The cost of being a digital nomad

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.

Every younger generation has its own place for romance and high hopes. Every generation has its own way to travel.

In recent years, the topic of digital nomads has become more and more popular due to the impact of the epidemic. Two days ago, I launched a group vote on "Have you ever thought about being a digital nomad?" in my own community. The results are interesting:

"I have thought about it" accounted for 46.2%, "I have thought about it and I am in practice" accounted for 38.5%, and "I have not thought about it" accounted for only 15.4%. Although I only did this survey in my own small community, but In fact, it can also reflect people's attitude towards "digital nomads", a profession that is not a profession.

Obviously, "digital nomad" has become a way of life and work that young people yearn for and yearn for. Hearing this word can't help but connect it with "cool", precisely because the digital nomad group is extremely popular in China. A small group of people, a small number of people, therefore makes the public rush for it.

But today I want to use this weak data sample to talk about its charm around "digital nomads", and at the same time tear off its halo and veil.

Digital nomads are more like a way of life. Their income comes entirely from the Internet and they have complete territorial autonomy.

(1)

belief

As early as the 1950s, there was a book that became popular in the United States, and then became popular in China. So far, this book is still being reprinted and published by major publishing houses, which shows its influence. This book is called "On the road". (on the road) and made into a movie.

In fact, the first time I came into contact with this book was in a Chinese extracurricular class in middle school. I am still grateful to the Chinese teacher who opened the door to countless film and television literary works when I was very young.

From "The Shawshank Redemption", "Braveheart", "The Last Samurai"... to Kerouac's "On the Road", although he is over 30 years old, he has a strong spirit of freedom in his bones. And brought this spiritual power to the classroom and passed it on to his students.

When I was in junior high school, when I saw these works, my impression was only on the freedom and glory, adventure and madness, filth and the chaos of the relationship between men and women who were known as the "Beat Generation". "I, facing these complexities of human nature, fell into chaos and confusion for a while. At that time, I frantically rejected the ideas conveyed by this book. I didn't like it because it didn't meet the three-view standard in my mind at that time.

However, many of the immature extreme ideas in my youth have gradually begun to loosen and peel off during the rushing around and interacting with all kinds of people in adulthood. I remember that in my senior year, I picked up "On the Road" and watched it again. There was a passage that particularly ignited me:

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn , burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The only people who are crazy to me, those who are crazy to live, crazy to talk, crazy to be saved, and yearn for everything at the same time, those who never yawn or say a slang word, but burn, burn, burn , like a mythical yellow Roman candle that explodes on the stars like a spider.

The experience of that road trip rekindled the sleeping soul in me in a flash of lightning, as if Mark in "Life Cutting", accidentally read his brother-in-law's best-selling book "The you" at work. you are".

Literary works have played a huge role in shaping my thinking during my upbringing. I feel sorry for "literary youth", which has now been regarded as a derogatory and sour color by some people, and even people, in order to prevent themselves from being associated with this word, And the subconscious will be eager to get rid of this relationship.

In fact, thanks to my "literary and art" back then, I was able to get to where I am today. Literary works carry a lot of light of human wisdom, which inspires and inspires generation after generation to think about their own lives and pursue their own ideals. the Road.

"On the Road" also ignited me, even took over my mind. Old readers know very well how much pain, pain and cynicism I endured to leave Hangzhou. At that time, I was all thinking about Beipio and where the future was. For a young girl in her early 20s, there was no answer at all, but the only thing in my heart was The answer is:

I must go out, I must be on the road, I must take risks, I must see the wider world, no matter what the cost.

This belief almost gushed out of my chest, so that I could defy the persuasion and abuse of all my relatives and friends, so that I could pass up the opportunity at hand and embark on an adventurous road without any clear future and direction. .

So what does this have to do with the digital nomad that I want to talk about today? Why am I sharing this experience?

I know that many people are envious of the way of life of digital nomads at the moment, eager to become digital nomads themselves. I have talked to many friends who want to be digital nomads. Why do you want to be digital nomads?

The answers are all related to the current environment——

I want to get rid of the 9-to-5 life or even 996, 007, I want to control my own life, I want to live in different places and experience a different life, I want to travel and work...

These reasons are all reasonable, but there are also many potential pitfalls behind the rationality, because I can't see the thinking about "cost", let alone how much "sacrifice" and "give up" people can make in order to become digital nomads .

