The Future of Badass Digital Nomads

Kristin:    00:00:00    Looking back at those old travel experiences can really help you remember what you liked about it, what you didn't like, where you want to go, and what's important to you. When you think about traveling and when you think about planning your destinations and the the types of people you want to meet, the activities you want to do, this can be really helpful if you're choosing a next digital nomad destination or also a a permanent next home in another country. 

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:    00:00:51    Hey there, Kristin Wilson from Traveling with Kristin here and welcome to episode 264 of Badass Digital Nomads. First of all, I'm a little bit sick. It's been almost two weeks now, so I'm gonna sound a little weird, but we're gonna do this. I just want to thank all of you who have left podcast ratings and reviews over the past month for our Tortuga Backpacks gift card giveaway. If you're just hearing about this now, we did a giveaway where we're raffling off a $350 Tortuga Backpacks gift card to one listener who left a review in the past month. We've received 15 official entries. So thank you all for that. And I'm sure if you are listening to this podcast, then you have a travel backpack of some kind. So if you haven't heard about Tortuga Backpacks yet, then I definitely recommend checking them out. They have a new Slim 40 liter carry-on travel backpack light that they just launched, and it's perfect for trips of a week or more.  

Kristin:    00:02:04    It's the maximum sized carry-on that you can bring on all domestic, international and budget airlines. It fits in the overhead bin, it has lay flat packing so that you can pack it just like a suitcase and stay organized. And they're also a really cool company. I interviewed one of their employees back in 2019, so I've been following them for a long time. They make great products for travelers and nomads and they have also really nice customer support. They offer free shipping and a worldwide warranty on all their products. So you can check out their new travel backpack lite using our link in the show notes, and I'll also link to their 40 liter Pro version so that you can compare them and see which one is best for your needs. The winner of the giveaway is drum roll, please. Darren White, who actually was the first person to leave a review back in May, so we did a random raffle drawing and Darren was the winner.  

Kristin:    00:03:10    So congratulations Darren. He left such a nice review as well. I won't read the whole thing because it's really long, but thank you Darren. He says, Badass Digital Nomads has been an indispensable guide for him through the intricacies of living a nomadic lifestyle. As I celebrate my own milestones as a digital nomad, he says, I owe a great deal of my savvy navigating through various cultures and time zones to this podcast, whether it's for finding the best tools for remote work, understanding local customs, or just finding the best spots to set up a laptop. The insights offered here are as valuable as they are varied, celebrating its fifth anniversary, Badass Digital stands as a pillar in the digital nomad community, consistently fostering a sense of adventure and connectivity, cheers to five years of remarkable storytelling and invaluable guidance. Here's to many more years of learning and wandering.  

Kristin:    00:04:08    I actually met Darren through our Facebook group, Badass Digital Nomads, back before the pandemic started, I believe. So he has been listening to the show probably since its inception. I think he joined back in 2018 when I was living in Japan. So, wow. Thanks Darren. I think you definitely deserve this. A Tortuga Backpack gift card, and thanks again to everybody who participated in the giveaway. And also don't be afraid to leave a review any day, anytime. We love it. Reading your reviews like literally makes me cry. I'm tearing up just thinking about it. We received a lot on our website as well, so I won't, you know, belabor this point any longer, but just thank you. And you know, we put so much effort into publishing this podcast every week, so it really helps motivate me when I receive your reviews and messages and, and five star ratings online, and it helps other people find out about the podcast.  

Kristin:    00:05:07    And now the title of this podcast sounds a bit daunting, the future of this podcast, but the podcast isn't going anywhere, so I don't wanna scare you, but there are some changes that I'm thinking about making, so I'll talk with those in a bit. But first, just a quick update on kind of what I've been doing and what I've been thinking about lately. We've had a lot of cool interviews, so I haven't done any personal check-ins yet, but very happy to announce that my first nephew was born. His name is Austin James, and he is adorable as, as all babies are. I flew out to Las Vegas to visit my sister and meet the baby and hang out and help them out, and my mom flew out. So we had some great family time there. I haven't shared any photos on social media except in a story for multiple reasons that are kind of related to the podcasts I published earlier this year about just going through some hard stuff, hard times.  

Kristin:    00:06:16    But the most important thing is that my sister is okay, she's healthy, the baby's healthy, and everyone's great. So our family's just really happy about that. And wow, being a parent is a lot of work. So shout out to all the parents out there. Being an aunt is a lot of work, <laugh>. But um, yeah, that's been an amazing experience. I did get sick, however, as soon as I flew back from Vegas, so it was definitely something that I picked up in Vegas. My mom was sick as well, so I've been on kind of a forced house arrest and bedrest for the past two weeks, which has been pretty difficult because I'm so active and I'm used to working out a lot and being outside a lot and working a lot as well. So, um, it's forced me to slow down and really just focus on the most important things in my business and do a lot of self-care.  

