My Digital Nomad Daily Routine

Introduction: Welcome to Badass Digital Nomads, where we're pushing the boundaries of remote work and travel, all while staying grounded with a little bit of old school philosophy, self-development, and business advice from our guests.

Kristin:    00:00:18    Hi everyone. Kristin here and welcome back to another episode of Badass Digital Nomads. I've been working from home since 2008, and in today's episode I'm going to tell you my exact work from home routine and digital nomad tips for what you can include in your routine while at home during the shutdown. But first, I'd like to give a shout out to a private donor this week who sent me a hundred dollars on Patreon. You know who you are. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. And thank you to everybody who has started joining my Patreon page. You can support my podcast and YouTube channel by becoming a Patreon at patreon.com/travelingwithKristin. And for $5 a month, you can get access to lots of behind the scenes footage, exclusive interviews, videos, and you can watch my videos a day before everybody else on YouTube.  

Kristin:    00:01:24    So as I mentioned, I've been working from home for myself for more than 10 years, and many of those years have been spent traveling or somewhere on the road, but for the past two to three months, I've been in one place in Miami. Let's see, today is April 27th. I've been in Miami, not traveling since February 15th, so I've had a lot of time to get into a new routine, and I'm gonna tell you about some of the things that have been the same as they were before when I was traveling, and some of the things that are different, and hopefully there's a lot here that you can take away from it and that you can integrate into your own work from home routine so that you can feel energetic and rested and productive. At the end of this episode, I'll give you a summary of tips of things that I think everyone should do that have had the biggest impact on my life and a list of things that I don't recommend.  

Kristin:    00:02:28    So here's what a current day in my life as a quarantine digital nomad looks like. And if you wanna see the video version of this podcast, you can check out my recent YouTube video Day in the Life as a quarantine digital nomad, which was actually the inspiration for this podcast because once I finished filming the video, I realized how much advice and how many tips I had for people who are working from home for the first time. So here goes, the first thing I do every morning is wake up naturally between seven or 8:00 AM, I really try not to use an alarm at all unless I need to catch a flight. And the first thing I do every day is go to the bathroom, brush my teeth, and also scrape my tongue because a lot of bacteria builds up in your mouth overnight. I know it's gross, but from what I've read, I'm not a doctor.  

Kristin:    00:03:27    You shouldn't eat or drink anything until after you've at least brushed your teeth and kind of gotten all of those bad bacteria out. So I brush my teeth and then I drink 10 to 12 ounces of water before I sit down to meditate. So I always like to hydrate first before having coffee. And I do drink coffee every day. And so I'll drink a glass of water, sit down and meditate for up to an hour, and then I'll drink a little bit more water after that and make coffee. As you guys know from my Vipasana meditation episode, and I've talked about it so much, I've been meditating for a few years now, and I still do it actually hardly ever miss a day. But I also don't get mad at myself if I do miss a day here and there because you know, life gets busy.  

Kristin:    00:04:23    Before I did the Vipasana course, I was using the Insight Timer app exclusively, but since the pandemic started, uh, the Vipasana Association or organization has been holding live meditation streams on Zoom. So I will usually join that meditation if I wake up early enough because it starts at 7:00 AM every day, and it goes for one hour after that. I usually work out in the morning, and some productivity gurus will say that you shouldn't work out in the morning because usually people's peak productivity hours are earlier in the day. But I found that I'm not quite ready to start working an hour after I wake up. So I'll usually make some coffee or pour an iced coffee, have a few sips, and then do my home workout, which right now is either a Pure Bar class, which we're doing online through the Facebook group or a Tracy Anderson method workout, which is a subscription based model where you can have access on demand to watch workouts at any time.  

Kristin:    00:05:31    So these are both female friendly workouts, but men can do them too. But right now there's a ton of different online workouts that you can do free or paid or discounted because of the coronavirus conditions. My workouts last about 45 minutes to an hour, and then I will hop in the shower, and I always take a cold shower because I started doing that two years ago when I joined one of Ryan Holiday's, Daily Stoic Challenges. And I was actually living in Amsterdam at the time, which is a horrible place to take cold showers because it's always cold and rainy outside. But for whatever reason, I started doing it. Then the habit stuck. I even took cold showers in the winter in Bulgaria because I'm crazy. And very rarely will I take a hot shower. I just feel more refreshed when I take a cold shower.  

Kristin:    00:06:29    So I do that, and in Miami, the water is never cold, it's lukewarm, and then it's time for breakfast. So by now it's usually around 10:00 AM and it's at this time that I will listen to a podcast or an audio book or listen to an episode of my podcast because I have to listen to them a lot during the production process and I'll listen while cooking. And that always helps me get motivated and it helps me get in a good mood and get in the mindset to start working for breakfast. Every day. I eat protein with veggies and sometimes a carb like potatoes or squash or sweet potatoes or something like that. I'll also finish my coffee, and I usually have a piece of fruit or a side of fruit. I've been eating really clean for the past few months and taking advantage of not traveling to be able to cook at home, because usually when I travel, I eat out a lot and it's not that healthy and it's also very expensive.  