Back then, I was able to make such sacrifices and give up just to make myself "on the road", instead of trying to find another way out because of the economic recession and the deteriorating environment.

I have a decent job where I can live comfortably, I have a local social network, I have a safe haven I can rely on, I can come home from get off work and eat my mother's steaming meals, I can go to work I'm paddling in my comfort zone, and I can also meet a good local network of people... But if I choose that path, I won't be "on the road" for the rest of my life, and you won't read this article. .

In order to make my life burn and to complete the inexplicable ideal life that seems to be brainwashed in my mind, I chose to be crazy and to take risks. This belief is so powerful that no one can stop it, no matter how big the temptation is. , and the price is a broken arm.

Therefore, if you are not a digital nomad at the moment, you still have a decent job, a stable income, and even have a family of your own, and you still long to try to become a digital nomad and stay "on the road", then you might as well Ask yourself -

Do you dare to embrace an uncertain future? Are your beliefs about it so strong that you're willing to give everything you have?

If you start to waver at the belief level, this path may not be suitable for you, because you will definitely regret the choice you made, and you will even blame yourself for why you followed the crowd blindly at that time, living your life with endless twists and turns. Uncertain life.

Faith is the primary basis for any major decision I make.

Whether it's choosing a city, choosing an investment target, or choosing a certain life, if I don't have enough firm and strong confidence in it, then I will definitely not make a decision easily, and the decisions I don't have the confidence to make are often made after thinking about it. Makes me regret, on the contrary, the decisions I make with conviction have good rewards.

(2)

ability

In my opinion, whether you want to become a digital nomad or what kind of career and life you want to have, ability comes after belief.

Because of a person with faith, ta can pay whatever price ta is willing to pay for this faith, and this force is enough to defeat any competitors and players on the track.

So, what does it take to become a digital nomad? Let’s take a look at what kind of people digital nomads are.

Tell me that I have come into contact with friends who call themselves "digital nomads", and I think they really fit the definition of "digital nomads" in my mind rather than "freelancers" in the pure sense.

1. Strong sense of learning

The homeless people I have come into contact with can all be super individuals, and one person can handle problems that can only be solved by several people. This ability is not innate, their learning initiative and motivation are far more than ordinary people.

I remember that when I was in Latin America, I shared a little brother I knew. He was a crypto-related knowledge training coach. The two of us met in the class of learning Spanish. I was really "sucked" to death by him.

Everyone should be clear that, in the true sense of digital nomads, language ability must be the most basic and important ability. Language can be regarded as the weapon of digital nomads, because the real digital nomads, their battlefield is the whole world.

I consider myself a person with a strong willingness to learn. After all, I have also violently broken the Japanese language, but when I met him, I was resigned to the disadvantage.

Whether he is in class or eating out socially, he will not hesitate to use Spanish to have a conversation. When I was still stammering, he was already able to speak fluently, and sometimes when I was in good shape, he would praise my language progress quickly, and after the praise, he would go back and study hard for a few hours to catch up with me.

He only stayed in Peru for a month or two at the time, and his last stops were Brazil and Mexico. Every time he went to a place, he would find a local language school and set aside a fixed time for a week to learn the local language. If he could not go offline, he would The teacher will be asked online to continue teaching him one-on-one.

On the day he left Lima, he said to me, "Misso, you can't give up learning Spanish, we have to work hard together and hope to meet you somewhere in the world in the future."

His self-driving force and willingness to learn are far higher than mine, and people like him are not a minority, but a majority in the homeless world.

2. Strong intelligence search ability

If you want to be a digital nomad, then you must have strong information search, analysis and integration skills .

I don't know if you will do a strategy when you travel to a certain place? If you are good at making travel guides, and you can use your own strategy to arrange the guides in an orderly manner, obviously your ability in this area only needs a little training.

Digital nomads are entering an unfamiliar environment. The first thing they must do is to collect local information, such as local climate, temperature, language, religion, culture, eating habits, consumption level, cost of living, security, security range, currency , exchange rate, entry and exit policy, length of visa stay, venues for meeting local people and obtaining information, local network speed and environment, local hospital and medical level, local attitude towards foreigners, local short-term/long-term rental platforms and prices...

After considering local factors, you also need to consider your own travel must-have checklist and related preparations. For example , calling cards in different countries, international credit cards, insurance, overseas social contact information (Line/what's up), social accounts (ins/twitter, etc.), maps, translation software, overseas related insurance accident insurance, related drug preparations, etc...

