What did you wish you knew earlier?

Things I wish I’d known:

1. I second @nambrot that you shouldn’t try to do too much in a certain amount of time. I exhausted myself in my first 6 months - sometimes staying in a city for as little as a week before hopping to the next. My sister and I travel together and we were so worried about planning the perfect trip we booked rooms and flights ahead of time for the whole 6 months. Big mistake.
2. Always plan to come home for a bit. While it’s interesting and fun and totally worth it to spend time in another country, at some point you’re going to want to enjoy your own comfort zone again. Plan to take periodic trips home, whatever “home” means to you. It’s hard being a foreigner all the time. I’m currently taking a 4 month “home” break now.
3. The weekend trips! I hadn’t really planned on needing so much time for weekend trips. Think of your destinations more as home bases. You can pick a central location (a big city) in your country of choice that will have the infrastructure you need for working during the week, and then plan to use some of your weekends to explore other parts of the country. I hadn’t planned ahead for this, but it became an obvious necessity upon arrival.
4. Loneliness, yikes. I’m traveling with my sister, but even we got lonely together. It was really difficult only having each other. Humans are pack animals. Staying in touch with my friends back home was really helpful, although in a way it pulled me out of my experience. If you struggle with loneliness, doing something as simple as planning a weekly “Skype date night” with a friend can make a big difference. And by friend, I mean one who supports what you’re doing and is excited about it (not jealous or cynical). Call mom often. Also - absolutely stay in a place with multiple roommates. Having someone to chat with in the morning while you make coffee can make all the difference.

One of the main things I’ve learned is to not give up easily if people say “you can’t do that”. It happened quite many times to me that somebody said I can’t do something because of some visa policy or because it’s too dangerous or whatever other reason, and once I tried myself it wasn’t that bad. So I’ve kind of stopped listening to people telling me to not do something and I only listen to people who tell me I can do something .

1. Super lonely. I really wish someone would fix this problem. There is clearly a sizable number of nomads going to places who are in the same situation, but be prepared that most of your time will be spent by yourself or making very short-lived relationships. I have learned that I’m someone who craves building a sustainable connection with people over a longer period of time.

2. Don’t do X cities in Y days. Try to stay in a place as long as possible, places start to look somewhat similar from a superficial tourist perspective. You gotta give a place enough time.

3. Logistics ain’t that hard once you get the hang of it. At this point, I barely do any preparations (though the Visa situation sucks for Vietnamese citizens)

I wish I knew to be myself and follow my own path, as soon as you get something like “I wish I could …” in your head, that means you want it.

“I wish I could go to Pragues” -> go fucking do it (@levelsio :D)

“I wish I could have the balls to take this plane to Tokyo” -> go fucking do it!

You get the point

1. I didn’t realize how much times would go towards planning where to stay, what plane tickets to buy, which local SIM card to get, where you’ll get the best exchange rate, what visa procedure you need to follow to get in etc. If you move often, you find yourself repeating these steps, and it doesn’t necessarily get easier over time.
2. I didn’t realize how much time would go towards very simple things that were so obvious before (when you didn’t travel), like replacing a broken laptop charger, finding a local post office and sending something off, picking up mail sent to you (without permanent address, enjoy!), wandering around trying to find a laundry service or a coffee shop with free WiFi (for more than one hour). There are so many simple things you need that suddenly become very time consuming.
3. How easy it is to just fall in the traveling trap. In some locations there is so much to do and see, giving you a bad feeling when you’re not getting the full potential out of your stay.
4. You start losing the point of traveling and the point of meeting new people. Do you want to go see yet another temple (while traveling through Asia)? Or do you want to engage yet again with a new person you’ve just met whom you’ll add on Facebook but will never talk to again? Also, traveling by yourself isn’t that great if you can’t share your experiences with somebody you care about.
5. The fact that you need the most of: underwear! Because that’s what you’ll change most often. You won’t change your shorts or t-shirts that often, so you need less of these. Remember, the less underwear you bring, the more laundry you’ll have to do. If you bring 5 pieces, you’ll have to do laundry every 5 days which gets tiring. Also, bring single use Tide packets so you can do laundry overnight in a sink.
6. The impact of different time zones on your business. Depending on what your business is, you’ll be expected to answer email / offer support in the middle of the night, late at night or early in the morning.

Summarized: You get far less done than what you originally planned to do (I bought a Kindle to read some books and haven’t touched it the past two months).

wow, I am amazed by the quality of the replies. Thanks for your advice, it is much appreciated.

I seem to have quite the same views on Digital Nomadism as @dandanflood and I can’t wait to leave my homecountry and discover the world. I had a conversation today about how this lifestyle is dangerous but I think that for every risk you take and everything bad that happens to you, you can choose to learn from it and move on with your life.

When on holidays I always am in a “holiday-mode” that is basically a Don’t-Give-A-Shit attitude and I behave differently. You @levelsio talked about that the problems you are now facing are the same you’d face at home so I am wondering if the environmental change didn’t affect your behaviour/character/problems…?

I only have 3 “I wish I knew” issues since starting this lifestyle:

1. Why the heck didn’t I do this earlier? I had the ability to, but all this planning nonsense and whatnot just ended up wasting time.

2. Why did I take so much stuff with me? Perpetually traveling is tiresome and even though I’m physically moving from one location to another only once every so often, it sucked with heavy bags. I quickly realised that living in cheap countries meant that I could buy new clothing wherever I was (which suited the climate) and donate it to the needy before I left.

3. Why do I always have to justify my life choices to others?

“Oh, so you’re one of those digital nomad things eh? You must be living the dream. That can’t be sustainable”.

No, my life isn’t perfect. It is comfortable and I’m a lot happier than I was 10 years ago however I’m not living on tropical beaches whilst white water rafting every weekend. I’m still behind a computer screen every day poking away at the keyboard. Sometimes when people ask me what I do, I just say I’m on holidays and I work in an office back home. It can be tiresome and irritating having to justify myself to others who insist their way of life is better than mine as I am seemingly a threat to their very existence.

Aside from that, life plods along the same (mostly) as it would at “home”. Sure, I deal with a lot more paperwork regarding the tax and immigration department but that’s just par for the course. My life did improve substantially after I made the choice, however it probably would have even if I didn’t leave.

Digital Nomadism isn’t a quick fix, it’s just a different lifestyle. It doesn’t fix anything. You have to choose to fix yourself if you need to be fixed in the first place.

Although this isn’t something I assumed before I started, I desperately wish the Internet would stop hyping it as the saviour of all things.

Awesome question.

I think what I learnt in two years traveling is that it doesn’t really matter what you do with your life, you’ll always have good and bad times. I knew about the Hedonic Treadmill before, so I knew this was coming but still it’s interesting. You can raise the quality of your life by using the cost savings of leaving expensive countries, which is great in the beginning. But you’ll get used to your newfound luxuries (e.g. the typical pool, beach, laptop b.s.).

The thing is that it always seems traveling is presented as something positive. And even though I feel it is, you’ll have the same problems in relationships, friendships, business as you’d have at home. So it’s not really about getting a more happy life, there’s not even a guarantee it’ll make you happier. It will be more interesting though.

And maybe that’s what you should go for. Live the most interesting life you can get.

It’ll also change you forever. Like most big things in life will. If you’ve never lived your life at home outside of the typical structures, you will probably do for the first time when you’re abroad. That means without a definite cultural structure, you’ll probably do a lot of soul searching and learning more about yourself. Especially in the times you’re alone. This might take years, but you’ll evolve into a much stronger personality.