Kristin:    00:07:32    So I've been saving a ton of money since I've been at home. I'm probably spending about a third or a fourth as much as I usually spend while traveling. I've also done two rounds of Whole 30 this year, which is only Whole Foods, no rice, no bread, no gluten, no grains, no beans, no dairy, no cheese, you know, nothing like that. Just fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, chicken, potatoes, and yeah, no added sugar. So I've gotten really used to eating like that, and it gives me a lot of energy during the day, and I don't get that slump that you feel after you eat a bunch of carbs, for example. So I've really been sticking with that, and I've only reintegrated a little bit of cheese sometimes, and sometimes quinoa or rice or a different grain, but in moderation, I'm pretty much not eating bread at all.  

Kristin:    00:08:31    Even gluten-free bread, it just doesn't satisfy me. And I, I get brain fog if I eat too many carbs. So after breakfast, I'm usually still listening to whatever podcast I was listening to when I started cooking. And then if I still feel like I need some more time, I will read or journal for like 15 minutes or 30 minutes, and then it's time to start working. So if I work out in the morning, I usually start working around 11:00 AM. Um, on the days that I don't work out, I will start working around 9:00 AM but if I work out in the morning, it's like 11 o'clock, and I always do my deep work first every day. So at this point, I still have not checked my cell phone, <laugh>, I haven't checked email, I haven't checked messages unless there's a meeting or a phone call or something specific that I have that day.  

Kristin:    00:09:31    I will not start on my inbox or any requests until the afternoon. So in the morning, while I'm in a good mood and my brain is fresh, I will start with deep work, gut, the caffeine high kicking in, feeling focused. And so for me, deep work would include writing, editing, research strategy, content creation, something like that. When I was doing a lot of relocations, it would be work for a client, like a property search or project management. And then another thing that I'll do is sometimes I'll choose one task to work on for the whole day. So since I recently created an online course, the Make Money Mentorship, I might spend a full day just writing scripts, lessons, documents, and creating videos for the course lessons and modules. And I find that to be very helpful as well. Instead of spending one hour on email and one hour on writing and one hour on phone calls and blah, blah, blah.  

Kristin:    00:10:41    And so if you're one of my consulting clients, you know that I do all of my consulting calls on Fridays, and I also record podcast interviews on Fridays after my first work block. It's usually around 2:00 PM and I'll eat something light so I don't get tired after, because afternoon is my lowest energy time of the day. So I'll usually eat a salad or some more protein with veggies like cucumbers and celery and stuff like that. And I'll sit outside just to clear my head and take a break from the screen. And then in the afternoon, it's time for my second work block. So usually during lunch I will start checking messages, social media, and just preparing myself to start answering email. So that is my lowest energy and lowest productivity time of the day from three to 5:00 PM or 6:00 PM. And if I were to reverse that, I think I would be much less productive in general.  

Kristin:    00:11:48    So if I were to do shallow work type activities like administration, accounting or email in the morning and social media, it would instantly put me into a reactive state. And then by the time it's time to start doing my deep work, I would be completely brain fried <laugh>. So I definitely recommend figuring out when your most productive hours are and planning your work accordingly. And then by 6:00 PM I'm usually completely burnt out and like brain dead on any sort of mental tasks, which is okay because I should stop working <laugh>, everyone should stop working by like five or 6:00 PM and usually at this time, I wanna get out of the house. So it's kind of funny because whenever I'm house sitting for my parents, I would go walk the dog in the morning in the afternoon and she would always come up to my desk and nudge me to get up and go for a walk if I was working too late.  

Kristin:    00:12:48    And so now I kind of got in that habit as well, where if I'm sitting at my desk too late in the afternoon, it's like, okay, time to get up and go for a walk. So since the quarantine has started, I've been walking for five to 10,000 steps a day in the evenings, either before or after dinner. Um, so if I'm really hungry, I'll eat dinner at six o'clock, otherwise I'll go for a walk and then I'll eat dinner after that. And just like breakfast, I kind of eat the same thing every night. It's usually protein, veggies, and some type of gluten-free carb. And I've been cooking every day during the quarantine. I don't think I've ever cooked this much in my life. I haven't been ordering takeout, I haven't been ordering delivery. I've just kind of been in the zone and been in this routine of cooking.  