The above are all the dimensions I can think of, and there may be gaps that I can't think of right now, but if you want to become a digital nomad in the true sense, you might as well take the latitudes I listed above and find a country and city to apply it yourself. Try a simple intelligence analysis job and feel the difficulty and complexity behind it.

If seeing this makes your scalp tingle and even wants to give up thinking, then you may really not be suitable, because this is the most basic ability needed to be a digital nomad.

3. Strong social skills

Most of the time, digital nomads are a group of loners, because their wandering around will also determine the instability of their social circles. Therefore, when they arrive in unfamiliar countries, they often need to reopen their social circles. , to meet local people or stay in the local homeless.

Otherwise, if you go to be a digital nomad with the heart of traveling around the world, it will just be a lonely trip, and there is no essential difference from a tour group punching in a certain city. Therefore, a distinction needs to be made between homeless people and tourists.

When you want to be a nomad, it means you need to keep a relatively open mind, you need to go deep into your target destination, do everything possible to learn and integrate into the local culture, customs and local social circles.

The social circle also means a lot of intelligence and information, which can bring you insights, ideas, cognition, business opportunities and other latitudes of inspiration because of the various strangers you come into contact with.

Therefore, it is absolutely impossible for the homeless to be a group of people who work behind closed doors and watch flowers on the fly. No matter how introverted you are, as long as you want to be a vagabond, you must light up your social skills, and even know how to use the Internet to organize local bureaus, find local vagrant groups, communicate with them and share local intelligence.

4. Be careful and bold and enjoy loneliness

The roads are interwoven into the brocade of life, the roads are interwoven into a labyrinth, there is no end, one cannot reach the end, one can only stop, or be stopped.

Digital nomads seem cool, they have wild free spirits, and they are bum of mind and spirit, but they are also a group of exiled souls who face the issue of loneliness at any time.

Changes in the environment have created a lot of uncertainty, as well as many dangers and opportunities. To become a digital nomad, you have to face this psychological issue.

There is no social identity, no exclusive social circle, or even a marginal group in society. You might as well ask yourself, from a psychological level, can you really accept such an identity? That's the price of "cool" you want.

After I embarked on this road of "marginal group", I really looked down on the fame and fortune that I used to crave, and I also looked down on the title of the society. You can say "I can't say myself until I can't get it." Just look down on it”, but in my heart, I think the meaning of pursuing the work and life I want is far higher than the layer of identity given to me by society, because when I have the latter, I also need to bear and bear the corresponding shackles with responsibility.

Instead, what exactly is this layer of identity? Will it be what I want? In fact, I couldn't even think of it, but the current state gave me a sense of stability.

I have accepted that I am a wandering soul with no exclusive social circle. I am not ashamed, on the contrary, I am very self-consistent and even willing to admit generously that this is who I am.

Loneliness is the norm.

But this kind of "loneliness" has brought me endless possibilities to think and explore life, and it is a healthy and stable loneliness. I need it, I enjoy it, and my life wouldn't be where it is now without even being alone.

But in the same way, I also have high-quality company. No matter where I am, I can always meet a group of like-minded people, have a good time with them, listen to new friends share their experiences and thoughts, and end the company, I must To be alone, digest their information, record and think about what inspires me.

how about you? Can you live with the amount of solitude you'll face as you embark on this path? Can you accept the consequences of losing your social identity and stable social circle?

5. Active + passive income

I think this is the key point to discourage countless people from being homeless. If a person does not know how to rely on himself to make money on the Internet, even if he/she has all the above-mentioned abilities, he/she will give up being a digital nomad due to “insufficient strength”.

After all, no one dares to give up their job and stable income and rush out to see the world when they have not been able to build a mature business system for making money.

However, many people also overestimate the cost of seeing the world and underestimate their own abilities.

After all, digital nomads are not travel professionals with deep pockets. You need to calculate and compare rental costs and consumption levels in different destinations as much as possible. When you understand what "geographic arbitrage" is, then you can save a lot of money, and at the same time It also allows you to enjoy the joy of being a nomad.

Just imagine, if you can rely on the Internet to complete remote work or you can build your own business on the Internet, then of course you can boldly go anywhere in the world you want, because you only need the Internet and a computer to get income, And right now, you are a remote worker or a web entrepreneur.

However, there is also a problem here.

If your job takes a lot of your precious time, even if you are in the Maldives, it does not mean you are starting a digital nomad lifestyle. Because you still haven't been freed from work, and even you will not be able to better enjoy and explore local folk culture, customs and so on because of work.

