I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’m living in a twilight episode. I still can’t believe we’re in a global pandemic where the entire world is on lockdown and travel bans. Right now is definitely (and obviously) not the time to travel!
But it is the perfect time to reconsider your living situation. In a time where most people who were able to keep their jobs are likely working from home and we can see with such clarity how countries handle crises, there is no better time to evaluate where you currently live. What does location independence mean to you? Do you have the availability to pick-up and travel whenever you want? Can you earn an income from anywhere in the world? Does this sound appealing to you?
If so, right now is the best time to begin designing your living anywhere lifestyle. These are my top 3 things you can (and should) do right now, before you even attempt a digital nomad lifestyle.
And no, it doesn’t include making a list of places you want to go or the best travel tips, that’s the easy part. Seriously, if you’re thinking of traveling around right now, I truly hope you reconsider. Take this from a nomad, I’m currently in Malaysia as I’m writing this and do not intend on traveling elsewhere until forced to…that is if Malaysia does not approve my request to extend my social visa *fingers crossed*.
If you don’t already know what a digital nomad is by definition, start with this post about the DN lifestyle, or if you don’t already have a location independent business or job read this post about getting started. Okay, with that out of the way, I’ll assume you already have a good grasp on what location independence is or what being a digital nomad is like. This is my personal top 3 list of things you need to do now if you want full location independence:
1. Get Rid Of All Your Stuff
Sorry, not sorry. I’m always going to go right back to becoming a minimalist. In my experience, minimalism, and nomad-ism go hand-in-hand. Frankly, it’s hard to even imagine being a nomad with a bunch of stuff, even if that stuff isn’t physically with me, I’d still be taking care of it all (I’ll explain later). Here are some blog posts to get you started with minimalism. You have to get started on this journey of getting rid of your stuff at the slightest moment you make the decision to try out this digital nomad thing. Why? Because it takes a lot longer than you would think.
For example, if you have a car – you either have to sell it, store it, or wait for the lease to be up. My situation fell in the last category, I had a year left on my lease and the Honda dealership was really going to stick it to me if I decided to end the contract earlier, even though the car was in pristine condition and extremely low mileage since I worked from home (no commuting) and I traveled a lot (the car sat while I was gone).
This will be a similar situation for apartment leases, renting out the home you own, etc. You’ll need to cut ties and tie up those loose ends, first-things-first. It just takes a little coordination on the front end, and continuously reminding yourself that you’ll be a nomad by X date or in X months, otherwise, you’ll get sucked right back into another commitment or responsibility that you’ll have to add to the list of “tie cutting.”
Now getting rid of all the smaller things like clothing, dishes, tennis rackets, etc., etc., might also seem like no big deal, “I’ll just spring clean and have a yard sale”. Well, yes that’s a great start but it takes work and time to adopt this new minimalism mindset. I have some great articles and resources for you here.
2. Get Organized
I know this doesn’t sound like fun, no one wants to be told to clean out their closet. But, this has to be done! And, the good news is, you’re not actually cleaning a closet. Well, you probably already did that with step one, actually. Anywho, you DO have to get yourself organized. What I mean by this, is it’s hard to realize (without getting started) how much you depend on the world outside of your laptop and logistically how much is handled on a physical basis. What I’m talking about here is all your records, mail, banking systems, etc., etc.
Once you decide you want to live nomadically, you have to start the process of being sure that everything possible is managed electronically. Yes, I’m sure you already do online banking, if you don’t…I don’t know what to say, go log into your aol.com account, make sure your ethernet cord is plugged in and get crackin’ (LOL). For real though, think of everything that you could “online bank”-ify. If you have hard copy anything, that stuff needs to be scanned and saved to whatever online storage system you’re using. I’m not going to get into cloud vs hard drive, that is a personal preference. I had house buy/sell info, tax returns, healthcare documents and other important stuff that I couldn’t carry around with me. I went ahead and scanned all of it and organized it so it would be easy for me to find it later. I thought I might have been overly cautious at first and thought, I could probably just stick all this stuff in a storage facility and never even need it again. Well, I’ll tell you I’m so glad I saved and organized all those documents and have access to them from anywhere (aka my laptop), because, for example, just over the last 3 months:
- I had to present business incorporation documents
- I needed a voided check for a business account I rarely use
- I had to search for house purchase info from 2009
Below is a list of my suggestions for what to save and have available electronically. Obviously, use your discretion as everyone’s situation is different and you may have additional things you need or some of these may not be applicable to you.
