What I Learned when I Quit my Corporate Job and Sailed Across the Atlantic on a Cruise Ship
What do you do when you have a successful career and live a very comfortable life in one of worlds best cities? Well in my case that was quitting my job and leaving my apartment to go on an adventure…
Its not that I was burned out or didn’t like the work I was doing. But it is in my nature to intentionally push myself to have new experiences. These new experiences I get through making new friendships and exploring the magnificent breadth and detail in the world, which makes me grow as a person. Over the last 3 years I had gradually lost this energy. So it was time for something new.
And what better way to set myself of, than to leave everything behind and cross the Atlantic towards Latin America on a cruise ship?
When I first heard about the Nomad Cruise, I knew this was something I wanted to take part on. The Nomad Cruise is a bi-annual skill-sharing journey for Digital Nomads that this time in 14 days sailed from Gran Canaria to Panama, with one-day stops at St Kitts, Curacao and Aruba. With a total of 1500 guests, of which 260 part of the Nomad Cruise, 700 staff members, a casino, pool, shops, theater, spa, gym, club and multiple bars and restaurants, this was bound to be exciting.
The Nomad Cruise program consisted of its participants presenting and giving workshops on topics as diverse as marketing, storytelling and cryptocurrencies, but the main theme was sharing experiences on how to get by as a digital nomad. This program was enriched with meetups, lots of networking and alternated with some sports or cocktails at the pool.
Isolated in this bubble in the middle of the ocean I made lots of new friendships, had an enormous amount of fun, was overwhelmed at times, but above all got inspired and learned a lot. On the latter I want to share some of my learnings here.
1. The Increasing Popularity of Digital Nomadism & Remote Work
I mentioned the term before, but what is a Digital Nomad actually?
Digital Nomads are people who derive their income remotely and online and are therefore location independent. Many of them also have a passive income which allows them to spend more time travelling, learning something or practicing their hobbies.
The types of jobs they do vary a lot, but I tried to capture most of the jobs they do in the image below:
Motivated by The 4 Hour Work Week and facilitated by the omnipresence of high speed internet the Digital Nomad community has exploded over the past 10 years. Resulting in a huge community in Facebook groups, Slack channels, a subreddit and on Nomad List. This community is facilitated by among others:
- Co-working and Co-living spaces that pop-up in every city and even towns around the world.
- Nomadic ecosystems like Selina, that include everything from accommodation, and co-working to food and events & activities.
- Remote job platforms like: Wanderbrief, Remote OK, We Work Remotely, Remote and Remotive, that build the bridge between companies in search for talent and remote workers.
But definitely also by events and workations (vacations that combines business and leisure), like the Nomad Cruise and many others like Remote Year, WiFi Tribe, Nomad Train and the DNX Summit.
Tolkiens famous quote seems to apply particularly well to this community:
“Not all those who wander are lost” — J. R. R. Tolkien
However, working remotely is not only for people who want to be on the road all the time.
Remote work can also be combined with a traditional office job, where you work from home, a cafe, or a co-working space from time to time. I used to do this once or twice a week in my previous job and found it to be greatly boosting my productivity, efficiency and happiness. And its becoming an increasing possibility for various professions, since how much of our work really requires more than a laptop, internet and a phone?
However this is not a possibility for all lines of work and not everybody will be interested in this way of working, I do believe an increasing part of the future of work is remote. And mainly young workers will drive this workplace transformation. Which is great news for companies, because it will not only increase employee productivity, efficiency and happiness but might also decrease real estate costs and overhead.
2. Becoming the Best Version of Yourself
Maybe it was because of the fact that I finally had more time for other things after quitting the rat race, but unquestionably also all the workshops & talks on the ship inspired me to think more consciously about self-improvement.
On board I noticed there is a lot of knowledge and enthusiasm for optimization rituals in the Digital Nomad community. This ranged from talks focused on the body like setting eating & exercise goals, to mind focused topics like meditating, breathing techniques as well as neuro-linguistic programming, and more functional self-improvement topics like productivity tips, public speaking advice and yes, even an actual orgasm workshop.
The motivation I got as a result of joining these sessions, plus having a bit more time on my hands has set myself on a journey of becoming a better, wiser person, focusing more on self-improvement.
But where to start? There doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to exercise, meditate AND eat healthy next to my working and social activities. And in the meanwhile my Goodreads & Pocket reading lists, Podcasts feed, watching lists and Notes with random scribbles and ideas keep on expanding. The whole thing seemed so overwhelming, so where to begin? How to make a habit stick, and even start with it?
For me the answer came through a podcast I listened to recently. In this episode of the Knowledge Project, Naval Ravikant shares his thoughts on reading, happiness, systems for decision making, habits, honesty and more. I highly recommend this podcast to everyone, because of its many life lessons.
What really helped me overcome my obstacle are two things Naval recommended. First one is to understand yourself. Create a focus and set priorities to the things that are important to you. And then second, do something of that every day. It almost doesn’t matter what and how much of it you do, but the habit will build. Eventually you will do enough of it and your interests will lead you there, that it will dramatically improve your life.
This really encouraged me and I’m now in the process of setting my priorities and trying to practice them on a regular basis. I’m not ‘there’ yet, if I will ever be, but perhaps one of my future blog posts will be about my experiences in this process.
3. The Meaning of Work
It turned out I wasn’t the only one on the ship who quit their job and was looking for a change. But there were also many others who were not sure they had found their dream job.
To cater this need there were workshops like: your money or your life, what’s your thing?, the why discovery and discover your meaningful 6-figure business idea. The central idea of all of these was to discover what work means to you. And generally this (shockingly) did not turn out to be to earn money so you can enjoy your life at retirement.
Many people had already threw this traditional view of promotions and money on a career overboard (pun not intended) and were rather interested in the freedom in time & mobility they gain through their remote work. However, since we spent most of your day at work, we might as well make it worthwhile and do something we are good at and enjoy doing, while making the world a little better. This non-traditional way of thinking seems to be a broader trend among younger workers and is something we frequently forget when we are up to our neck in our daily work routine.
Therefore most of these workshops were focused on exploring our personality types, articulating what our particular skills and interests are, and then evaluating how we can help others when we combine these. This combination usually gave a good starting point to explore your options further.
For me, it really helped me on my way to discover what I want to do next. But just as with my self-improvement goals, I haven’t completely figured this out yet, so stay tuned.
Concluding this was a wild and intense experience. And never would I have imagined to meet so many different, inspiring people and have so many interesting interactions while floating around on a vessel in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean without internet.
I’m still working on processing all my experiences, but overall I believe quitting the rat race and joining this inspiring cruise has set me in a perpetual self-discovery & self-improvement mode and I trust through this I will get the best out of myself and live a happy life.
If you have any thoughts or questions after reading this, I’m very curious to hear them. Thanks for reading!
