Weird question I know. Before I accepted this new job, I booked a 10 day trip to Rome, Italy and paid for the Airbnb, flight, reserved a budget for it. I wanted to go out and finally do something. But this new job has us on rotational shifts and it means I’ll have to work from 12pm-9pm on most days and will only have 2 free days. I’m starting to have regret.
How do you find time to enjoy things while having to actually work? It seems like people who are digital nomads are free. I wanted to be able to go out and try diff restaurants, explore, all of that but I won’t be able to
On weekends
I work abroad and remotely but 5-6 hrs max per day
Nomading != Vacationing
You stay for a month or longer because you only get the weekends off, just like when working from home. Pretty simple.
That makes sense! I was thinking about Japan next year or France and I was thinking too that if I go I should probably stay for at least a month bc I’ll be working my ass off lol.
Yes if you stay for a whole month you get roughly 8 days free(4 weekends). So you can think of 1 month of nomading is equivalent to a 1 week vacation if you don’t take any free days to recover/do nothing.
The longer you stay, the better. You’re just living a “normal” life in a different location.
The best advice is just to stay in a location until you visa runs out and then go somewhere new.
If you have 2 free days per each 10 days, the answer is to book your stay for a lot longer than 10 nights in order to have more off days to explore.
I would go out early each morning and come back just before noon.
If you do this over a week you will see a lot. It’s not the ideal schedule but it’s better than a 9-5. Do the longer stuff/trips on the weekend. Most of Rome’s sights don’t take up that much time anyway.
Europe is fantastic for working US Eastern Time in my opinion. Sightsee and walk around until afternoon and then start work. No need to stay in a place for a month or whatever if one can do that.
If working 9-5, then yeah, you are basically restricted to weekends and paid time off.
Thank you so much for helping me see the light in this too! Plus it’s kinda cold in Italy anyways so I wouldn’t have dedicated that much time to walking I think lol.
There are some nomads that make really good money and don’t work more than a few hours a day, but the majority of nomads are working full time like any other job. There’s the lower budget version which is backpacking, but those people don’t typically have solid jobs or money so it’s more of just an adventure.
Part of the deal is you still have to get your job done, and you have to figure out how to balance that with fun and if it’s worth it to you. Personally, I’d rather spend my off days in Argentina or Paris than somewhere like Idaho even if I work close to full time.
Thank you for smacking me in the face with that solid fact lol that’s so true I’d rather be in Italy eating good ass pasta and working than be here in this small southern town where we have nothing but Walmart. Damn. Thank you seriously for putting that into perspective. I think I was comparing my situation to what I see others do and that’s where I went wrong. It’s a blessing I’m even taking this long of a trip by myself - first time in years I’ve been able to truly save money and actually enjoy it. I hope you have a great day :-)
I hope you have a great day too!
It’s easy to start comparing yourself to other people that travel and get a lot of FOMO from it, but the thing is that people only post the cool stuff. They’re not generally posting showing off how they worked 9-5 today before going to the beach or cathedral or whatever. Also, when you start doing this people are going to be looking up at the things you’re doing in the same way and get FOMO from the things you’re doing.
You won’t be enjoying all the time. You will be tired sometimes, and deserving some rest, and that’s ok.
For me, what helped was trying to have a healthy workload and trying to have a fixed work schedule as well
To enjoy the city in a workday, you can try to have lunch in differents restaurantes sometimes, do a quick break in the afternoon to go to a cafe or a park… or even find a cowork place sometimes