Is digital nomading (working while traveling) actually the best way to travel more?

We (my youngest daughter and myself) went on a week-long resort holiday (I was working while we were away, so it’s not really a holiday) and staying all-inclusive for the first time (bar a special treat with my in-laws for a big anniversary, that they paid for) at the start of the Easter holidays. It was a pretty cheap deal – not the absolute cheapest I could find, but the cheapest ones were all in Tunisia and I was unsure about going there right now, so we went to the Canaries (Tenerife).

The biggest thing we got from the trip was full awareness that we aren’t really resort people and definitely not all-inclusive resort holidays. At least, not in the budget currently available to us – I have read about some wonderful sounding all-inclusives that cater really well for vegetarians and vegans and have food that is very sustainable and so on, and room service and apartments with cooking facilities for if you want to do it yourself. I would also want longer hours for the meals, so you could have breakfast at 6am if you wanted and dinner at 10pm if you wanted, for example. But that sort of thing costs a lot more.

We did a bit of exploring and the coast was beautiful, but the beach near us not really one for hanging out at (and the tide seemed to be constantly in whenever we wandered down that way) and neither of us felt like hanging out on sun loungers in front of a pool (if there were any available – you had to bag them early in the morning and mark them with your towel).

The coast was beautiful

It was an experience and we have also talked about using being away to tell you what you miss most about home, and then making sure you do more of that when you’re back. Home-cooked food is very high on my list, as well as decent WiFi (I basically had to sit on the floor by the door to our apartment to be able to get any work done – and most of what I was doing was constantly online; I discovered that Reception had brilliant WiFi, on the very last day when I had finally finished all my work.) That also meant I missed out on watching TV, though the work I was doing wasn’t the kind you can watch TV while doing, so I probably wouldn’t have watched much anyway. I missed family meals and sofa time with the cat and those little moments of time with Chris (though, as always, when I’m away, we tended to have longer conversations on the phone than at home, which is perhaps a sign that we need to go for more walks together or go out for a drink once a week or something).

The biggest thing for me is that I started questioning the idea of digital nomading. At least with the work I currently have going on. I do think it should work well for periods when I’m 100% or close to 100% on illustration or pattern design work, so, I’m not giving up on it entirely. But what I am recognising is that I really, really, really need a proper break where I do no work at all. Where I just completely wind down and fill my soul with inspiration – from books, from art galleries, from plays, from wandering around winding little streets. And where I don’t have to fit in X hours a day of work, or get X number of PowerPoints typeset, or check X number of videos, or edit X number of pages. Where I don’t think about work at all and my time is my own.

There’s a chance that, in my desire to travel more, I have gone in the wrong direction, looking to work and travel at the same time to enable me to go away more. Perhaps instead what I need to be doing is working out how to make extra money and to take on the type of work that allows for more breaks in between. (That does kind of lead me back toward the ‘perennial income’ search, because if that could be built up enough it would be the sort of thing you could easily take a couple of weeks off from and still get money coming in.)

During our almost week of being home, though, I have introspected a bit more about it and realised that there is still value in little breaks with some work. When I was in Nice in November, it worked quite well for me, as did St Ives a couple of Novembers before. I think, somewhere around 3–4 hours a day is a good balance, and allows for lots of wandering and picking the time of day to wander – so work from 6–10 am then take a train down the coast; take a wander down to the sea in the early morning, pick up a pastry and a latte then do a couple of hours work before wandering off to an art gallery and lunch for a few hours and then do a bit of work in the evening; do a big day of work and go for dinner and then a play or some live music in the evening and then take the whole of the next day to travel to another town and explore.

What doesn’t work is being away when you’ve got sooooo much work on you are having to fit in 9+ hours a day, or with the kind of work that relies a lot on WiFi. And… importantly, making sure that you have the ability to set aside time to spend time with family if you are travelling with them.

I think I will continue exploring the potential behind taking some work with me, but I will also do my utmost to take one or two full, no-work-at-all breaks a year, to completely and properly wind down. Because we do all need that and, while I’m at this self-introspection thing, it would be useful to do that on a regular day-to-day/weekly basis, too. I think when you work for yourself it can be far too easy to let work take over and become the main focus in your mind. Winding down at the end of the day, making sure to go for walks and take lunch breaks and taking at least one full day off per week, completely, should all be built in to our routines, rather than something we try to remember to squeeze in.

What about you?

How do you do it, if you feel travel calling to you? Do you not work and treat all travel as a proper holiday? Do you combine travel and work in some way? Do you purposely make extra money purely so you can travel? Or are you happy hanging out at home and just having the odd day trip out? Maybe you create home holidays where you do the relaxing and completely switch off from work? Or have you created your own art retreat, perhaps? Digging into exploring your creativity while on holiday in a beautiful Italian seaside town, perhaps? I would love to hear any ideas!