Practicalities of being a Digital Nomad

We're all used to remote working now and at FullCircl we've had people working from a variety of places around the world, from Australia to Talinn, usually staying with family or friends.

A natural extension to this would be to work from a holiday destination (eg extending a weekend away for a few days), but is that practical if you spend most of your day in meetings?

Well, I’m just back from a week being a digital nomad in Palma, Mallorca. We have one main rule for our employees who do this - the experience for their colleagues should be seamless.

If you’ve ever considered doing this, and work for a company who allow it, here are some tips to help you make that happen (I'd love to hear your tips too):

Accommodation

Hotel rooms rarely have a comfortable working environment, so I went for an Airbnb. Here are some things to validate before booking anything:

• Space to work – Airbnb now have a ‘Designated workspace’ search filter. Its useful, but quite a broad definition, so look at the pictures very carefully – some hosts consider a stool at a breakfast bar to be enough. If you're going to be working all day you’ll want a comfortable seat and a decent sized desk/table - check the pictures.
• Internet – you can filter for Wifi availability but if you spend a large proportion of your day on Zoom/Teams I suggest contacting the host to validate – they don’t want a bad review so if you tell them you'll be working and need internet which is both fast & reliable, I figured they are likely to be honest. One of my shortlisted places qualified themselves out when asked this.
• If you are there with a partner, make sure there is space for them to do their own thing.
• A decent coffee maker in the room saves a fortune!
• Another option is to look at local co-working places, although this will increase your costs and they tend not to be all that quiet.

Boundaries and working hours

This could end up being a blocker for some people, particularly if your travelling companions aren't there to work and the accommodation isn't suitable.

• Set boundaries - agree your planned working hours with them in advance so there's no ambiguity.
• Most of the FullCirl teams work closely so we operate core hours of 10-4 to ensure efficient collaboration - outside those hours we don't mind when people do the rest of their working day.
• I trust our employees implicitly but I imagine it would be hard to make this work with a family unless you're able to lock yourself away in a separate room. We've all found a rhythm to make this work at home, but kids would be in holiday mode which could make it harder. I'd be interested if any of you have managed to pull this off, and how.
• Adjust your normal schedule – I'm a bit weird in that my most productive time of the day is 5-7pm. I still finished at 7pm while in Palma, but being an hour ahead meant that my colleagues were only just logging off when I stopped, so I didn't get the usual couple of hours at the end of my day to wrap things up productively. I ended up shifting the other hour to the start of the day.

Practical stuff

• Keep your laptop on UK time – I found it helped keep me aligned with everyone elses working day and also made scheduling less confusing
• I found this brilliant lightweight portable 15.6” Asus monitor for £165 – small enough to slip into your laptop bag, big enough to be practical, runs off USB-C so no power cable required and its carry case becomes a makeshift stand. Its in the picture above. If you work at FullCircl, this is now a communal resource if you want to borrow it!
• Have an iPad? You could also use that as an extended screen. I tried this but mine was too small for my squinty eyes. If you do want to give it a go, MacOS has an app called Sidecar. For Windows, Duet was well reviewed and worked fine when I tried it.

Phone:

Some boringly practical stuff here...

• Check local network charges with your provider before you leave – if its in Europe, chances are you'll be able to use your standard call minutes and data plan for no additional cost.
• Regardless, ensure Wifi calling is enabled - there's no harm and often the quality is better than a cell signal.
• Don't be fooled into thinking that your UK data plan being available in Europe means your data usage is unlimited - most corporate data plans still have a limit. Don't hotspot off your phone, and make sure you connect it to the Wifi so all those Tapas pictures don't get inadvertently uploaded to iCloud on a paid line!
• If your provider doesn't include calls and data abroad just manage your online behaviour carefully - common sense really. Check with your employer to see if they have any policies - better to know than to have surprises.
• Finally, you may want to turn Data Roaming off so your phone will only connect via Wifi. I also made sure my laptop didn't accidentally hotspot to my phone.

Was it worth it?

For me it was easy. I spent around 60% of my time there on Zoom/Teams calls, and several of my colleagues said that my signal was better than some in London. The 'office' experience was seamless, but then I had invested a *lot* of time validating the things above to make that so. I also found the change of scenery made me more refreshed and focused when I needed to be.

If you have the self-discipline to focus on work rather than the surroundings, and your travel companions also understand, its a great way to get a fresh view on the world.

Overall a positive experience.

The itinerary? We flew out on a Saturday and back the following Sunday, so I got two full days on holiday without taking any time off work, Mrs B explored all day while I worked, we ate a lot of Tapas in the evenings, and I had some lovely early morning walks around different parts of Palma before work each day.

It would be a good way to extend a long weekend too - take Thursday afternoon off work, fly somewhere, work from the apartment on Friday then go straight into a weekend off. There's something refreshing about switching your laptop off at the end of the day and immediately being on holiday.

If you've tried working from holiday accommodation, how has it worked for you?