a digital nomadding experiment
So I’ve kind of snuck off to Portugal to experiment with digital nomadding.
‘What is digital nomadding?’ I hear no one ask.
Digital nomads are people who leverage the internet to take their work to wherever they want to go. There are typically 3 ways of working that enable this:
Working a remote full time job - either convincing your job to let you work away from an office or working for a remote first company of which there are more and more. Think Basecamp or Growth Machine.
Becoming a freelancer - many freelancers, particularly those who have built some regular clients or those who use various gig platforms like Upwork, can work largely unfettered by adherence to a timetable. As long as they do their work, it doesn’t matter where they are.
Starting your own business - this is probably partly behind the proliferation of coaches, digital nomads trying to ‘monetise’ or more sensibly, helping people to address previously rare problems that come with true location independence.
There are other ways of doing this. Having inherited wealth is a classic. Creating the Holy Passive Income Grail is another where your products/books/software (more likely property rentals) sell in perpetuity largely without your input. This is often posted as the dream, enabling you to do whatever you want with your now very unencumbered time. This is hardly a goal limited to digital nomads but it’s certainly an oft referenced solution.
Anyway, I’ve got some regular clients and no immediate dependents at home. It’s something I’ve always been interested in and I’ve got the opportunity to test it out in a relatively no consequence sort of way.
So why not?
Already, I’ve met some interesting characters who are using this new way of working to create a lifestyle that wasn’t previously possible for them.
Some are travellers, like the Aussie/Kiwi girl I met in my Lisbon hostel. She’s doing enough graphic design to subsidise her travelling and recently realised that she’s essentially broken even over the course of. year while seeing Europe.
Others are actually full-time employed. There are currently 2 software engineers staying in the same co-living space as me who work for companies in the UK and Europe. They have to login at certain, partly negotiable times and work relatively normally during the day. They leverage their lack of a commute and their location independence to surf. One of them usually lives in his solar panelled van.
There have been a couple of van-lifers, cruising up and down the Portuguese coast searching for waves and ducking onto cafe wifi to complete the odd bit of work.
There have been freelancers too. One was a German e-commerce and fashion photographer who lives in Lisbon for most of the year, goes home for Christmas and heads to South Africa from January to join the German companies who decamp there to shoot summer lookbooks. Lisbon is cheaper and sunnier than Berlin and provides a stream of work to keep her gainfully employed.
As far as how I feel about it, it’s only been a week but the early signs are quite promising. My schedule hasn’t actually changed all that much.
At home I get up, have coffee, preferably outside, do some reading and then start work, taking any early wins before getting into more serious stuff. I break for lunch, do a bit more and then round off the afternoon with some exercise. Then I relax, see friends, have dinner and then often do a bit more work, maybe something more creative, in the evening. I also have an American client who I only speak to at night.
Here my schedule is much the same. I get up, have coffee and go outside. Then I work, break for lunch and then go surfing at the end of the day if conditions allow. Then I socialise, have dinner and do some work later in the evening too when everyone else is in bed. I find working in the day easier as there are other people sitting there working which I find motivating.
The van-lifers talk about how they feel lonely from time to time and I could see how this could get a bit transient. I remain in the same place but the people around me change every few days for the most part. I don’t have my long term friends or family available to me here, except over FaceTime.
Perhaps the best way for me to do this is how I’m doing it now. Commit to a time period in one place, perhaps where I can do something specific to that location, establish a routine and then enjoy being there. Then I can come back home afterwards and see where to go next.
Perhaps it won’t be to my tastes. I might decide after a month that it’s a bit much. But that’s fine. It’s only been one month. Today I went out on a shorter board and only caught one good wave but it was amazing, one of those that makes you feel like the whole thing is worthwhile persisting with.
As far as I can tell for the moment this experience is a real high upside, low risk bet. Hopefully it pays off.