Initial lessons from the road

I’ve been a full time traveler, digital nomad, location independent, insert current catch phrase here, for about a month and a half. In that short time, I have learned a lot. From unexpected surprises to challenging situations to newfound appreciations, there has been no shortage of insights and lessons. Some are applicable specifically for anyone desiring or making a transition to a similar lifestyle, but many of them are more broadly useful. Without further adieu, some initial thoughts from the road:

Efficiencies

I believe everyone who has worked in an office, especially a modern open floorpan office, has realized this at one point or another, but you really can get much more done when you spend the vast majority of your time outside of the typical office environment. This means you are either working from home (ideally a home “office”), a private office of your own, a coworking space or a hotel lobby. It doesn’t really matter where or what, but by having a work environment that is optimized to your preferences and working style, you will undoubtedly do your best work. How many times have you gotten more done in two or three hours working from home on a snow day than you did the entire previous day? For most people, the average workday is filled with interruptions, distractions, ready-made methods of procrastination and most destructively, meetings.

Speaking of meetings, when you are on the road and away from your home base, the number of meetings/breakfasts/drinks you are obligated to attend immediately drops to nearly zero. The ones that do happen become video or phone calls, which are typically shorter and more productive as everyone wants to get on with their day. Certainly in-person meetings can be extremely valuable and I will admit that something is lost via pixels, however the benefits of not having a calendar littered with these events far outweigh the downside of being unable to take these meetings.

At some point, anyone who travels long term will likely find themselves on the other side of the earth from their main business contacts, which means contending with and adjusting to an opposite time zone. I happened to to bite this off in my first two months (Taipei and then Melbourne), and while it has not been easy, being constrained by the number of productive hours available has taught (or forced) me to be more efficient with my time. We have all experienced some version of this story: that huge project due Monday which has been on your to-do list for weeks magically gets completed Friday morning because you have to catch a train to the beach for the weekend. Condensing a full work day into a shorter number of hours is an experiment that everyone should try a few times per year.

What you miss (and don’t)

I thought I would miss the comforts of home more than I do. Im a sensitive sleeper: I’ve always needed my pillow, a comfy bed, darkness and cold in order to get a good night sleep. Turns out I can adapt to different situations pretty easily, from a rock hard mattress in Taiwan to crappy pillows in Melbourne. As long as you’re tired, you will sleep. The longer you have to settle into a routine, the more natural it becomes. I also love to cook. So far, we’ve made due with a hot plate, hotel-sized fridge and complete lack of decent knives and still managed to create some respectable, even ‘grammable (not that we take pictures of our food) meals. My closet of dozens of button downs shirts and jackets and fancy shoes as been reduced to six t-shirts, two pairs of pants, a vest and a coat and what have I noticed? That I love not having to think about what to wear. Simplicity is a good thing. Those things you think you can’t live without? Trust me, you’ll struggle to even remember them.

You do miss the people: friends, family, neighbors (the few that are worth missing), doormen, colleagues. Greater effort is definitely required to keep in touch and maintain those relationships. You have to be proactive in reaching out and remind people you are thinking of them. This is a good habit to build regardless of where you live. Some relationships are inevitably going to suffer and some will falter altogether, but I think any friendship or professional connection worth preserving should be able to survive (if not thrive) despite a physical distance. 

Sense of time

As I mentioned, we’ve been remote for less than two months and already it feels like at least a year. Your sense of time completely changes when each day is filled with novel experiences. Days may go by quickly, especially if your schedule is upside-down due to being in an opposing time zone, but when reflecting back on past weeks or months the memories stretch from edge to edge in your mind. This is a strange feeling, having only been in a city for two or three weeks but remembering the first dinner you had like it was a lifetime ago. You can’t place a value on this but I can tell you it’s worth a lot. I can’t wait to see what a year (or more) feels like.

Finding balance

If you were to put me in a room filled with desserts and sweets and tell me that no one is watching, I would eat everything. I have very little self control when it comes to certain things and have to consciously force myself to find the right balance. When you are on a typical one or two week vacation, you rationalize indulgences - expensive meals, ice cream every night, sleeping late - by reminding yourself you only get two or three of these a year. When this has been your expectation for for years or even decades, it is a difficult mentality to shake, but when you're traveling indefinitely you cannot eat at Michelin-starred restaurants or have bespoke cocktails every night. The average person cannot stay in luxury accommodations everywhere they go. Its unlikely that you can even visit every “must see” destination within easy reach of where you are living. So far this has been the most difficult thing for us, but we have made a budget and plan on tracking it closely. Finding a balance between enjoying this new lifestyle and making wise financial decisions is priority number one and I plan on writing more about this over time.

If you plan on working, have a creative pursuit that you want to maintain or learn while traveling. It can be very easy to spend all your time working, and having something as a creative outlet will make you a happier person. For example, my goals include continuing to write for this blog, taking pictures of the places we go and learning new skills, from surfing to tango to martial arts. Find something that relaxes you, challenges you and makes you happy and do more of that.

Random travel tips

Pack less than you need. This advice is legion for anyone searching for digital nomad pack lists, but I am very proud of the fact that my wife and I took this to heart and managed to bring everything we need into a large backpack plus small daypack each. You may think because you are living in one place for extended periods that having several giant rolling suitcases is a good idea, but as soon as you hit a city with cobblestones, trek down a beach to a hut on the water or decide to jump from place to place more frequently, you’ll quickly regret that decision. My advice: pack for a week or ten days (full packing list to come at some point). Thats all you need.

Bartenders are amazing local guides. Find a cozy or cool bar and go in for a drink. You’ll be amazed at how eager they are to share their experiences, many of which you won’t read about in any local guides.

If you are traveling from city to city and staying for any length of time, make a list of the grocery and pharmacy staples that you must have and buy them on day one. Things like olive oil, ketchup, aluminum foil and ziplock bags are rarely found in AirBnBs and furnished apartments. It is worth making room for a few small items such as salt and pepper, which are both prerequisites for cooking at home and annoying as hell to have to buy over and over again.

I will write a separate post about the best gear and technology in a few months, so I will save my thoughts on those topics until then. In the meantime, for anyone who wishes they could do what we are doing, it is far easier than it may seem. Yes, a house and a car and a family will make it more difficult and create more moving parts to align, but nothing worth doing is ever easy. If I had to identify the biggest surprise so far, it would be just how normal it actually feels to live in a completely foreign place for several weeks at a time. To paraphrase someone (thanks Brad) we are traveling with, “during the work day we live a normal life, but every other minute we are basically on vacation.” This is a pretty apt description. Because even a simple walk to the grocery store is a novel experience, every day is full of new memories. This is what vacations are supposed to be all about: experiences that will be treasured and reflected on for a lifetime. The biggest challenge is figuring out how to get that feeling for more than a few weeks out of every year.