Kristin:    00:07:18    So if you are, uh, sick with a summer flu or covid, I hear that's going around right now. Luckily I tested negative for Covid, but I hope you can take care of yourselves and feel better because I've had extra downtime. I have been reading a lot lately and also a lot more this year than last year when I was traveling a lot. It's not that reading and traveling are mutually exclusive, they actually go really well together. I think sometimes it's just the combination of traveling, working remotely, creating content, all of the things in in life that um, sometimes we can feel like we don't have enough time to read. But as a writer and an avid reader my whole life, I definitely feel different when I'm not reading as much volume as at other times. And I don't count reading the news or social media or anything on a screen as reading, unless it's your Kindle or your tablet that you're reading a book on <laugh>.  

Kristin:    00:08:18    I'm talking about books here. So I have been reading a lot of books lately. I've been very interested in learning more about the history of humans, anthropology, getting more into psychology, also productivity, but more of anti productivity. I've been reading books like A World Without Email by Cal Newport, Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, and also a book called Do Nothing by Celeste Headley that I found extremely valuable that I found through Cal Newport's books. And on the other side of the spectrum, which is actually quite related to productivity, but also activity is that I've been reading a lot of about the history of humans. So I've, um, been reading Sapiens, a very popular book by Yuval Noah Harri that many of you have probably read before or heard of. I just finished a book, very lengthy, difficult book to get through, actually called The World in Six Songs by Daniel j Leviton, which is a lot about culture, anthropology, and also how music has shaped culture over the history of humanity.  

Kristin:    00:09:39    He's written a lot of books and they are, you know, quite scientific based. So if you're interested in that, definitely check out books by Daniel j Leviton. Not Easy reads, but you get a very interesting perspective on the different topics that he talks about. Also, read a kind of a self-help book recently called The Mountain is You by Brianna Weist, which, uh, was very good and I definitely recommend that one as well. And another book that's related to history, anthropology and also science is called How to Invent Everything by Ryan North. And it has over 4,500 high reviews on Amazon, four and five stars. It's called How to Invent Everything, A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler. It's also a pretty long book, but it's an easy read. I mean, it's, it's quite funny and I don't know, I think it's four or 500 pages, it's pretty long, but it, it, the concept of it is so interesting because it is a manual on How to Invent Everything in case you got stranded back in time.  

Kristin:    00:10:52    So if you were living in the future and we had access to time machines, which maybe we will someday, and you got stranded in the past with your broken time machine, it is a guide on How to Invent Everything to create your own civilization. And I think the reason I've been drawn to these types of books lately is because of the nature of what we talk about on the podcast and also what I talk about on YouTube, which is a lot related to travel culture and work as well as personal productivity and self-development. I think these pillars really encompass a lot about life and, and the, the intro of the podcast, I talk about how we also talk about philosophy a bit and you know, we don't get into religion or politics, but we hit kind of a lot of the other, uh, pillars of life because by definition of living a location, independent lifestyle, we are trying to live our best lives regardless of our geographic locations.  

Kristin:    00:11:59    So that means staying healthy wherever we are, connecting with people, wherever we are, having life enhancing experiences wherever we are, and also finding success in our work life, whatever that means to you. Whether you're an employee or a freelancer, small business owner or a retiree, and you've already put in a lot of years of work and now you're trying to understand what your life is like without working full-time because especially in the western world, so many of us derive our identities through what we do for a living. And as Celeste says in the book, Do Nothing. It's very common, especially in the US culture, Canadian culture, Australian culture, a lot of different cultures to lead with questions such as what do you do? Because we are also interested in what we do, what do other people do? And it's a way for us to assess who this person is that we're talking to, basically label them, categorize them, and kind of rank where we fit into society based on the people around us, the people that we're inter interacting with.  

Kristin:    00:13:15    And that's definitely a trait that is learned more than innate to our DNA as Celeste mentions, we don't have to work to live, but many of us live to work. So of course we need to work in this society because we need to survive, we need to pay bills, we need to support ourselves, but a lack of work will not hurt us physically. And so she makes a good argument for the amount of leisure and idleness to have in your life. And I think that's what a lot of us are looking for when we want to travel to other places, we want to experience what is the lifestyle in that place. But when you are working full-time, especially if you're working remotely, you're carrying your work around with you. So it's, it's all about figuring out, you know, how to address each part of our lives to be able to find balance and peace in all of these areas.  

Kristin:    00:14:22    One of the ways that I've been doing that lately is cutting back on device time and phone time. Now I have published a podcast in the past about how to break up with your phone. We have podcasts about productivity, but this is a recurring problem because so much of life has to do with our devices. Like even I just bought a new MacBook Pro and logging into websites again for the first time. I am receiving all of the codes to my phone by text message, by email, by authenticator app. So it's like even when you're trying to do deep work and you're trying to focus, it's like you, you need your phone, you need to look at it for different things. So one of the solutions I've found to this is by buying a device called the Brick. I think I ironically saw it in an Instagram ad, but this is a plastic brick.  

