRC, mailing lists and Github issues provide all the conversation and decision making infrastructure necessary to make the same architectural choices needed to build something with the same level of substance and depth as any project being tackled in an office environment.

My takeaway from the article was that the cognitive overload of being in a new environment was at least as big a factor in not being able to handle meaningful work (that is to say, challenging work that forces you to grow) as the logistics.

But what you suggest has merit and I'd be interested to hear what the nomads' take on it is.

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

#130

Post by malandrew »

cottonseed wrote: post #26

The author needs to learn how to properly use the comma.

I really which grammar comments could be replaced with a "suggest edits" feature like on Quora. I don't know why no one has created a javascript layer that can be added to a site that would allow the author to designate anything on the page as something for which readers can suggest edits. Then when a reader clicks an edit button, they get an interface just like on Quora or maybe even better, where they can make changes and send those diffs to the author, who is free to apply them.
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