The Trap

Too many of us will find ourselves stuck in jobs that are well paid and perhaps even cognitively rewarding . . . but just aren’t what we want (and many more of us will find ourselves in this pickle with jobs we don’t enjoy).

The problem is that this is all we’ve been taught: that success means wearing a suit and getting to shout at people, regardless of what that does for our blood pressure. That taking risks is irresponsible when you have a family to provide for—and that anything other than traditional employment is a massive risk. We’re so “risk averse” that we ignore the risks that we’re facing right now.

We believe there is some kind of honor in working long hours and grafting hard. Staying at the office until 10 p.m. means you are conscientious or a team player. Working harder makes you a better person. Even if that work isn’t particularly valuable. Even if that work means attending pointless meetings about how to market staplers, where nothing ultimately gets decided.

Working in itself is not something to be proud of. Doing meaningful work is. And so is looking after your family. But we mustn’t conflate those things.

What’s more is that we feel as though we’re working toward some kind of green pasture. We think that when we become highly successful, we’ll then be able to quit our job and retire to spend all that time with our families. We think that when we’re successful our stress will drop away. We look forward to the day we retire.

But why are you waiting until you’re old and gray to start enjoying life? What if you die tomorrow?

So many people have told me that they regret missing out on their children’s younger years because they weren’t home in time to tuck them in. The things I regret are not going on certain holidays, not taking certain opportunities because I was ‘too busy’.

And what if—most tragically of all—you already actually had all the income and the success you needed to start enjoying life today but just didn’t realise it? Your family won’t benefit as much from an extra $2,000 per year as you think: they’d probably rather spend more time with you! Especially if you could just as easily get that same $2K by driving less and cutting some bills.

Don’t aim to retire happy. Aim to love your work and your lifestyle so much that you don’t feel the need to retire at all. Be happy now!

(Get a private pension just in case though.)

Wow, that got heavy quick.

But I’m not that cynical, honest. I included this because I think it’s an apt analogy and an example of how the promise of distant ‘freedom’ can cause us to endure even the most inhumane circumstances (not that most of us endure anything that is even comparable to that). In reality, I don’t think there’s any evil conspiracy going on here. I simply believe it’s a hangover from a time when these tools didn’t exist. We haven’t yet adapted to our new way of life and the possibilities it brings.

And the system is so bloated and tired that it’s going to take decades for it to catch up. If it doesn’t collapse on itself first.

But you don’t need to wait. You can create a job that you can love right now. That means pursuing goals and ambitions, yes, but not acting out of fear or trying to fulfill someone else’s ideal of success.

What REALLY makes you feel alive? For me, among other things, it’s working out. And so, I always make sure that I can fit in my workout first thing in the morning and start work at 10 a.m. rather than 9 a.m. I get to write and vlog about working out, and I get to test fitness trackers. I’m working on building a fitness app. Much of this work is stuff I can’t wait to do more of.

Another interest is technology of course, and so I ensure that my work either involves writing about fitness and technology or working on apps, websites, and other online projects.

Likewise, I love spending time with my family and friends and being there for them—so I ensure I’m able to drop everything when I need to if my wife needs to be picked up from work, or if I want to meet a friend for lunch. I have side projects that I am highly enthusiastic about, like my blog, so I spend one day a week working purely on that (it brings in a little passive income, so it pays for itself). I make sure this is possible by working that little bit extra the other days.

I also make sure I have time for writing books like this one, and for learning: I’ll be taking a fitness training course soon so that I have a qualification to demonstrate my knowledge in that area. I’m growing my career in a way that is dictated entirely by me.

I like focusing deeply on my work, and I like working in coffee shops—so I try to stay away from work that ties me down and keeps me in the house/office. I’ve had to compromise a little on that though, in order to take on some opportunities that will ultimately benefit my career. But this way my decision.

Likewise, I’ve had to compromise a little in other areas to ensure that I have enough steady income to afford the quality of life I want. I do keep a number of “boring adult” expenses down though (clothes, alcohol, etc.), so that I can invest more in tech and save enough money for a rainy day. Or a similarly wet kitchen floor, which is the challenge I’m currently facing as a homeowner thanks to a leaky pipe.

I even manage to travel more often than most friends. I can take my work with me on the go, and sometimes I go away for “working weekends” with a friend who also works online. I take smaller weekend trips, and that way I’m able to visit more countries. I also have the significant advantage of being friends with a pilot who can get me cheap flights to Europe. Last year, we picked a random destination at his airline and flew to Dortmund, Germany for a Christmassy weekend! We called it “travel roulette”!

