Working remotely for over a decade
Remote work equals freedom to me. Freedom from a location, from having to live in one place because work demands it, from morning traffic, from dull offices, from commuting.
Freedom is the ability to quickly shift priorities and direction based on changing circumstances. An example of that is that after having lived in Brussels for 7 years in 2016 I was able to relocate to Sofia while retaining our existing client base.
That started in 2010 when I first read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss and continued with Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier. It prompted Dávid Reinhold and me to a gradual process of educating our clients that we can still be productive and efficient while not being physically present. I even wrote about the tools we used at the time in my first-ever blog post 10 years ago.
I had countless conversations with people about the benefits already back then. There are different levels of remote work. Here is how I would classify them:
- Level 1: You work a job that could be done away from your official place of work like your office to avoid the time that you waste commuting there and back. Only doing that, while still living in the same city and working the same job should save you about two to three hours per day. That’s 60 hours per month!
- Level 2a: You are still working the same job but you are not in the same city anymore. If you are an action sports junckie like me, you can be close to the mountains or the ocean and be able to snowboard or surf before and after work. I can not overstate the motivation that I have to do my job well and fast if I know that I can use the hours before and after work for something fun. For me this is unbeatable.
- Level 2b: You want to go somewhere for a long weekend. You can leave on Wednesday after work. You can take a few hours off on Thursday and take Friday off completely. Then you would enjoy Friday, Saturday, and Sunday while effectively being away for 5 days.
- Level 3: Relocate completely to another country. Since I completely embraced this way of life I often relocate for a few months to different places around the world.
- Level 4: Be permanently on the move. An example would be to work from a camper van. We did this a few years ago with my wife.
After joining X Challenge Park in 2019, Vesselin Despotov and I created an alternative co-working space in 2021, and since I spend the summer months in the park I work from there most of the time.
The funny thing is that a few months ago I rented an office in downtown Sofia together with my lifelong friends from Those Things Studio and my recent friend Alexander Ralev from Are Optics. So I kind of went full circle. Level 5? So why do I have a physical office if I am such a remote work fan? I like to have a place to go to for work from time to time and depending on what I have to do I choose whether to do it from the office or from home. It takes me 5 minutes to walk so I can handle the commuting.
I am sitting in my daughter's room in Varna as a write this and my current belief is that having the ability to work from home, from your office if you have one, or from anywhere with an internet connection is the ultimate work freedom.
Here are some more photos from the past few years.
