How to become a digital nomad (it's simple).

I discovered the concept of Digital Nomading (DN) around 10 years ago, while reading the 4 Hours Workweek from Tim Ferris. This book captured my imagination and really opened the door to so many different ways to view work and leisure. The key was to be able to work remotely.

Before 2020 being a digital nomad was arguably hard(er). Remote jobs were rare, and you had to have some kind of personal business and an entrepreneurial mindset to make it work.

But since the pandemic and the rise of remote work, being a DN has never been so accessible.

I won’t sell you dropshipping classes, crypto trading courses, or multi-level essential oils marketing ebooks, that’s not what I did and I doubt it works for most people.  I became a (part-time) DN by having a normal job and chasing remote opportunities, to increase my salary and get better working conditions (better holiday, more flexibility, and 100% remote).

To be clear, I never left everything to live and work permanently on the road, but I do take my laptop and my work with me when I travel, and I've done multiple DN trips around the world. I think there is an image online of the young DN based in Thailand selling some scammy self-help book, but the reality is that tons of people with normal remote jobs just enjoy taking some extended trip locally or abroad, and this is to me a more realistic and achievable goal. And I'd say more fulfilling

How I became a remote worker (and you can do it too)

I started working in London as a QA tester in 2016, for a tech consultancy. I was delivering a project to a famous public organization, and we had 2 then 3 days of remote work a week! I clearly think I lucked out but it gave me a taste for it.

Later on, after a big trip from Europe to Asia by land (more on that later), I moved to Spain and got a job in a local startup. They were quite reluctant about remote work, but I did not mind, as going to the office back then was a fantastic way to supercharge my social life as a new arrival in Barcelona.

Then eventually 2020 arrived and they had to let us be remote. This company was badly affected by the pandemic and laid off a bunch of people (not me). I saw the writing on the wall and got another job for my first full-remote company, where I started dabbling more seriously with QA Automation. I was happily working remotely but it was the pandemic so I just stayed home. Once we were able to travel around a little, we took a first DN trip to a small village in Catalunya called Corça, where we got a beautiful country house with gigabit internet in the middle of nowhere. We were doing it! It was so great!

Then we started working remotely when visiting family or for Christmas. Instead of taking an entire week off, we would only take a few days here and there, and save our holiday allowance for bigger trips. Christmas and New Year are usually great times of the year to do that, as most companies have much lower activities.

Then, in 2021, I move to my current company, where I became QA Automation Engineer. This company is full-remote and really embraces flexibility, async communication, and remote work. It's honestly a great place to work. As the world opened again, we started doing more DN trips and enjoying remote work even more. I spent a lovely week in quiet Mallorca in September 2020 with my friends, I worked in Menorca and the UK multiple times (we have family there), in Mexico in Jan-Feb 2022, the Philippines in April 2022, and Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in August 2022.

But you don't have to go far. The whole point of it is to just live the life you want to live and do the things that make you happy.

How you can become a Digital nomad

I. Get a remote job

It is shockingly simple, but simple does not mean easy.

If you are not already a remote worker (and you want to become one), you can either:

• ask your boss for a remote trial, then a few remote only days per week, understanding that it might be an upward battle for not much payoff.
• Find a similar remote position. There are a lot of opportunities, just type "your job" + "remote" in LinkedIn and check the results.

Whether or not you want to leave your job, look for a full-remote position on the following websites, so you get an idea of what's possible.

• https://www.linkedin.com/
• https://remotive.com/
• https://www.remote.io/
• https://weworkremotely.com/
• https://remoteok.com/

Looking at the list of remote jobs shows us 2 things:

• You might want to work in tech, or at least focus on the tech-adjacent part of your job, or do a non-tech job in a tech company.
• Salaries are usually shared openly. If like me you live and work in Europe (I'm in Spain), you might be seeing job offers with significantly higher pay than in your local market. They might not be offering the same employee protections, but if you can double your salary does that really matter to you?

Do not be afraid to leave your job for a better one

II. Profits!

That’s it. No secret, no special sauce.

Once you have a remote job, just go wherever you want. Make sure you carry everything you need. Have a test trip locally to dip your toes or travel to the other side of the world. Get a van or stay at your parent's place. You don’t have to go to Chiangmai to sell courses about writing courses, you can do your normal job from the place you want to explore. You can do whatever you want.

And that's the beauty of it.