Digital Nomads are people who spend their free time traveling the world, living out of their backpack and working remotely. It’s a lifestyle that gives you freedom, yet makes it harder to manage your money, stay healthy, and lead a happy life. When you’re away, you want to be comfortable, so you don’t want to pack all your clothes in one carry-on. You don’t want to be out of place, so you want to travel light.
For some people, the hardest part about being a digital nomad is actually choosing to be one. The whole notion of leaving your job, family, friends, country, and lifestyle to travel somewhere exciting, unknown, and new is scary to some. However, you’ll soon realize that creating your own work schedule is essential to living on your own terms. Having a day job you can actually separate from your lifestyle can be challenging, but not impossible.
There is a lot of advice out there that says you can’t be a digital nomad. I’m here to tell you that is a load of nonsense. The truth is that we can do it. The great thing about digital nomads is that we get to be in many places at the same time. We get to live in a different place every week, and we work from a different place each day. In this article, we are going to explore the 3 most tough part about being a digital nomad.
Being Consistently Productive and Self-Motivated
When it comes to making a living from our passion for travel and digital nomadism, it’s hard to find a balance between work and leisure. You want to work when you’re in the mood, but you also want to take advantage of your free time to enjoy the best of your lifestyle. How do you find a balance?
Being a digital nomad is a lot of fun, but it’s difficult to be consistently productive and to stay motivated. Why? There are many reasons, but the most important is that you are not always where you want to be.
Learning to organize your life and work more efficiently is one of the most important things you can do to become more sustainable. While the key to becoming more productive is quite simple (all it requires is more discipline), finding time for all the things you want to do can be difficult, especially if you must squeeze them into your extremely busy routine.
If you’re a digital nomad, these things will happen to you on a daily basis. This is not a particularly new phenomenon, but I felt it’s worth covering here.
Maintain A Consistent Daily Routine
When you decide to become a digital nomad, you’re making sacrifices, sacrifices that can be difficult to maintain. For example, you’re giving up the safety of a stable job; the comfort of your home; the daily routines of your home life; and the social support you get from family and friends. You also make sacrifices of your time, giving up the time to go to work each day, to start your day with some exercise, to spend time with your loved ones, to spend time with yourself, and to start your day by doing some writing.
Life as a digital nomad is an exciting adventure, but it’s also exhausting. You have to adhere to strict schedules to survive, then when you get to your destination, you have to convince yourself that your schedule is okay after all, and then you only have the slightest amount of energy for any other details in your day. There’s also the fear that you won’t be able to stick to your routine once you’re home, since you’ll have temptations of friends, social life, or work to deal with.
If you’ve ever wondered why you’re never getting that daily routine that you set out for yourself, then you’re not alone. It’s simple really, it’s because it’s impossible to keep all the tasks you plan for in mind at once.
Maintain Relationships
Relationships are difficult to maintain. It seems that most people have a set routine of going to work, then coming home, then having dinner, then sitting on the couch watching TV. It’s no surprise that most people go through life with simply that—no more, no less.
When deciding to move to a new country, we often say we’re going to live a life of freedom and travel. But what we don’t always realize is that we’re actually leaving behind the relationships we already have. We might leave relationships that we’ve nurtured and cared for years and feel a slight pang in our chest when we’re about to leave them behind.
When I talk about relationships, I don’t mean the romantic kind. I mean the ones between friends, family, and coworkers. I know what you’re thinking: how can something be difficult? But the truth is, relationships are hard to maintain—even the ones you believe are perfect. All relationships have ups and downs, and that’s just the way it is.