Tips to Balance Work and Play as a Digital Nomad
The best part of being a digital nomad is the set of choices that this career offers as an add-on. The choice to decide where you live, the position you work at and the time slot you want to work in. It is all about fixing your priorities when you are living your life abroad as a digital nomad. Let us see some work tips for digital nomads.
The Balancing Act
There is a fine line between achieving your aspirations in your profession and exploring what is in store around you. The best guidance often comes in the form of simple work tips for digital nomads.
Have a Dedicated Schedule
A dedicated schedule is easier to implement when your work requires your physical presence on the site. You have to stick to a routine. It is advisable that even during full-time remote employment, you follow a daily schedule because of commitments like meetings or conference calls.
However, sticking to a routine becomes tough when you have no fixed work timings. You are free to schedule your daily work as and when you want to. All you have to do is finish your work within a deadline that only you can fix. If you are in a new city full of new attractions that can easily become distractions, this can become very difficult to achieve.
One way to resolve this is to return to the basics and follow a routine that you adhere to resolutely, ignoring all distractions. That routine may be followed while working five days a week and taking weekends off. Whatever be the case, you are the boss of your work timings.
Do not ‘Agree’ when you ‘Disagree’
Both working and living abroad as a digital nomad requires you to know why you are living abroad. Social media and travel blogs enable one to experience every offering with such proximity to the location that one can almost feel oneself there already. In real day-to-day lives, you will come across other nomads hanging out every day, exploring various sites of tourist attraction. If you do not find a tourist place interesting, you do not have to visit it. Your individual choice of places worth seeing does not necessarily have to match the list of general sightseeing attractions.
Often, to know something you have to experience it. This makes it easy for you to decide whether to ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ with the general public opinion around you. Self-awareness will make your work-life balance more stable, even when you are in a new place. You will then be able to disagree with the general sentiment or opinion in a far more reasoned way and do what suits you best. Despite all the fanfare about getting the maximum out of your travels, you can focus on that which makes you happy.
Plan Your Day as Digital Expat
When you are a digital nomad, you already have a routine of planning your travel and stay, so it is best to keep the management of your tasks simple. The same goes for productivity management. Having a fixed domain that restricts your productivity to an elaborate system of apps and gimmicks is likely to use up most of your time organizing rather than completing your tasks. This is where a simple checklist notepad or an app like Tick Tick can help. Trello and One Note are great for managing long-running projects. Boosting your productivity is your own private goal and how well you can manage to do so is different for different people. The simpler it is, the better.
Your productivity may be top-notch and highly satisfactory when you live your life during both work and play, just like you did in your home country. However, when abroad, there is an added inducement of the perks of adventure and incentive of reaching out to new domains. This can be best explained by the quote, ‘Make it simple but significant.’
Digital Expats Have to Take Care of Themselves – Global Health Insurance
When you are a digital nomad or global nomad, you are generally on your own. You have to arrange for high-speed internet, a computer, cell phone and much more. You are essentially an independent business person. As a result, you will probably have to obtain global healthcare as your health insurance in your home country probably won’t cover you abroad. Your health must be insured for overseas emergency situations as well.
In case you are living in the United States, Japan, or Australia (or in countries where healthcare is inexpensive) and you are afflicted by a serious illness or have had an accident that demands urgent local treatment, you may have to deal with exorbitant medical expenses. This is where insurance that covers all these costs comes to your rescue.
A suitable global medical travel insurance can cover your emergency medical expenses and out-patient care, such as seeing a doctor, checkups, vision and even dental. You will need a global health plan that can cover the costs of any essential medical treatment that you avail of in your home country.