Therefore, it can only be regarded as a freelancer at best. After all, the life of digital nomads is not only "job" and "vocation", they know how to enjoy and make full use of local resources.

The homeless people I met include business owners, investors, coaches, designers, language teachers, self-media bloggers, and friends who are devoted to web 3... Without exception, they all have their own remote income sources, Has its own business model for making money.

Of course, some of the foreign vagabonds I have contacted have strong investment capabilities. In addition to the income they operate in their hands, they are also good at investment analysis in different markets. For example, I have met homeless people who invest in real estate and the secondary market, and in the process of communicating with them, I found that they know how to use the logic of "capital" to make money.

At this point, I think that many Chinese homeless people who rely on OTC cash flow still seem to lack some relevant capabilities in investment, and some cognition and learning of "capital" will be relatively weak.

Of course, the sample I have contacted may be limited, and perhaps most of the homeless friends scattered in other countries in China have the dual attributes of "investor + entrepreneur" .

Therefore, if you want to be a digital nomad, in my opinion, you need to improve your understanding of individual business and investment. Once this model is established, as a nomad, you can use a relatively relaxed attitude. state to explore a part of the world to your heart's content. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to truly enjoy the moment, explore and experience local resources no matter where you are due to livelihood issues.

This is also a great difficulty in my opinion as a homeless person. You need to have the ability to learn not only language, but also to understand higher-level ways of making money. Business and investment are indispensable.

(3)

end

I have written a lot of thoughts on digital nomads. I hope this article can help some friends who want to become digital nomads.

Although this is an article that seems to discourage everyone from being a vagabond, it is not my intention. Instead, I want to rip out these cool looking "digital nomads" with layers of filters, and lay out a lot of truth for you to see.

If you really want to be a digital nomad, then as I said in the first point, your belief is there, no matter in the middle of the way you see the many scary demands I have written, it never shakes your firm Heart, then I congratulate you, in terms of willingness, I think you are ready, and the next step is just learning and training at the ability level.

Similarly, if you have already started to waver when you are reading this article and have given up the idea of becoming a digital nomad, then it does not matter, there will always be people who will choose a risky path, and there will always be people who will choose a more stable path. There is no right or wrong choice, as long as Just be happy.

However, I personally share one last point:

I believe that everyone's life should have its own heroic journey, an adventure story that you can be proud of for decades.

A lot of people would think that the biggest problem with being a digital nomad is money, but it's not, there are tons of strategies involved in getting your game to launch in a cheaper way that people ignore. I will talk about this in detail on the live broadcast of the video account on the evening of this Saturday (October 1). Interested friends can make an appointment at the end of the article.

Being a digital nomad does not mean that it needs to run through your entire life. The life cycle of human beings can be as long as eighty or ninety years. In our long life, take out the cycle gap of several months to a year and try to go Doing something bold and crazy won't destroy the rest of your life.

And this kind of "impulse" is more beneficial when you are younger, not only because of its high fault tolerance rate and low cost, but also because it is more likely to completely reverse and change the trajectory of your life. Because when you have a family and want to be a digital nomad again, the dimensions you need to take into account and consider will become extremely complex, and your core competencies will be higher.

Without a gap year, it would be a pity to have only a continuous study and work life without interruption. Of course you can say that I will see the world and become a homeless after I have earned enough money to retire, but people's courage, energy, and physical strength often reach their peak when they are young. Entered the state of boiling frogs in warm water, so I chose On the Road when I thought I was young and enthusiastic.

My story isn't over yet, because I'm still young, wandering for years, and I haven't even reached my 30s. I wrote "The Golden Age of 20 to 30", which has clearly expressed my attitude towards life. Maybe when I was in my thirties and forties, I suddenly figured it out, ended the nomadic state and started a business? Who could have guessed?

My life is full of uncertainty, and I dare to embrace this uncertainty. It is precisely because of the uncertainty that I have developed a stronger anti-fragile ability and coping with external factors. ability to risk.

So there are pros and cons to this path, but because I like it, the pros far outweigh the cons in my eyes.

When I'm old, I must be able to recall many more wonderful life stories than many people, and maybe decades later, a young couple surrounded me with an old lady, listening to me with eyes full of admiration. What about adventure stories from a young age?

When I think about it, my life becomes more meaningful.

Born to be human, I 'm sorry (happiness).

Weibo @ slash girl Fan Misuo

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