My Experiment Living as a "Digital Nomad"

Working in “paradise” seemed amazing, but was actually pretty stressful 😣

Last month, I traveled to Bali to work there remotely for 30 days. 🌴

This was an experiment with some simple rules:

1. Continue to live my life as usual, including all my business responsibilities, client projects, recording YouTube videos, coaching calls, and maintaining my health and fitness habits.

2. Swap the cold and wet Dutch weather for the tropical climate of Bali.

Why? Well, this idea has always intrigued my girlfriend and me, so I wanted to give it a good shot to see whether it’s actually something for me. 🌏

Conclusion? It was one of the most stressful periods of my career. 🤯

I quickly realized that keeping up with my regular weekly responsibilities in this environment was too much, despite working 10 hours per day.

This will be different for everyone, but the combination of a new environment, time zone differences, and working in cafés made things really challenging for me.

It felt like tasks that would take me 1 hour at home took me 3 hours here, and days just flew by while my to-do list was getting longer and longer (i.e., stress).

Would I do it again? This answer might surprise you, but yes.

Obviously, I would do a lot of things differently. Here's what:

1. Stay in one villa for the entire duration.

2. Only share the villa with my girlfriend, not with other people.

3. Rent a desk and monitor setup for the villa to avoid co-working spaces.

4. Decline or outsource more client-related work during the period.

5. Give people a heads up and decline 90% of my meetings.

I share more stories like this on my LinkedIn profile, so if you're interested in that as well, make sure to follow me there!

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