This goes without saying, but please, please, please be sure you’re saving everything safely and securely. Disclaimer, I’m not responsible for you saving things irresponsibly. I save all my stuff via the cloud with two-step verifications. I feel pretty secure with this, again this is a personal preference in which you want to save this stuff to be easily accessible electronically.
- All identification info, take pictures/scans of your driver’s license, passport, birth certificate, immunization records, social security cards, etc. Although you may already be carrying some of these physically (i.e. drivers license and passport), things do get lost and you may need these electronic copies if they do. Also, I found that when I need to supply a passport number, for example, it’s easier for me to pull it up online than going into the other room, inside the safe, and grabbing it physically.
- Banking info, take note of all your bank account numbers, routing numbers, credit card numbers, etc. You may have credit cards that you don’t need to take everywhere in the world with you, but you don’t necessarily want to close the account and shred the card. Try saving the credit card information. I’ve found myself in situations where I use that credit card online, even though I don’t have it physically with me. For example, making a purchase on Amazon, with my Amazon card that gets me 5% cashback when I sent my niece a birthday gift, remotely. Save an image or scanned copy of voided checks for each of your accounts. This is something I didn’t have and became a pain for me as I was trying to set up a direct deposit account with one institution that requested a voided business check. I didn’t have checks with me, so I had to go through a longer, more agonizing process to get it set up. If I had a copy of a voided check, electronically, I could have simply sent that over.
- All the other stuff. I’ve needed almost everything I decided to save electronically. Being a digital nomad adopts the mindset of you truly not knowing (or caring) where you’ll be this time next year, so, you also can’t bank on going back “home”. For example, as a US citizen, I still have to file taxes. I need to be sure my tax forms/returns are easily accessible for this.
3. Get Detached
Being a digital nomad means that all the comforts of home will be no more. Home will be wherever in the world you are, or some like to say “home is where my bag is”. This is hard to think about conceptually, but my suggestion here is to begin building your mindset and for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call it being unattached.
This should be its own post, it could get very long (I’ll work on an extended version later) but for now, these are the top areas you’ll need to consider for this act of unattached.
First off, I think the word “detachment” sounds a bit scary, or that you have to all of a sudden be totally aloof. You might be thinking, “Hey lady I’m not attached to anything or anyone! This nomad thing is easy peasy lemon squeezy!” So, instead, maybe we should call this relaxing, easing up, releasing labels and egos…okay that’s enough, before I go into a huge rant.
Here’s the deal, we may not realize all of our little habits, normalities, relationships, and “go-to” activities that we currently engage in at home. Over the course of living in one place long enough, we get into a groove of all the things we like, things we dislike, what to expect with the weather, what we wear, and all our go-to lunch spots.
Being a nomad turns all of this on it’s head, you have to be comfortable with the uncertainty. Since you’ll be living nomadically, all these comforts will be gone…well some may just look a little different. But, it’s easy to think now, that none of this will bother you. That you can just plop on over to anywhere in the world and be A-OK. I’m telling you right now, that just won’t be the case. This is where the third and most important tip comes in, working on releasing the attachment will help tremendously with this discomfort.
Releasing attachment to what your life IS, who you ARE, what your family and friends mean to you, what you LIKE and DISLIKE, and on and will allow you to be so much more flexible and comfortable where ever in the world you are. The idea of “homesick” won’t even cross your mind. The awesome news is, you can start working this muscle now! And you totally should.
Begin noticing every time you thing or even use labels for yourself or your life. For a real simple example, if someone asks me, “Hey, tell me a little about yourself?” and I respond with, “I’m a girl from Phoenix, raised by a single mom, I hate the cold, must have my coffee every morning and I run marathons.” We could take each of these and dissect them to 5 different things I’m attached to, question those attachments (it could be helpful to know the root cause), & release them. Because the truth of the matter is, it doesn’t matter that I’m from Phoenix, I don’t need coffee and I will be totally fine never running a marathon ever again.”
But if I instead go ’bout my business not realizing the attachment in all my thoughts and actions, I basically just let those attachments run my life. Although some of these attachments will seem totally harmless and some even healthy (like going for a run) in your at-home life, these attachments to these labels and ideals will come to bite you as a nomad. The reason – there is no guarantee you’ll have any of these attachments available to you. Actually, I can guarantee that you typically will not. Feeling like you’ll have a hard time being away from friends or not having a cup of coffee in the morning, will create immense pain. The funniest part about it, is the pain is only based on the information you’ve stored in your mind – these stored attachments and stories of WHO you are.
Simply start recognizing and releasing attachments in your day-to-day now, and you will build up this muscle to be anywhere in the world, under any conditions, and be totally blissful.
