Productivity For The Digital Nomad

If you’ve noticed the recent tones of my blogs, they’ve been focused around traveling since that seems to be the thing that’s been keeping me preoccupied the most. One question I’ve been asked a lot in lieu of my posts is, “how can you afford to travel so much” and “don’t you have a real job you have to be at?”

While I’m not exactly a digital nomad, I do have a handful of jobs that allows me to function wherever I am in the world. While this might not last very long, as I will be taking over something more permanent very, very soon, it doesn’t stray away from the fact that I have the attention span of a 5 year old. This means, no matter what endeavor I partake, I will always try my best to live a routine and obstruction-free life as much as possible. If I’m not making any sense, I simply want to work at my own time and I go where I want, when I want.

This might sound hard to believe considering that 1 of my jobs entails me to oversee production (see, www.citi-wear.com) but with the proper tools, effective time management and the right bits of inspiration [1][2], living the life of a digital nomad or in my case, living like one is easier than you think!

Here are some tools and techniques that I like to apply in my daily life:

1. Organize your tasks/ priorities/ things to do at the start of every week

Weekends are something that have been obsolete to me for a while now but the upside is, I get to take breaks whenever I want to. Although most of my time is spent in the confines of my home, I make it a point to sit down every week and organize the things I need to accomplish whether it be blogging, vlogging, event, office or personal related.

2. Make sure to keep your lines of communication open and to be responsive of inquiries/ emails

Wherever I go, I always make sure that my lines of communication are clear and open. I try my best to always respond to emails right away and if I’m dealing with a client who’s half way around the world, to let them know what times they can get through to me and the various channels they can get through to me.

3. Work virtually

Whenever I need to make slides for talks, presentations for clients and what not, I make sure to either make them on Google Documents or to save them on a cloud platform when I’m done. It saves me the heartache of software crashing and it also allows me to access them wherever I am in the world for as long as I have internet and a device.

4. Have a back up

I work very closely with a secretary who I leave in charge of all the things that I need handled remotely. My secretary is in charge of running errands, dropping samples and doing things that simply cannot be done virtually. This part really depends on what your profession is but as a supplier, there are still tasks that require a human touch.

5. Never stop learning

Technology is always changing, therefore I like to seek for inspiration from websites like Adapt RM. Whenever I need some sort of inspiration or if I need to catch up on something new, I like to scroll through their pages. They have a lot of interesting articles there which I find extremely useful whenever I’m looking for valuable information on being a digital nomad.

The trick is to never stop learning, sharing and creating.

How do you stay a digital nomad?

ENJOY!