Today’s Office is something I started doing while I was working on the road and working remotely. Whenever suited I took a picture from my «Office». Thus I’m sharing my best pictures over my latest few months, also because the independent-work-lifestyle resembles the way of working from many of us these days. If you want to go directly to the images, click here.
What is location independent lifestyle?
Firstly, what is location-independent-work or a nomadic-lifestyle? I would describe it as not being tied to a particular location for any reason. And why would you want this? There are several answers besides the obvious that you travel the world, learn from other cultures and meet amazing people. For me, it also about productivity when on the road I get into deep focus. While having a delicious coffee, I can get things done for 2-3 hours. Additionally, I get natural breaks during travelling or sightseeing in a city and use them when I get stuck. With that, I also get this awesome feeling that probably many of us perceived when having this perfect day with seeing many new things, but even managed to work a couple of hours although sometimes it is more and sometimes less.
Skills and mindset you need
Some values you need to have if you want to have a lifestyle like this or thinking of starting it:
- Innovative and being creative
- Have skills
- Love what you do!
- Start small, but start (now)
- Celebrate small wins
- Don’t do it for others (or fame)
- Read read read (or listen to audiobooks)
- Listen to others!
- In summary: Find your Sweet Spot
My own location-independent journey
A little bit about my journey to put the Today’s Office pictures in perspective. My journey did not start entirely location-independent. I combined both of the worlds, the 9-5 and the location-independent-lifestyle before I travelled to South East Asia and worked remotely.
Corporate and location-dependent
More specific in Copenhagen, two and a half years ago, I put myself in a foreign country. I didn’t speak the language, only been there for a couple of days before and didn’t know the company I would work for. That was the first step for me to get out of my comfort zone and force myself to learn a bunch of new things. Without going into too many details, the goals were to comprehend how I will function in an entirely new environment, improve my English (learn a little of the local language), improve my work-life-balance and find new friends and meeting amazing people from all over the world.
This is still a 9-5 job in a new environment without the independent as I was still bond to a specific place. This some picture I took when I worked location-dependent:
However, already there I travel for the company as it was a global company where I started to get the feeling being on the road. As I liked it more and more, I searched for ways to add the independent to my location lifestyle.
Bali-Spirit and Asian culture
Therefore I decided to go one month to Bali with Project Getaway where I was around like-minded entrepreneurial people. I started developing, brainstorm, discuss, argue my own ideas with all the awesome people around me. Also failed miserably with my first ideas and came to a conclusion these ideas or products where not yet to be done and worked on other ideas and ways to grow personally and try to find the right product for me.
After that one month of excellent experience with the Bali-spirit, I wanted more and travelled to more unusual places in South East Asia. First stop was Singapore with its Asian hub for big businesses. After that, I continued to places like Hanoi in Vietnam, the Palawan Island in the Philippines which were called the best island in the world and finishing off in Bangkok Thailand. The Today’s Office pictures on the road you will see here:
Germany and around Europe
As not only Asia is beautiful, I took a road trip from Copenhagen to Switzerland. Starting from Copenhagen to Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. As well around my home country of Switzerland with cities like Solothurn and Bern, but also many more beautiful places. As mentioned, to focus on a specific project and go deep, I prefer particular places with less distraction where my mind knows already when entering that it has to operate hard 😉. Always good are libraries like my favourite one in Copenhagen (showed in the pictures above). As well I like co-working spaces. For example, I recently became a member at Impact Hub Bern which I love. Following you see Today’s Office picture from these places:
What I have learned abroad
Maybe you think to start 1-2 years abroad or travelling the world as well. Therefore I want to share what I learnt from my recent experience.
Thinking out of the box, discovered the power of books and especially audiobooks, work-life balance (specific for Danes or Nordic countries).
Maybe most important, getting to know so many different cultures and realising that we are all the same, just with a different background.
Meeting people from, and all over the world.
Value the time, spend it right, you can’t buy it back!
Live like a stoic. If you don’t know where to begin, start with this.
You don’t have to travel all the time. It’s okay to have a base somewhere in the world, where you can enjoy old friends, family and loved once and prepare for the next trip.
Last but not least, be happy, with a smile.
Book recommendations for getting things done on the road
If you need to study or work on projects, or just want to get stuff done, I recommend the book from Deep Work by Cal Newport, which explains how to get focused and get most out of your time. (Deep Work = Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that pushes your cognitive capabilities to their limit.)
Or the one and only book that many of us out there got started, the 4-Hour Work Week by my favourite author Tim Ferriss.
Productivity tips with gears and tools on the road
Almost life-changing is the headphones from Bose active-noise-cancelling and Music that keeps you focused or other productivity tools described in great details in Tools I use part I, part II or part III.