This is all a huge juggle, but I have a system that works for me and that is just flexible enough to support things going wrong, or interruptions to my usual workflow. While there are times that I am stressed, I also have plenty of time to relax with my wife, read good books, and play on my Nintendo Switch. And while there are days I find myself writing about plumbing, I am constantly working on numerous big projects that I find highly rewarding. And I’m seeing constant progress in my career that spurs me on to keep going.

It’s a constant process of refinement though, and of adapting to changes in your lifestyle. Your advantage is that you can refine and adapt. You can reduce your hours or increase them at any point. You can increase your rates, or switch industries. No one is going to stop you.

Find what you love and do more of that right now. And I can almost guarantee you that this does not require you to be a high-flying CEO.

Your Job Isn’t the Be-All and End-All

Most of us feel as though we need to be traditionally successful because that’s what we always aimed for and that’s what our parents and teachers wanted for us. We want to be able to feel as though we’re successful and as though we’ve “made it.” Maybe we want to be intellectually challenged, or to create something we can be proud of.

But then why does that sense of accomplishment and forward momentum need to come from your work? What if you were to take on a job that would just pay the bills, and then use your spare time to pursue something more meaningful? Maybe you could write a novel, maybe you could work on art, maybe you could compete in some kind of sport?

This comes down to that whole “what do you do?” question that gets asked so often at parties: you shouldn’t define yourself by your job. Income shouldn’t be your one barometer for success. And it certainly shouldn’t be how you define your identity.

A lot of people want to be rich, or at least financially successful. This is something else that many of us have been taught to desire. So, we climb the ladder in our organization, again taking on more and more responsibility and sacrificing more and more of our freedom.

But your income alone is not the sole determinant of your wealth, as we have already seen. In just the same way as we calculated the income of our business while filing tax returns, we can do a similar calculation for our own personal wealth. That means

Income – Overheads = Wealth

So, if your salary is high but your overheads are also high, then you might actually earn less than someone who has a low income and low expenses. If you need more money, you don’t necessarily need to work more. You can just spend less. Or look for other ways to bring in cash.

You can earn more by running side hustles, by selling items, by investing more wisely, and so on. Your aim is to be comfortable and to support the lifestyle you want, and once you realize that your job isn’t the only way to do that, the world is your oyster.

Lifestyle Design and the Gig Economy

Lifestyle design is a powerful idea, but its potential goes through the roof once we combine this notion with the gig economy!

After all, if you’re working for no fixed amount and you can choose how much work to take on at any given point . . . if you’re completely location independent and you can choose precisely what kind of work you want to do . . . well, then, the options are truly limitless. And the lines between your work and your lifestyle will become significantly more blurred.

Here are some examples.

Goal Setting

So, step one would be to imagine the perfect life that you want to achieve. If you had no limitations, then where would you live? What would your house look like? How would you spend your time?

What things matter to you most? Would you like to travel and experience the world? Do you want to do creative, meaningful work, or do you want to spend more time with your family in a beautiful, comfortable home?

(I’m suggesting you pick one or two of these . . . not all of them!)

Once you’ve got an idea of the kind of lifestyle you want, then you can start to think about different business models that would allow you to get there. How much time off would you need? How much would you need to earn?

Budgeting

The next step is budgeting. Budgeting becomes very important if you truly want to benefit from lifestyle design. And here’s why . . .

Most likely, wherever you are located and whatever your current lifestyle, you will require a certain amount of income per month to maintain that way of life. Once you know how much that is, then you can set some more concrete goals for yourself again.

So, if you know that you need $150 per day to live in your current home and enjoy your current way of life, and your goal is to work no more than five hours a day, then your objective becomes simple: establish some gigs that will let you earn that amount, in that amount of time. OR look at other aspects of your lifestyle that you can change in order to need less money to live on. Maybe you could remove an expense. (Stop paying for Netflix, for instance, and you can finish half an hour earlier on one day of the month perhaps. Cancel your gym membership and train from home and maybe you can work an hour less!)

Budgeting is also very important for a whole host of other reasons. It will allow you to avoid getting into financial trouble as a household, for instance, by making sure that you have enough money to live and an emergency fund for unexpected expenses. At the same time, it will ensure you can keep saving toward any goals and so forth.

