The Inglorious Life of a Digital Nomad
Loneliness & 4 other challenges of being a digital nomad (and how to overcome them)
The digital nomad cliche is:
A millennial sat in a trendy coffee roasters,
nursing an hour-old room temp Americano,
tap-tapping on their shiny new MacBook,
to effortlessly fund their next adventure.
Although I fit this cliche almost to a tee (I have a PC not a MacBook), it definitely hasn’t been effortless.
Here are 5 challenges I’ve experienced from 9 months (and counting) working from abroad, and what I have learnt from each.
1. Time Difference
This falls into the “blatantly obvious but massively underestimated” category.
Dealing with time difference is a given if you’re working remotely from other countries. What I didn’t expect is how much of an impact this can have on your working day.
Telephone Calls
Telephone calls can become all but impossible unless made late at night or early in the morning. Even then they often have to be scheduled in advance due to the small overlap window.
Emails
Email exchanges that might have taken place over an afternoon back home can be stretched to several days as you sleep through each other’s replies.
Longer Days
Trying to make the most of local library and cafe opening hours, whilst also allowing for overlap time with contacts back home, often means you’re starting early and finishing later.
There are however a few upsides to time difference too.
In My Sleep
You can fire off emails in the evening asking for things to be done, knowing they’ll be worked on while you’re asleep.
Batch-bake
You’ll likely receive the majority of your emails overnight so, instead of being bombarded constantly all day, they’re there waiting in the morning. This way you’re free to tackle them all in one batch at a time that suits you.
Lean Machine
Not having the luxury of multiple email exchanges per day forces you to be more efficient with your communication, to either ensure everything is handled based on one set of instructions, or to cut you out of the thread entirely. This leads to less back and forth and more time freed up to spend on other things.
These skills can be applied to improve your efficiency when you go home.
Automation, Automate, Automate
To avoid being a bottle neck due to your time difference, you’re also inclined to automate whatever you can, so things get done regardless of what time it is. This again increases efficiency.
Side note: If automating daily tasks sounds like something you want to do, you have to try Zapier. A platform that allows you to connect most online websites to most other online websites (no affiliation, just a fan).
Again, this skill of knowing what can be automated can also be put into practice when you return home.
2. Loneliness
I’m not travelling alone, I’m with my wife, but she works as a locum vet so we spend our working days apart. This means, if working from where we’re staying, I can spend the entire day alone, with no pets (unless we’re house sitting) and with no one to talk to from back home (because of the aforementioned time difference).
After a while this isolation can leave you feeling quite lonely. It also causes distraction as you seek human contact through YouTube videos online and can lead to a lack of motivation too.
To counter this I’ve found that working outside of where you’re staying at least a few times a week helps a lot. The change of scenery, and having strangers around, helps with focus and reduces the feeling of loneliness.
3. Not Knowing Where To Work
Coffee Shops?
It might not be for for everyone, but I like the white noise hustle and bustle of a coffee shop, it helps me focus.
However, you’re taking away a table from other potential paying customers, so you yourself have to be a paying customer for the time you’re there. This can get expensive:
- 9am A morning coffee
- 11am an elevenses pastry
- 12pm early lunch
- 1pm afternoon coffee
- 2pm afternoon snack
- 3pm random soft drink…
The longer you stay the more you pay.
Oh, and then there’s the toilet situation.
Assuming you’re there working on your own, who watches your stuff when nature calls? Do you risk leaving the lifeblood of your remote business humming away on the table for anyone to take, or do take everything with you and hope you don’t lose your table?
All in all, working out of coffee shops can be great, but not every day of the week.
Shared Offices?
High speed WiFi, security for your belongings and sometimes even free coffee.
Perfect.
For these reasons I try and book in at co-working spaces whenever and wherever I can. That said, they’re not available everywhere and even when they are they can often be expensive (WeWork, anyone…?), so doing this will depend on your budget.
Libraries?
Peace and quiet, desks, chairs and free Wifi, what’s not to love! Libraries are great but, being public places, I’m still not comfortable leaving my laptop alone. Working in a dark, drab library is not fun or inspiring either, so you do need to find a nice one.
Hotel/ Airbnb?
Working from where you’re staying is the cheapest option as you don’t have to travel anywhere and you’re paying for it anyway. You also (hopefully) don’t have to worry about your laptop going missing! That said, it can be lonely if it’s the only place you work from.
So which is best? The answer is, a mix.
All in all I’ve found a balance of all of the above, helps to avoid loneliness, keeps you motivated and won’t break the bank.
4. WiFi
Not everywhere has free WiFi… who knew!
What’s more, even if free WiFi is available it might be slow or prone to dropping off right in the middle of an important file upload.
I’ve countered this by having a mobile contract that allows roaming abroad, with data usage priced the same as if I were using my phone back in the UK. I’ve also got a contract that allows tethering so I can connect my laptop to it.
This setup been a lifesaver on many occasions where, without this mobile tethering, working that day would have been impossible.
Side note: if tethering your laptop to your mobile phone, ensure you set your laptop to treat your phone’s WiFi signal as a metered connection. PCs seem to drink-up gigabytes of your data allowance with background downloads otherwise!
5. Distraction
At the time of writing I’ve stayed in 49 different areas whilst travelling. Each location has meant a new place of work, a new local area and with it, the temptation to explore.
How on Earth do you get anything done in this scenario?
A trick that I’ve found helps is to allow yourself time to adjust to new working conditions, and not punish yourself if you don’t immediately get to work. This achieves nothing.
My method of quickly establishing a new routine after moving goes like this:
How To Quickly Establish A Routine & Focus After A Move
- Orient: What do you need and where is it? Use Google Maps to find things like run routes, shops, cafes, libraries and co-working spaces.
- Explore: allow yourself a few hours to explore your new surroundings. After all why are you travelling whilst working if you’re not going to explore?
- Sample: Spend each of the first few days working in a different location so you can find the best spots for you.
- Settle: Follow your usual work routine (morning walk, meditate… whatever it is) in your new environment. No sense in reinventing the wheel after each move.
After relocating 49 times I’ve also noticed a benefit from all this moving around that I didn’t expect:
A change in location keeps the mind fresh and allows you to mentally step back from your work.
In other words, changing where you work can help you gain perspective on what’s important, and stop you going down rabbit holes of “busy work”.
Over To You
So there you have it, 5 challenges that come with the digital nomad lifestyle, and how to tackle them.
Whether you’re already working remotely or thinking of doing so, hopefully something I’ve shared here helps.
Happy travelling.
About The Author
Whilst travelling, Simon has challenged himself to raise £100,000 for his new product Geco Hub (a wall-mounted storage hub for important everyday belongings), in only 100 days.
You can follow along with his progress at and find out what lessons he’s learnt from the challenge at 100ToLaunch.com.
