Is the Digital Nomad Lifestyle Right for You?

If social media were to be believed, the digital nomad lifestyle is a glowy daydream come to life. But naturally, this doesn’t tell the whole story.

So, how do you really know if becoming a digital nomad is right for you? Here are five ways to tell that the nomadic lifestyle is for you and five ways to tell if it isn’t.

Signs The Digital Nomad Lifestyle ISN’T For You

Do any of these points feel familiar?

1. Decisions exhaust you

The most exhausting part of the digital nomad lifestyle is decision fatigue. You’re constantly faced with questions like where you should work from, where you should go next and how long you should stay there.

Getting settled into a new location requires you to get to know the locale so, unless you’ve moved homes many times in your life, the decision cycle that takes place when you land somewhere new is a somewhat unique experience.

It is a stark contrast compared to life at home where questions like where you’ll work, how you’ll get there and which grocery store to visit are already answered.

2. You don’t enjoy planning

When you’re always moving from place to place, you’re in a constant cycle of planning.

This is how the planning cycle looks in my life as a digital nomad: I stay in most locations for a month at a time. This means that I’m constantly planning my upcoming month, and the month after that. Some digital nomads will plan for longer periods, such as three or six months, to minimize the number of decisions they must make.

3. You’re picturing yourself living on holiday

The daydream of hopping between attractions on a Tuesday afternoon is intoxicating, but it’s not the reality for most digital nomads. If you’re still working a full-time job, then you can expect to spend your evenings and weekends off exploring and your normal workday at your laptop.

Look critically at your daydream: if you’re picturing yourself off exploring nonstop away from your computer, then you’re picturing a holiday, not remote work. The opportunity that digital nomadism presents is about changing what you do, see and experience after work.

4. You can’t let go of specific routines

Being able to maintain every single routine that you have isn’t a guarantee when travelling. Your ability to find the precise breakfast or personal care products that you’re used to will be compromised the further you go from home.

This is as true for comfort routines as it is for necessities like access to essential medical care. Travellers with specific medical care routines will have to plan out where they’ll have access to restocking their supplies and may have to make specific arrangements such as taking shorter trips, getting a bulk supply of their medications upfront or having supplies mailed to them.

5. You have poor communication skills

Poor communication, such as losing track of emails and messages and not replying to colleagues in a timely manner is a quirk that’s not uncommon in the workplace. In the office, poor communication skills can always be circumnavigated by colleagues approaching your desk.

As a digital nomad, when your day-to-day in-office contact with colleagues is reduced to emails, direct messages and phone calls, communication becomes even more important.

Beyond having to work harder for clear direct communication, you also lose all your indirect communication. You no longer have casual (but often work-related) conversations with your teammates in the kitchen while brewing a cup of tea or overhearing an informative conversation happening at the desk next to yours.

Poor communication is something that must be improved to reduce problems for yourself while travelling.

Signs the digital nomad lifestyle IS for you

Let’s shift the conversation to the positive and look at affirmative signs that the travel lifestyle is for you.

1. You can acquire remote work

If you’re already working remotely, then you can move on to the next point. For anyone who is not currently (or never has been) in a remote position, then this may require a change in job or career altogether.

The most common paths for acquiring remote work are:

• Negotiate your current role to be remote (if possible)
• Use remote work job boards such as Flex Jobs or Remote.co to find a remote role
• Go freelance and offer any digital skill that you have as a service via Upwork or Fiverr

If you’re still interested in going abroad but can’t find a remote job, then you can pursue contract work in many countries such as teaching English as a foreign language.

2. You genuinely enjoy travelling

While this may sound obvious, travel is a stressful event for many people and it’s important to examine how you (and your travel partners, if you have any) respond to a constantly changing environment.

If holidays and weekends away cause headaches and stress, you’ll need to think closely about how much you genuinely want to travel and don’t just want to escape your current circumstances. If travelling itself doesn’t excite you, it may be time for another big life change, such as moving somewhere new or changing jobs.

3. You can’t currently achieve your travel goals

Is your bucket list overflowing with trips you want to take, but it’s impossible to fit them into your time off? Without the option of remote work, most travellers end up taking one of these paths:

• Travelling during your holidays and slowly checking off destinations
• Saving up money and quitting your job for months of extended travel
• Making big travel plans for retirement

If these solutions aren’t desirable or realistic for you, then combining work with travel is the best way to achieve your travel goals.

4. The thought of spending your Evenings exploring excites you

For remote workers, exploration happens outside of your working hours. So, imagine that you shut down your computer today at 5 pm and you’re somewhere new – KigaliI, São Paulo, Istanbul, Hội An, Mexico City - what would you like to do?

Can you see yourself wandering around night markets, following your nose to find dinner or finding a good viewpoint to watch the sunset? If these ideas excite you, then you’re on the right track.

5. You’re curious

There is no contract to sign to test out the nomadic lifestyle and you won’t have to commit to five, three or even one year. Digital nomadism doesn’t need to put you on an entirely different life trajectory. It’s perfectly fine to temporarily use remote work for a working gap year, then return to normalcy back home.

Final Thoughts

It might be easy to assume that if digital nomadism is the right decision for you, you’ll feel confident and unwavering in your decision. I’ve met a lot of nomads in my life, and I don’t know if anyone felt that way. Most of us had the voice of doubt asking, “what if you regret this?” and the feeling that leaving normalcy behind might have been a mistake.

If you’ve been looking longingly at travellers online wishing that you could experience that same freedom, then it’s worth taking the jump. Don’t worry, we all feel dizzy from the freefall!