Obviously, being self-employed means that your income is going to be somewhat variable,¹ and that’s why the aim should be to create a budget based on a sensible “minimum” income that you’re going to aim to earn every day and every month. (Setting a daily target can also be easier to track and motivate yourself toward.)

Financial Modeling

Create a spreadsheet that includes all of your income (revenue streams) using conservative estimates, and all of your expenses/overheads. That means business expenses and personal ones. If all has gone well, then you should be left with some excess cash at the end of the month, and if you multiply this by a certain number of months, then you can calculate how long it would take you to save toward something such as a holiday.

This is called financial modeling—creating “models” of your accounts and then calculating projections into the future.

You can also use this same spreadsheet to try out alternative futures and possibilities. What if you were to cut one of those expenses? How would this impact your monthly profits? How would that affect your savings in five months’ time? Financial modeling this way gives you a kind of crystal ball for looking into alternate potential futures.

Make sure that your spreadsheet uses your income after tax to calculate your finances. AND make sure that it includes a whole lot of extra budget to deal with things that could potentially go wrong. You should definitely have a buffer in your daily budget and you should definitely have a “rainy day fund.”

While financial modeling is very useful, it will typically fail to account for the unknown unknowns. In other words, you need to prepare for the furnace breaking, the car brakes needing replacing (this cost my wife and me £340 the other day), and all the other things that could go wrong. You can try testing these scenarios, or even try to calculate a rough average for your “unexpected costs” and split this across the year. There’s always an element of guesswork however.

You can use this budget as well to test out different numbers of days off. That way you can see how many days off you can afford while still moving toward your goals and stashing some savings. Or you can see what other factors you might need to tweak to be able to take off more time.

You can also use similar modeling to see how you might be able to invest more money into aspects of your business (such as marketing) and then calculate how that might impact your profits over time.

Optimizations

In Chapter 5, we looked at several ways you could work more efficiently: either by improving your own concentration and focus, or by looking at “process fixes” in order to streamline your workflow.

Whatever the case, these can then help you to continue earning the same amount of money in less time—thereby helping you to either work less or earn more in the same amount of time. Either way, when you aren’t tied to your desk for a set number of hours, being able to work faster and more efficiently will start to benefit your private life too.

In short, if you know how much you need to earn (including the buffer), and you can do that in half an hour . . . well, then, you only need to work for half an hour! Find ways to cut this down and you will find it’s much easier to write the budget that will allow you to live the lifestyle you’re going for.

The Right Kinds of Clients

Of course, all of this feeds back into finding the right kinds of client for the work style that you have chosen. Gigging means you can negotiate the precise type of work you want to do—not only in the grand scheme, but also when discussing work with each individual client.

So, you need to think about the type of lifestyle that you’ve imagined for yourself and your family, and then look at the kind of work that will fit with that. Do you want to work on short-term projects through an agency that will give you steady and reliable work/income? Or would you rather work on longer-term projects and have more flexibility over the way you divide your time (in which case, you’re going to need to be a lot more disciplined)?

Do you want to get into a nice routine that fits around your family and friends? In that case, finding recurring work might make sense. Or, do you thrive on the freedom and unpredictable nature of doing different jobs nearly every other day?

If you plan on traveling a lot, then you will probably want to stay away from clients that require you to have lots of Skype calls at specific times, or to be on Slack.

And again, this doesn’t have to mean picking the one kind of work that is best for you. You will very likely find that a mix of long-term clients with set hours, one-off clients, and haphazard clients is ultimately what gives you the right balance of freedom and security.

Using your own vision for your lifestyle and your budget, you’ll find that it’s a lot easier to look at the terms of a contract, or the payment methods offered by a client, and then decide if this is right for you.

Create Rules

Whatever you end up designing as your work-life balance, however much work you choose to take on, and whatever hours you choose to work for, it is also now important that you come up with some kind of structure in order to make sure you can survive this way and that you are working toward the lifestyle you envisage for yourself.

This might seem to somewhat negate the benefits of being able to work how and when you want. But the difference here is that the rules are rules that you are introducing. And were I to get really philosophical, I might say something about discipline being necessary for true freedom.

No one is mandating when you must work, or where. But if you don’t make these rules yourself, then it’s all too easy to give yourself breaks all over the place and end up falling behind or letting clients down.

Want to break your working day into two halves and have a three-hour lunch break? That’s fine. But make this a rule and stick to it.