Kristin:    00:13:38    And I've been doing a little bit of meal prep where sometimes I'll cook like a whole package of chicken and that will last me two or three days and I'll cook like a bunch of veggies or I'll make a curry or something like that. And then I'll have dinner for like two nights or three nights. So I've mostly been eating whole foods and cooking at home and feeling really good. And then since I live alone, I'll usually watch a show or something while I'm eating dinner. This has kind of been my time to catch up on a politics in the state of the world. So sometimes I'll check something on the news or I'll watch something funny like the Daily Show or something like that. And then also it's a good time to FaceTime a friend or family member. So either during my walk or at dinner, I'll FaceTime somebody as well just to get some human connection.  

Kristin:    00:14:33    And then at night, if there's no big deadlines coming up, I take that time to relax and work on my quarantine hobby, which has been DJing. And as you guys know, I've been trying to learn this for a long time, but it was really hard when I was traveling to learn because I didn't travel with that kind of equipment. And I was usually in places where there were no kind of DJ classes around. I took one in Amsterdam once, and then I took a couple in Bueno Aires. But for the most part, I'm in really rural areas with no electronic music scene. So at night I'll do some DJ stuff or sometimes I'll do more work, but I really try not to work at night because even with the blue light blocking glasses and even using night shift on my computer, it does keep me awake longer.  

Kristin:    00:15:29    So I'll also watch Netflix or YouTube or something like that at night. And my ideal time to go to bed is 11:00 PM but sometimes it's a little bit later. And definitely if I start working or editing a video or something like that at night, I can stay up until 2, 3, 4 in the morning. Actually this week when I was editing the day in the life video, I stayed up editing until 4:30 AM and that ruined my sleep <laugh> sleep schedule for the next three or four days. So I really don't recommend that unless that is the schedule that you wanna stick to. Like I actually saw a blog from Tom Kugler, one of my friends on Medium, and he said that he's been staying up till two or 3:00 AM and sleeping until 11:00 AM and he's been doing that every day, and that's really working for him. So I've done that at sometimes depending on where I was in the world, but I love the mornings too much to sleep through them.  

Kristin:    00:16:29    So I really try to wake up early. I've really never been a 4:00 AM 5:00 AM early riser, but that's what I aspire to be at some point. For now, 7:00 AM will have to work seven 8:00 AM So total during the day, I'm doing anywhere from six to nine hours of real work, which is a lot, especially compared to people who work at a office where they might only do two to four hours of real work per day and the rest of the time is spent in meetings or talking or interruptions or commuting or things like that. So as a remote worker, one of the biggest downsides and biggest risks is over work, working too much and never disconnecting. And so the quarantine does present some risks for remote workers and workaholics because you can just end up working all the time and that's not healthy. But it's especially difficult if you like what you do.  

Kristin:    00:17:31    And a lot of digital nomads do generally like the work that they're doing. So there's always something to do If you're a freelancer or an entrepreneur or a small business owner or a startup founder, the work is never over. So you have to set your boundaries as to when you want to start and stop working. So now let's get to my tips and recommendations. Here are my main tips for anybody who's working remotely or working from home. The first thing to do is to designate a workspace. I see a lot of people working from bed or working from the couch or working all slouched over. And if you can, if you're in a place where you can order a desk for like 50 bucks on Amazon, or even a standing topper, which you can get for, the one I bought was only $140 in my Amazon store, I'll link to it in the show notes.  

Kristin:    00:18:31    It's really worth it. And even if you only use it for a few months and then you store it or blend it to a friend or something like that and and only use it a few months a year, I think it's really good for your health. It's better than sitting all day, that's for sure. But either way, definitely make sure that you carve out a workspace, even if it's in your bedroom or in your living room or in your kitchen or something like that, where all you do is work in that spot. And don't use the same workspace for eating or creative stuff or anything else. Just use one space to work and one space for relaxation. For example, my other main tip is to find out when your peak hours of the day are. You can do this by tracking what you do all day, every day for two or three days, and just use it like a journal and write down how you're feeling, how is your concentration?  

Kristin:    00:19:32    You can even track it online. There's free time trackers, like toggle, you can use a paid one like harvest. There are a bunch of those. I'll link to a couple in the show notes also. But you can really see how you're spending your time. And if you see that your day is being taken up by email, social media and messages and phone calls, and you feel burnt out at the end of the day, but you feel like you didn't get that much done, then you'll know what to change and when. And so if your peak hours of the day are from midnight until 3:00 AM that's when you wanna do your most important work. Or if your peak hours are from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM do it then. But figure out what works for you and take advantage of being able to set your own schedule. Now, if you are working for a company from home and you have to be online at certain hours of the day, then try to negotiate with your boss which hours you're not going to be reachable so that you can focus and get some deep work done without always having to respond to the Slack group.  

