How To Succeed At Becoming A Digital Nomad

Ally Basak Russell is among the growing number of digital nomads, professionals who prefer a location-independent lifestyle that allows them to travel and work anywhere in the world.

Russell leads the international marketing team at oDesk, a marketplace for online work headquartered in Redwood City, Calif. She’s currently based in London, but can work virtually from just about anywhere there is a good Internet connection.

“As one of oDesk’s resident Digital Nomads, I’ve been fortunate to spend many of my working hours over the past year at coworking spaces in London, Amsterdam, Paris, and San Francisco; cafes in Sydney, Dhaka, Manila, and Dublin, and Airbnb rentals in Oslo and Berlin,” Russell said.

(Coworking spaces provide desks, Wi-Fi, meeting rooms and other office amenities, as well as camaraderie to independent professionals who prefer to work among peers rather than from the isolation of home or hotel rooms.)

Russell said she is able to support a productive and rewarding digital nomad lifestyle due to careful planning and the wealth of tools made possible by modern technology. She has compiled Top 10 Lifehacker Tips for Digital Nomads  that have helped her – everything from professional tech tools to assist with expense reporting and setting up a world clock system to schedule meetings in different time zones to tools that have helped her make the most of personal time while on the road and share her adventures with family and friends.

When and how did you first learn about digital nomads?

It was actually at a conference in Manila, Philippines where I met Bernard Vukas, a talented Croatian freelance developer who works via oDesk for global clients, often from beach towns on his laptop. As I traveled to more cities — Sydney, Dhaka, Berlin– I met more digital nomads, many of whom know and support each other. There’s truly a global community of digital nomads, with online and offline meetups to boot.

Why did you decide to become one?

When I graduated from college, I was determined to live and work abroad but I wasn’t sure how to turn that lifestyle goal into a career path. That was ten years ago and high-speed wireless Internet wasn’t pervasive enough in my bucket-list destinations to put in an efficient work day online. So, I explored the standard routes–Peace Corps, multinational nonprofits–and eventually landed in Ecuador with my boyfriend (now husband) teaching English at a community school in the Andes with WorldTeach, a non-profit, non-governmental organization founded by a group of Harvard University students. I found it energizing to pare back my life to only what would fit in a few hiking bags. At night and on weekends, I learned how to make guanabana ice cream in a spinning copper pan, bargain with grumpy taxi drivers in Spanish, and dance to live bands playing woodwind instruments I didn’t know existed.

Those on two-week vacations or three-day business trips rarely encounter these experiences, even with help from local contacts and a lot of planning. For a travel junkie like me, it’s tough to rely on a brief change of scenery during an annual vacation to sustain me throughout the year. It’s also tough to forego a hard-earned career in marketing to open that beachside B&B that sounds like such a good idea until I have to get breakfast on the table and wash ten sets of sheets as a typhoon rolls in.

How did you learn how to do it? What resources did you access?

Many of my friends are avid travelers. Some have even paused their careers to travel for weeks or months. However, few have adopted a true digital nomad lifestyle of working via the Internet as they travel. For example, friends of friends are traveling by train for an entire year and writing a blog about it for fun. Another friend from high school quit her online marketing job at a huge e-commerce company to photograph her travels for a year. A third friend went on a paid sabbatical abroad after clocking in five years at her company.

I’ve extracted a lot of advice from travel blogs, many of which focus on personal growth through storytelling or chronicle a journey via Instagram, but I’ve had to assemble the more practical advice myself. I wanted to share a few quick hacks that have saved me time and frustration.

How did you choose a location for a base?

I’m a digital nomad with a full-time job for a company that moved me to London, so that’s my temporary base. When I’m in London, I work at TechHub, a coworking space within Google Campus. London has a fast-growing tech startup ecosystem and is also a great jumping-off point for travel to other European tech hubs like Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and Dublin. This week I’ll be in Oslo. Next week I’ll take the Eurostar train to Paris while working en route.

Whenever possible, I work from accelerators and coworking spaces. They usually have reliable Internet and printing facilities, and it’s fun to learn about nuances between cities by chatting with the resident entrepreneurs. Best of all, local founders can tell you where to get the city’s best (and cheapest) cup of local coffee.

One of my digital nomad credos is stay in a local home whenever possible. I typically use Airbnb so that even if I have a long work day, I can still get a feel for a neighborhood during my lunch break or a late dinner. I try to avoid chain hotels and restaurants, and commercial shopping districts, at all costs. If a restaurant has an English-language menu out front (outside of English-speaking countries, of course), I keep walking.

What have been the biggest challenges or frustrations?

A consistent high-speed Internet connection. Even in London, you’d be surprised how frequently my connection goes down. Video calls are crucial to be able to read people’s faces and body language during meetings. Without video calls, I feel much more isolated.

I have also racked up a lot of foreign transaction fees at ATMs. Getting a local bank account in many countries is a nightmare. Scheduling can also be rough. My boss has been amazing about scheduling team meetings first thing in the morning for the California folks so that I can join. With others outside my company who are less accommodating, I’ve had to set boundaries. I work longer hours than in the U.S., but without the commute, it nearly evens out.

Any downsides to being a digital nomad?

I’ve missed some key milestones in the lives of friends and family back home, which can cause feelings of selfishness and guilt. I’ll need to do my best to make up for missed birthdays, weddings, holidays, and baby showers when I get back to San Francisco.

What has been the most rewarding aspect?

Being a digital nomad is the best of both worlds: I get inspiration and levity from new environments while furthering the marketing career I’m working hard to build.

I’m very lucky to be at a company that affords its employees work freedom. oDesk really believes that work is no longer a place. A paradigm shift is occurring: companies who want to attract and retain employees need to embrace work flexibility.

For an edited version of Russell’s Top 10 Lifehacker Tips for Digital Nomads, click here.