We’ve decided to become digital nomads — or “diginoms”. The decision to do this evolved in an incremental way, from one idea to another, rather than arising as an already formed idea in itself. We love travelling and since being together have tried to fit in as much holidaying in the year as our 9–5 work schedules would allow. However, we were constantly left wanting more after only four weeks annual leave per year. We read Tim Ferriss’ four hour work week and got some inspiration. While we don’t necessarily agree with all of the approaches advocated or certain attitudes he adopts, the underlying philosophy was appealing. In any case, we wanted to travel more and work less, or at least work more flexibly.
The idea of a flexible work life became our goal. We wanted the ability to spontaneously travel and to spend quality time in different locations — the experience you get from living in a place rather than dropping in for a quick visit where you tick off the main tourist attractions. This was what we wanted and ultimately, working out how we could do it became a bit of an obsession.
The first challenge: funding travel. The reality is that, for most people, it’s very difficult to travel around the world without an income. Of course, you can save until you have enough to fund the desired trip, but for us it was going to be a long time before we could save enough to travel for as long as we wanted. Of course, there are people who have travelled the world for years on a ridiculously small amount of money, but that’s really not our style and the types of things we wanted to do involved a bit more cash. So, ideally, we needed an income while travelling.
The second challenge: working overseas. We thought about living overseas in one location and then travelling from there. As a lawyer, my options for working as a lawyer in other countries were pretty limited. London was the most realistic option, so we thought about living there and then travelling from there. However, we realised pretty quickly that we’d still be working Monday to Friday, leaving our travel to weekend trips and the occasional longer trip, but also probably meant limiting our travel mostly to Europe. This didn’t really fit in with our flexible working goal and desire for spontaneous travel and spending quality time in locations.
The third challenge: flexible travel. For me personally, working and travelling wasn’t really an option. While I found some bespoke legal jobs that could be done remotely, it wasn’t really the type of work I wanted to do. Fortunately, my husband is a software developer. He’s part of a progressive industry that truly embraces new ways of working. While remote working is not present everywhere in the industry, he found some companies offering this and one in particular, called GitLab. So he applied for a job there, and luckily for us, got it. GitLab does not have any offices and so all of its employees work remotely, from all over the world. Of course, digital nomads are not limited to the software and technology industry, but it’s certainly an industry that works very hard to change the 9–5 (in a number of different ways). GitLab is an extreme version of remote working — you can read about their philosophy here: https://about.gitlab.com/culture/remote-only/
So with Dylan being able to work from anywhere in the world, we’ve decided to take the opportunity to travel the world, flexibly, with an income stream (at least from one of us).
I won’t be working. For me, I knew I didn’t want to spend a year with Dylan working and me not doing anything, so it was a really important for me that I also had something to occupy me and keep me intellectually stimulated. I started a Masters last year by distance so the timing worked well for me to continue studying. I’m not sure whether that will be enough, but I’d really like to make the most of the additional spare time I’ll have to dedicate myself to some of my hobbies, like photography, and to also spend more time reading. And writing this blog.
We’re not quite sure what to expect or how successful it will be. We’ll let you know…