Work to live – the rise of digital nomadism

There has been something of paradigm shift in professional spheres over the last few years. Between global events and shifting attitudes, a new concept has risen to prominence that sees workers unbound by office desks and time zones: digital nomadism.

Digital nomadism describes the act of travelling and working simultaneously. Digital nomads can explore other cities and countries while working full-time and remotely. The concept has gained steam, with many countries instituting their own ‘digital nomad visa’ to minimise tax issues for working travellers. But how has the concept been legitimized?

New employee freedoms

Perhaps the single biggest influencing factor in the growth of digital nomadism is the shift in business attitude towards employee contracts. Globally, more and more businesses are adopting hybrid and fully-remote working agreements and contracts, and even creating new roles to fit this new age of work. Many digital nomads can now easily separate work and life and enjoy a complete new lifestyle.

The relatively sudden shift in business attitude to employee freedoms – both with regard to flexible hours and remote opportunities – can be largely attributed to the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic – and the restrictions on gatherings and travel it brought about – forced businesses to adopt strategies and technologies that enabled workers to carry out their duties from home. 

These capabilities did not disappear, even as the biggest lockdown measures were rescinded. Indeed, they proved uniquely popular amongst staff. They were also proven to increase productivity across industries, incentivizing businesses to reap the rewards of greater employee freedom.

As a digital nomad you get many freedoms, but it’s important to make enough passive income streams. Dropshipping and eCommerce are some of the best forms of passive income that can be managed while being a digital nomad. With both these roles, you’ll be able to sell products all around the world. One of the few things you’ll have to manage is the logistics of order fulfillment. However, this can easily be done on a portable laptop, making it ideal for a digital nomad. You will have to ensure that all your orders are well organized and that your invoices are in good order. Thankfully, invoice audit recovery software can help with this and streamline the process, meaning you can enjoy more time traveling and partaking in new experiences.

Co-Working spaces on the rise

Concurrently, the number of community and co-working spaces increased significantly. This was in part due to demand from a growing freelance community, but also due to an increase in available commercial space where more businesses adopted remote working as a core strategy.

With more co-working spaces available in urban and business hubs around the world, workers were no longer moored to their home offices; they could seek out spaces with their required amenities in almost any city, find like-minded people, enabling widespread travel without risk of being unable to work.

Digital opportunities

Earlier, it was acknowledged that businesses were leaning in to fully-remote roles – and even creating new roles with remoteness at their centre. Not only has communication and cloud collaboration technology improved substantively in recent years, but every market has also seen a slow and steady transition to the digital realm.

Australia’s e-commerce industry continues to outpace the growth of brick-and-mortar retail thanks to unparalleled customer convenience; digital portals and trading platforms enable day traders to conduct CFD trading from anywhere, a far cry from the phone calls and in-person bidding of yesteryear. The advancement of processing technology has enabled the rendering of high-demand, high-resolution media on smaller and smaller machines.

Attitudinal shifts

All of the above has led to the legitimization of remote work as a concept and practicality. Combined with an attitudinal shift in workers across the developed world, this has led to an increased interest in the marriage of travel and work; an ultimate freedom.

Pin this post if you’re planning to be part of the digital nomadism!