How to Stay Productive as a Digital Nomad (While Travelling)
It’s been over half a decade now that we’ve been living this digital nomad lifestyle. It’s not always easy to talk about what we do and how to share it with non-nomads, but we think it is one of the most rewarding ways to live!
We’re fortunate to explore new countries, finding cozy cafés to work from (lots of these), and waking up somewhere completely different whenever we want.
But as fun as the lifestyle is, staying productive while constantly travelling can be a real challenge. Trying to find new coworkings to work from, new routines, new time zones, and don’t even get us started on long travel days (not a fan of these).
Even though we still have challenging moments and days, I think we have things figured out pretty well. It was a steep learning curve in the beginning – and let’s be honest, we didn’t always feel like being productive either – but now I couldn’t be happier where we are as digital nomads.
In this article, we share some of the habits, tools, and things that have helped us and that we hope can help you as well, so you can stay productive while travelling!
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The reality of working while travelling full-time
Being a digital nomad is a very unconventional lifestyle, and I’m sure you’ve had people ask you when your holiday is ending or when you’re actually going to settle down. Or, what is your 5-year plan? Honestly, who knows!
What we do know is that it’s completely possible to live this lifestyle, enjoy it, make amazing friends from around the world, and see the coolest places ever – all while working remotely.
Staying productive with constant change, moving around, and all that can be challenging at times, but as we mentioned above, after doing this for 5+ years, we’ve learnt a lot and now want to share our tips with you!
Plan your travel days intentionally
Of course, the more you travel, the more travel days you’re going to have. Personally, we always try to stay in a place for over a month to avoid these travel days, as they disrupt productivity.
I know that’s not always possible, and there are ways to make the most of these travel days as nomads. We’ve had a lot of these, and there are a few simple things we do that I feel like help out a lot!
- We love to take trains and book tickets in the quiet section
- Use our bank cards like Revolut and go to lounges in airports
- Travel on weekends and make sure to actually take time off work
- Plan exactly what you want to get done beforehand
Use tools to speed up your process & stay organized
Keeping your travels organized
Josie is the type-A traveller in our relationship, and while we don’t plan every single trip in detail, we always try to stay on top of our flights, accommodation, etc.
For example, Josie will add all our travel details into our calendar – what time we’re flying, what airline we’re going with, and then she’ll attach the booking confirmation, so we never have to go search for it in our inboxes.
This removes a lot of headaches since we’ve got two shared emails + our separate emails. By being on top of our calendars, we waste less time searching for stuff, which frees up more time to be productive.
Workflow optimization
When it comes to increasing workflow productivity, I think we’ve all tried ChatGPT by now and seen how much it can help with your workflow, as your virtual assistant, and especially creating Custom GPTs is super helpful!
But that’s far from the only tool we use to help increase our workflow and stay productive. Another thing that’s been super helpful for us is following the Pomodoro method, which is essentially just a 25-minute timer that you start – and then for the duration of those 25 minutes, you stay super focused on your work. When the timer is up, you take a 5-minute break, and then you start over again.
Here are some tools you might find helpful:
- Asana, Notion, or a similar PM tool to keep track of your tasks ✅
- Headspace (meditation & focus) 🧘🏼♀️
- Spotify playlists with LoFi or focus music 🎧
- Time-blocking to maximize efficiency ⏰
We also outsource quite a bit when we can if we have a lot of deadlines + long travel days. For example, Edu Birdie’s writing service helps with writing-heavy tasks. We also outsource any tech we don’t know how to do via Fiverr or UpWork.
Create routines that travel with you
We talk a bunch about routine in our blog post related to digital nomad burnout, and what we can do to avoid burnout. I personally find I’m the most productive when I have some sort of routine that I follow daily.
It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, but an example could be a walk to a coffee shop before work or to get a certain amount of exercise every day. When we host our Pop Up Colivings, we go for runs most mornings. It’s such a great way to start the day.
Having these daily routines then helps make the rest of the day productive. Especially things that can be done anywhere you go will make it much easier to keep up with these routines, so you don’t lose them when you travel from place to place.
One thing we always do whenever we go to a new place is find a good coffee shop to work from right from the start. Finding that cafe for us helps everything else fall into place.
- Find an environment you’re comfortable working in and make it a routine to work from there 👩🏼💻
- Make it a routine to find time in your day for a healthy meal, a relaxing walk, or chill time with a coffee ☕️
The best routines are the ones you can do wherever you travel.
Choose accommodation that supports productivity
I never want to overpay for accommodation and always look to pay what the price of rent should cost in the location – but the one thing that will make me pay a bit more for an apartment is if it’s well-equipped for digital nomads.
What do I mean by being equipped for digital nomads? I am talking standing desk (or a good desk to work from), good wifi, natural light, and located close to cafes and coworking spaces.
All these little things go such a long way in making your work and travel experience in the location you’re going to much better.
Here are some of the things we look for:
- Pick a good location close to the things you like to do
- Find accommodation that will have a positive impact on your work productivity
- Things like good internet, a working desk, and good lighting are important
- If you like working from coworking or cafes, make sure your accommodation is near at least one of these
Prioritize slow travel
Probably one of the things that has helped us the most when it comes to keeping up with our work productivity while travelling is embracing slow travel.
When we first started nomading, we literally travelled the entire coast of Croatia in the span of one month. The longest we stayed in one place was 4 days. Now we rarely spend less than 1 month somewhere if we can help it – and, ideally, we stay for 2 months if possible.
While this can sometimes be challenging for us with the nature of our work (travel bloggers & content creators) AND having families on two different continents, we try to slow travel as much as we possibly can.
Final thoughts on how to stay productive as a digital nomad
And if there’s one thing we’d love for you to take away from this article, that’s it! Travel slow, create good routines, outsource when you can, and make sure to prioritize your well-being over everything else.
If you have any other tips that have helped you, we’d love to hear them! Please leave your tips in the comments so other readers can benefit from your knowledge as well.
Thank you for being here and safe travels! If you’re curious to read more of our digital nomad articles, you can find them here.
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