Why Opt to Be a Part-Time Digital Nomad

The new work-from-anywhere reality has opened up the possibility of working while traveling, but you don’t have to go all-in on the digital nomad lifestyle to enjoy it. Remote work gives you the freedom to travel whenever it fits your schedule.

Not everyone is cut out to be a digital nomad. You start to miss the comfort of your home, the familiarity of your surroundings, and quite simply the convenience of clothes stacked in a cupboard and not a suitcase. It can also be difficult to maintain work/life balance while being constantly on the move.

Still, there are many benefits to being a location-agnostic professional. But if a full-pronged digital nomad lifestyle is not quite right for you, try going part-time to enjoy the best of both worlds.

Here’s why you should consider being a part-time digital nomad.

1. No Need to Give up Your Home Base

If you’re on the road for a long time, financial reasons would compel you to think about subletting your apartment. But if you choose to divide time between your home and other locations, you don’t need to go through the hassle of finding a long-term tenant for your house or unmaintained apartments back home.

2. It’s More Comfortable and Easier to Plan

When you’re not hopping from one destination to another, you have more time to plan your next trip – whether it’s international or domestic. You can plan it around big office meetings, presentations, and really busy working days when you know you would have no time for outdoors. You can also plan your logistics better. Digital nomads are constantly dealing with issues of connectivity, WiFi, or just getting a parcel delivered. All of this is solved with a part-time nomad lifestyle.

3. Travel at Your Convenience

You don’t need a watertight travel calendar and pre-booked flight tickets to become a digital nomad. The part-time nomad lifestyle allows you to travel when you can, if you can. It could be mid-week, mid-month, or once in two months. You’re also free to plan off-the-cuff and travel to a nearby location (COVID willing) where you can work on the beach or brainstorm in a national park. Part-time digital nomadism is all about spontaneity.

Bonus: How to Plan:

Think about using your personal transport or accessible public transport for short day trips or weekend trips around your area.
Plan 3-4 days or weeklong trips to unexplored, domestic sites that you’ve always wanted to go to.
Plan 10+ days or longer trips to further off destinations at an interval of a couple of months so you can space out work-from-home and work-from-anywhere.

4. Balance Comfort and Your Desire for Thrill

The digital nomad lifestyle involves thorough planning of accommodation, coworking spaces, and even social life. You have to keep climates, visas, currency exchange rates in mind to ensure that your travel is not disrupted. But if you’d like a more comfortable and easier travel experience, the part-time digital nomad experience can come in handy! This way you can still get the satisfaction of spending a few days, weeks, or even a month in a new location without committing to a full-on nomad lifestyle.

5. It’s a Good Experiment to Know What You Like

You might never know what works for you until you try it. The part-time digital nomad experience gives you a framework to follow and get started on a new lifestyle. If it works for you, it can help you smoothly transition to a full-time digital nomad or establish that you’d rather work out of an office or your home, and do trips here and there throughout the year.

6. A Way to Avoid Burnout

Everyone working from home realizes that official hours and time-off has morphed into one endless working day. You not only need a break but also a change in scenery. A new location can be a solution to both mental and physical logjam. Travel and visit new destinations to improve your mental health and also reset your creative side to work more productively.

7. You Can Be Closer to Family

If there’s one major drawback to the digital nomad lifestyle, it’s how much time you spend away from your family and friends. A well-spaced out part-time nomad travel plan can be good for both your homesickness and your personal life. Unless you can find friends who’d like to work with you remotely, returning to your home base between trips is a good decision to keep everyone in the family happy.

8. It’s Easier to Sustain It

Being on the road constantly can be exhausting, but you can mitigate the travel sickness with time spent at home. Not only, then, is part-time travel an antidote to burnout, it’s also a more sustainable option. You can plan a mix of domestic and international travel, knowing that at any point, you can return home for time in your comfy bed.

9. Don’t Miss Out on the Office Presence

COVID-19 has pushed companies to normalize remote work, but typically, companies have a variety of engagement models with their employees, especially freelancers who work remotely. These freelancers may sometimes miss out on office fun and learning experiences because of their remote job environment. But a part-time nomad travel plan can help you schedule trips around when you’re needed in “the office”. This way, you can attend the important meetings or (virtually) hang out with your colleagues while still being able to see a bit of the world.

10. You’re Not Complete Unhinged

The digital nomad lifestyle is as productive as you make it. It requires a lot of hustling and discipline. But if you prefer some kind of an accountability mechanism and structure, a part-time digital nomad timetable can be useful. It will help you organize your weeks or months between regular, steady work in your home office and work outdoors. Here’s a tip: keep the creative work or assignments that need you to gather your best ideas for the road!

If long periods at home can be jarring, travel, too, can sometimes disorient you. Try the part-time nomad life to cool off and work up a better traveling appetite.

Want to try out the part-time digital nomad lifestyle but don’t work remotely yet?

These resources should help!