The things we love and don't about our remote-working, semi-nomadic lifestyle
Over the last 12-months Paula and I have been embracing life as permanent remote workers and, at least temporarily – digital nomads. It’s not just us – last year 10.9 million American workers also described themselves as digital nomads, an increase of 49% from 2019.
We aren’t talking about the sandal-wearing, staff-carrying, ‘just-the-clothes-on-my-back’ type of nomad (but some days that isn’t particularly farfetched). We are talking about individuals who work remotely for companies, like Houston & Ko, which are geographically flexible with no set office space.
Just over one year ago Paula and I had two corporate careers, travelled to our offices everyday, lived full-time in Zurich, and worked the standard(ish) 9-5 working day. Today we have one scaling start-up, no physical office space, work from wherever we wake up and spend whatever ‘free’ time that we have growing our business
Pandemic aside we have made some pretty significant changes to our lives and learned some things along the way.
Here are the top 3 things that we love and hate about what to expect when it comes to the pros and cons of being a digital nomad.
The things we love...
- Everyday has holiday potential: Time for a break? Two hours is more than enough to squeeze in a decent kite-surf, kayak or snorkel session when you are only 200m from the beach.
- Seeing more of our friends & family: Coming from international backgrounds, we both have friends and family strewn all over Europe and, travel restrictions aside, being able to spend evenings and weekends with them is a dream.
- Ability to change your environment: Fancy somewhere a little less rainy than Ireland? Or a little hotter than Switzerland? The freedom to change our environment adds huge value to our life-quality and keeps us motivated, inspired and happy to bring our best to the business each day.
The things we categorically do not love...
- Wifi Doesn’t Grow on Trees: Believe it or not, there is such a thing as ‘too remote’ so we have to make sure to find locations that are ‘on-grid’ enough to allow us to work effectively and run our business.
- Virtual Backgrounds: You know those friends and family we mentioned earlier, well they can nearly always be found roaming around in the backgrounds of our video calls so excuse the naff virtual backgrounds, but trust us, it’s for the best.
- It’s assumed you are on permanent vacation: If we got a cent every time those family members said ‘enjoy your holiday’ as we packed our bags to work from a new place, we wouldn’t even have to run our business to make money. If you aren’t in a suit, in an office – apparently it doesn’t count as work. We don’t make the rules.
What we wanted to tell you is that the grass is not greener on the other side, it’s just different grass and your own experience will depend on what you value in life. For us?
We wouldn’t have it any other way.