Want to alter the amount you work based on your current income and outlays? Fine: but you still need to be disciplined once you’ve done this and create that minimum earnings target in order to ensure you’re always bringing home enough to live on.

In other words, due to the lack of hard and fast rules, it is now up to you to regulate yourself and to introduce some discipline into your routine. You need to be your own manager, and you’ll find that you can occasionally be a difficult employee! These rules should be in service of achieving the lifestyle you want though, and therefore they are ultimately going to give you more freedom in the long term.

More Rules

Rules can also regard prioritizing things in your life outside of work. For instance, I have a rule that if a friend or family member needs me, that will trump even the most important project for a client. Likewise, I have a rule that I will never not go to the gym because I have a busy day. That might sound a little reckless (I’m sure my clients won’t be thrilled to read this), but ultimately if I want to stay in shape, I believe that’s the way it has to be. Remember: I work to support the lifestyle I want, so it only follows that said lifestyle should take priority! As soon as this changes, something has gone wrong with my management.

As I mentioned before though, I also have a rule that I will always earn at least $150 per day. Rules like this simply help to avoid stressful decision making and provide a useful compass when navigating a sea of work and opportunities. If I fail to earn that money, then I will need to find a way to make it back.

I recommend writing your rules down somewhere. The same goes for daily to-do lists, which can help to provide a little structure for the day, week, or month ahead (organizing these into “must-dos” and “should-dos” is also useful).

The best analogy to draw here is getting into shape. If you want to build more muscle or burn more fat, then you should have an idea of where you want to be. What do you want to look like? How are you going to measure progress? What type of training will you use to get there?

But while the vision is what will motivate you and guide you, that should not be your focus. Focus on a long-term goal like “lose 20 pounds in one year” and you’ll find it’s all too easy to make excuses or put things off. If you don’t train today, you can always train tomorrow. You’ve got ages before you need to reach that target anyway . . .

And you may find you’ve been working hard the last week and you’re no closer to your goal. Pretty demotivating! And very tempting to give up.

Before you know it, a year has passed and you’ve actually gained weight! The goal was simply too distant and too intangible.

These goals are immediate, achievable, and simple. You can pass or fail them on a daily basis, and if they go wrong today, you can simply try again tomorrow. There are no excuses to be made and you know precisely what it is you need to do. But if you focus on them and get them right 90% of the time, the 20 lbs will take care of itself!

That’s precisely what we’re doing here: we’re focusing on an inspiring end goal (traveling lots, being rich, spending more time with family), but we’re also creating immediate rules that we need to follow in order to support that, or work toward it.

Fitting in with Others

Here’s an aspect of being an online freelancer that often gets overlooked: other people.

As we’ve seen, working online as a freelancer means being able to take on any kind of work. It means being completely free from commutes, office hours, or rules. By being able to pick and choose jobs, you can ultimately make the lifestyle you want.

But unfortunately, employers are not the only ones that traditionally impose structure and restrictions on us.

Just as guilty are our friends and family. In particular, if you are in a relationship or if you have a family, then you will find that you have to somewhat fit around them. Maybe you need to wake up when your wife/husband goes to work. Maybe you need to take the kids to and from school.

Maybe your partner is unreasonably demanding that you spend at least some time with them in the evenings!

Again, to use a fitness analogy, it is always much easier to lose weight if your partner is also on the same diet. Eating nothing but crackers and water for dinner when your partner wants to enjoy a romantic meal out is going to cause conflict.

Even if you’re single, you will still have this issue to a somewhat lesser extent. If you want to meet friends for dinner, you need to be available when they’re available. And if you want to go to the bank, you’re going to have to do it during the day.

In some ways, you’ll find your flexibility is an asset. That bank thing for instance is actually easier because you can go during hours when everyone else is at work—no lines for the teller! And the same goes for getting your hair cut, going to the gym, posting mail, and so on.

As for the rest of it, you’re going to have to decide how jealously you want to guard your self-imposed regimen vs. how keen you are to work around the schedules of friends and family. What’s most important is that you don’t resent or blame your family for preventing you from living the completely free lifestyle that you want to: be true to yourself and explain to them why it is that you are so keen to adapt this divergent lifestyle (that is what it is, to be frank).

Moreover, you might explain why your lifestyle is actually able to benefit them. For instance, my wife loves that I’m able to pick her up from work. And she loves that I am home to receive packages.

