The Truth Behind the Digital Nomad Lifestyle: Expectations vs. Reality

Envy slowly builds as we contemplate trading our 9-5 in for the bougie beach clubs in Bali.

Lying in bed on Saturday morning breathing into the lushness of your morning coffee and exhaling the stress of the busy work week.

Our thumbs frantically scrolling Instagram catching up on everything we missed.

We’re quick to heart every post of people living the life we’ve been daydreaming about.

Envy slowly builds as we contemplate trading our 9-5 in for the bougie beach clubs in Bali or dropping into a flow state while working alongside the electronic music that fills the beach clubs in Tulum.

After I lived and worked as a digital nomad for 18 Months…

All I dreamed about was having a bookshelf.

My feed was filled with those same messages and then amplified with the gurus strategically placing ads in front of me claiming they had the secret to make the dream a reality.

The picture they painted was incredible.

Beams of sunlight glisten off your face as you breathe in the salty air.

Listening to the soundtrack of waves crashing while you sip on your iced coffee in your new beachfront “office”.

And watching the surfers drop in while you take your client calls.

I wanted it all.

So, after my wife and I closed our gym in 2018, we packed up our house into a storage locker and traded the cold Canadian winters, car starters, and ice scrapers in for our official titles as digital nomads.

Except the picture my adventure painted, was a little different.

We spent 3 Months in Scottsdale, AZ.

6 Months in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.

Just under a month in Bali, which was interrupted by the epidemic.

Finally, we spent almost a year in Tulum, Playa Del Carmen, and Medellin.

And here’s what the bougie social media photos don’t tell you…

Our Airbnbs in Bali didn’t have WiFi, so we couldn’t do any work there.

(This is much more inconvenient than you may think)

The WiFi in developing countries is incredibly unstable, making it difficult to be productive, and constantly freezing while on Zoom Calls.

When you move overseas from North America, you’re all of a sudden taking calls at awful hours like 3 am or 10 pm to accommodate your clients or the company you work with.

While the weather is amazing, it’s unbearable to work without A/C, as you’re drenched in sweat and your back aches from lugging around your backpack and laptop everywhere you go.

Living out of a backpack can begin to get old after a while.

You lose the luxuries of Amazon Prime, great gyms, and supplement stores.

If you don’t make an effort to “network” with other digital nomads it can become quite lonely. This is a tough one if you're introverted like I am.

You’re often frequently moving Airbnbs, renting weeks or months at a time, and always have the threat of needing to move and find a new place to call home.

After getting sick one-to-many times we began to disinfect all of the produce before eating it.

You need to lug 20 L bottles of water up to your Airbnb or Apartment every few days because you cannot drink the tap water.

And what got to me after a while was not having my own “space”, my “routines”, something I could call “home”, and a bookshelf to store my “things”.

The simplest of things I took for granted were what I missed the most.

People with traditional 9-5 jobs see the digital nomad lifestyle as being on vacation every day, when in reality after a month it’s just work, but somewhere hotter.

I won’t pretend like this is everyone’s experience.

I’m self-aware enough to know this was my experience.

If I had more money I could have paid for a scooter or a fancy CoWork but the concession here is the cost associated with those luxuries.

What I’ve come to learn is that the digital nomad lifestyle is a literal manifestation of freedom and autonomy.

So when I catch myself dreaming of the lifestyle I know that my mind is telling me something… It’s craving freedom and control.

Except the same underlying outcome can be achieved in many ways.

Many of them don’t have me lying in bed sick because I opened my mouth in the shower…

Like,

Trading in the 9-5 to pursue your passion.

Swapping the suit and heels for lululemons and fuzzy slippers.

The corporate ladder for entrepreneurship where you’re in control over how much money you make, how much you work, and what you work on.

The reality is that there may be ways you can build freedom and autonomy into your daily life without having to change (or quit) your job.

Can you negotiate a hybrid work-from-home environment? (Or, work for a company that allows that)

Can you do some freelancing or build a side hustle before leaving your job?

Are there boundaries or accommodations you can make/request at work?

Can you become an intrapreneur within your current organization?

Freedom comes in many different forms, here are some questions I recommend asking yourself:

• What environment do you thrive in?

• Where/what allows you to get your best work done?

• Where do you feel a lack of control that negatively affects your productivity, creativity, performance, or well-being?

• What do you wish you could spend more time doing?

• Where do you feel triggered or resistant throughout your week?

We must reflect on this from the proper mindset. If you are stressed, burnout, or feeling underappreciated it’s easy for your mind to drift to the extremes.

Maybe there is an opportunity to start pulling in elements of the digital nomad lifestyle without packing up your house and traveling thousands of miles.

This reflection will allow you to take account of your ideal environment and what you value most. This can put you in a position to improve your current working situation, give you a guide for a new working situation (new job), or the motivation to become an entrepreneur.

Or, maybe the digital nomad lifestyle is exactly what you want…

And if so, I encourage you to chase it.

I know people who thrive as digital nomads, whereas I did not, I seek what the lifestyle provides and I’ve learned other ways to bring those elements into my life.

-Landon

PS: Here are a couple of letters you may enjoy:

This Is Not What I Thought My Life Would Look Like At 35
https://landonpoburan.substack.com/p/this-is-not-what-i-thought-my-life

How To Publish 5 (Or More) Pieces Of Content Every Day While Working Full-Time
https://landonpoburan.substack.com/p/how-to-publish-5-or-more-pieces-of