Kristin:    00:20:41    For example. Another tip is to batch your work and theme your days. So depending on your job, you might not have a lot of flexibility in this area, but do what you can to single task and focus on one thing for as long as possible. Your brain will resist at first if you're used to multitasking or task switching a lot. But there are costs to switching your tasks. So let's say when you do laundry, for example, you wouldn't do laundry every day because there's a cost to doing it <laugh>. You have to, you know, wash it, dry it, fold it, et cetera. So you might only do laundry once a week. It's the same with work. If you, every time you start a new task, it takes your brain some time to get into a flow state. So if you're constantly switching tasks all day, you're wasting like 15 to 30, even 45 minutes every time you switch tasks.  

Kristin:    00:21:44    If you have the flexibility, you can also theme your days like how I do phone call Fridays, just do all my calls and interviews on one day because I found that I feel the same way. Whether I do two phone calls in a row or eight, I just get into the phone call mindset and that's where I am all day. And then the next day I'll do something else. My other tip is to eat clean and at specific times. So sometimes being right next to the kitchen, it can be tempting to snack all day, but then your blood sugar and your hunger hormones don't have time to balance back out. So try to wait at least three or four, even five hours between meals. And my final tip is to go outside, get some fresh air, get some exercise, get away from the screen at times, because you know, we're living life in the moment.  

Kristin:    00:22:42    And so if we're spending the entire day in front of the screen, that's not a very good quality of life. So make sure as long as you're allowed to go outside that you're doing that every day, it's just gonna help you clear your head, feel better. All of the great thinkers and philosophers of the world, were big fans of going out for a walk in nature. So take an idea from them and try that out. And so what shouldn't you do? In my opinion, when it comes to productivity and working from home, what you don't do every day is just as important as what you should do. So here's what I avoid and you know, take what works for you. But this has really helped me in the past few years. The main three things that I avoid is checking my phone when I wake up, answering email in the morning and watching the news devices news and social media are really the enemy of productivity.  

Kristin:    00:23:43    And so never use up your peak hours of the day by responding to messages, responding to email, or scrolling through social media. I don't know what it is about it, but it just does something to your brain where it sucks a lot of energy and productivity out of the rest of your day. So batch your social media and email and news as well. Do that during your lowest energy times of the day so that you don't feel guilty about it. And so it's not negatively impacting your work or your mental health for that matter. Another crucial aspect of my day as a digital nomad, and especially while quarantined, and this goes for everyone, is connecting with other people. So whether it's during the coronavirus or before, I would always make it a priority to talk with friends and family each day. So maybe I didn't speak to my family members or remote friends every day, but I was either in a place where I was around other digital nomads, or I had access to a coworking space, or I was co-living with other people or something like that.  

Kristin:    00:24:52    You wanna have some sort of human connection and interaction every day, whether it's in a Facebook group or on FaceTime or in real life. So always make sure to stay in touch with your friends, family members, and even your remote friends who you might not have met before in real life, but your connected through forums or Facebook groups. So some of my closing thoughts on this topic, as a digital nomad and as an expat, I am used to spending a lot of time alone whether I am working from home or traveling by myself. And so that experience, as you guys have heard in my podcast with Johnny Fd on travel like a boss, this has really helped me cope with the pandemic conditions as a digital nomad. But it's not just digital nomads, it's really now anybody who's isolated or anybody who's working from home or working remotely, the biggest downsides of working remotely or working from home are isolation, loneliness as one, and then overwork and inability to disconnect as the other.  

Kristin:    00:26:10    So really, if you just take care of those two things, it's a good start. So if you're working from home right now, make sure to set consistent work hours for yourself. Unplug if possible, reach out to people if you feel lonely. And remember, self-care. Take care of yourself. Caffeine in moderation. Eat healthy food. Get out there in nature. You know, digital nomads or not. A lot of people are isolated right now or or isolated with other people, and so you might be feeling a little bit stir crazy. But these are some tips that have helped me work from home alone, for the most part for many years and from anywhere in the world. So the biggest difference between when I was traveling and now is simply that I'm not moving around as much. And so when I'm traveling, I still keep aspects of my daily routine.  

Kristin:    00:27:11    I'm just not able to do it 100% every day. But no matter where I'm traveling in the world, I always try to exercise. I always try to go for a walk every day. I always try to batch my work, do my deep work in the morning, leave my shallow work for the afternoon. And it's gonna be different for you. It's gonna be different for everybody, but tinker around with what works for you. Hopefully these give you some great tips and points of how to get started. And if there's anything else that you wanna know about my day or what I do all day, then let me know. I will also be doing an episode about my different revenue streams and how I make money online, but I wanted to leave that for a separate episode because it's quite unrelated to the actual daily activities and routine of working from home. So let me know if you have any questions. Remember to leave a review for the podcast or share it with your friend and see you next week on Badass Digital Nomad.