But accept that there will be some compromise if you want to be in a relationship and maintain friendships—as is always the case. Seeing as having some kind of structure is important for us, we can view this as a useful starting point. I’ve built my current workflow around the time my wife starts and finishes work. Previously, I had plenty of time to work with as I’d drop her at the train station at 7:30 a.m. and pick her up from there at 5:30 p.m. When we moved in together, this was very good for me, as it prevented me from sleeping in until 11 a.m. as I had previously been known to do and it allowed me to complete enough work to dedicate Mondays to side projects.

Now my wife is pregnant and I’m driving her directly to and from work so she doesn’t have to take the train. This leaves me with fewer hours to work, but it is a compromise I’m willing to make—family comes first. I just have to readdress my budget, my clients, and my rates in order to make it work. For the most part, I have accomplished this. I even work in a coffee shop in town near her office on some days now, so that I only have to make the journey there and back once!

Things might be different for you, but explain your position to people you know and love, and take them into account when designing your own lifestyle.

Danger: Running Errands and Meeting Up

One thing you will find when becoming a freelancer is that people struggle to understand your availability or lack thereof.

While I’m committed to using my freedom and flexibility to help around the house, I do sometimes find I take on too much as a result. It only makes sense that it should be me who waits in for the plumber, who takes the parcel to the post office, who picks up Mum’s birthday card in town during the day. But these errands start to add up, and they represent interruptions to your flow.

Likewise, this is also true of meeting friends for lunch. This becomes difficult because sometimes you will want to meet friends for lunch or take days off to spend with them. You’ll move things around, work a bit extra, or take the hit financially (after checking in with your budget) in order to make that work.

But if you do that once, then you set a precedent. And now it’s going to be hard to explain to friends that “no, you can’t just drop in.” Even if you tell them repeatedly that it’s not always possible, you’ll still have people telling you they have the day off and thought you might like to hang out.

If you’re being strict, then you might make the rule that you shouldn’t do once something that you can’t afford to do often—better not to create those expectations and patterns.

But in order to maintain your flexibility and freedom, you alternatively just need to learn how to say “no” when someone makes the suggestion. A tip to make that easier: tell them you have an important Skype meeting, or a deadline. Those are concepts that they can understand.

Don’t feel pressured into meeting friends or running errands when you don’t really have the time: it’s ultimately going to cause more stress than it’s worth and, once again, foster resentment. Just make sure that this is accounted for in your larger budget.

Is a Digital Nomad Lifestyle for You?

There’s a chance that right now, your eyes are glazing over with the possibilities. Maybe you’ve always wanted to see the world and just hadn’t realized that your coding skills or online coaching services were your ticket out of here!

But on the other hand, you might be experiencing the precise opposite reaction. Maybe the idea of sleeping on couches and in hostels is absolutely repugnant to you. Maybe you can’t think of anything worse!

Whether or not the digital nomad lifestyle is for you is going to depend very much on who you are. But like every other aspect of lifestyle design, it’s worth keeping in mind that there is more than one way to make this work for you.

For instance, if you’re earning a little more income or have some savings, then you can always travel with a slightly higher quality of accommodation. There’s nothing to stop you from booking a hotel for a few weeks at a time somewhere beautiful—and hotels actually lend themselves particularly well to working online. And of course if you were a travel writer or otherwise combined your work and travel, you may be able to write off some of your travel costs as expenses!

Even then though, some people are going to find it hard to be away from home for such extensive periods of time. They might get homesick or miss friends. Ultimately, only you can decide if the benefits outweigh the negatives.

If creature comforts aren’t your main concern, then you may instead be more worried about the logistical challenges and how this might affect your career. Working on the move of course creates new issues—and you’re likely to find yourself relying on World Time Buddy even more now! Not only that, but there are certain types of work that you simply can’t complete when you work on the move. For instance, YouTubers will be able to travel vlog just fine, but you’ll struggle if your videos involve high production values with lighting rigs and shotgun mics. Likewise, programming is of course easy enough as long as you have a powerful enough laptop. If you need to work with serious horsepower in order to develop AAA games though, then you’ll find things get more difficult.

And of course, it’s a risk doing any kind of work that 100% relies on an Internet connection!

Tips and Challenges for Digital Nomads

If you do like the sound of becoming a full-fledged digital nomad, then here are a few tips that will help you to make the lifestyle work for you.