Kristin:    00:15:16    It seems to have a lot of notoriety online, so you might have already heard of it, but if you haven't heard of it, it's this gray plastic brick that physically turns off apps on your phone or block certain apps. So you can choose which, you can choose which apps you want to block or which apps you want to allow. And it is a physical action to scan your phone to the brick, to basically put your phone in work mode or sleep mode or going out for a walk outside mode or hanging out with family and friends mode or whatever that is. And this has really helped me a lot to just blanket turn everything off so I can use my phone as a tool if I need to use it, like use maps, use Uber, use the phone feature, use text messages, whatever it is that I need to do that day, keep that on and turn everything else off rather than going into individual apps and turning off notifications and things, which you should also do.  

Kristin:    00:16:17    But that has been really helpful for me. So I'll leave a link to that in the show notes. So that's helped me to focus more during the day without using my phone as a break from work, which is really just staying on screens. Another project that I've started just for my free time is creating a travel scrapbook of all the places I've been. Now, some of you might be fans of scrapbooking and be like, yes, scrapbooks, but some of you might be like, why are you telling me this? I don't care about your scrapbook, <laugh>. But, uh, I like the idea of scrapbooking because it's an analog activity. It, it's tangible. It's not just posting a photo on Instagram or, or looking through the photos on your camera roll, which we probably don't do very often if we're being honest, but it's actually printing out photos that mean something to you.  

Kristin:    00:17:10    Going back through the places that you've been and reflecting on each destination, who you met, what were the stories that happened there? What were the experiences that you have and, and how do you reflect on that months or years later? As many of you know, I've been to more than 60 countries, so this project is gonna take a while doing one or two pages per project. I started in the year 2000 with my first ever trip overseas to Italy, and I've just been going destination by destination since then. I found old photos from old photo albums at my parents' house. I've printed out photos from hard drives or from my camera roll and I've been turning on music or movies or something that reminds me of the time that I went to those places while I am creating the page for that place. And it's been very nostalgic and cathartic and also a bit emotional to look back at these memories and process them and think about what was the environment like when I was there, what was happening in my life, what things was I excited about, who were the people I met?  

Kristin:    00:18:32    And, and also writing a little paragraph about each place. And in doing this, especially putting pen to paper, you come up with so many stories, you remember so many random things that you would've completely forgotten in some cases they just came out of my subconsciousness. But in other cases I had written things on the back of photographs. So there was a photograph of a kangaroo, for example, and I thought it was just, oh, a picture of a kangaroo in Australia. But I turned the photo over and it said road trip to the Sunshine Coast. April of 2003. Jackie and I, who was my roommate at the time, we went for a surf trip and we met a random guy on the beach named Mick, very Australian name, and he told us where the wild kangaroos hang out. So we drove over to this grass clearing in our very crappy $200 station wagon <laugh> that we drove around in.  

Kristin:    00:19:34    And we saw these kangaroos and took photos. And I would never have remembered that if I hadn't have written it down, but because I wrote it down, I was like, oh yeah, I do remember going there and because like otherwise I'd be like, how did I find these kangaroos? Maybe I saw them on the side of the road, but yeah, we actually met some guy and, and went to go look at them. So it's things like that. But then it's also funny things like putting pictures of my first road trip to Mexico from California where we drove down to Baja Mexico and I remembered that we didn't pack enough, we weren't prepared at all. It was myself and two girlfriends, and we basically lived off cereal for the whole weekend, like cereal corona and tequila. It was horrible. <laugh>, we smelled like smoke from the campfire the whole time.  

Kristin:    00:20:24    We didn't have enough food, we didn't have enough sunscreen. And just seeing those photos reminded me of, you know, the actual details of how the trip was. And it's not all sugarcoated, you know, like when you travel, things are amazing, but they're also horrible at the same time, depending on the situations that, that you get yourselves in. Like on another trip when I was completely seasick and hungover on a very horrible old broken down cruise ship that I took from Fort Lauderdale to The Bahamas and back. So it has been a fun experience, but the, the reason I bring this up is, you know, maybe to inspire you to look back and process some of the experiences that you've had. Because if you are someone who travels often, and maybe you're a digital nomad who goes to a different place every day or every week or every month, chances are that when you're in those places, you're planning your next place before you're able to reflect on the place that you just went to.  

Kristin:    00:21:26    And sometimes you need a little bit more time in between anyway to really think about things and make sense of them. But for others of you, you might have traveled a lot in the past, but then you had kids and you stopped traveling and now you're preparing to travel again. So looking back at those old travel experiences can really help you remember what you liked about it, what you didn't like, where you want to go, and what's important to you. When you think about traveling and when you think about planning your destinations and the the types of people you want to meet, the activities you want to do, this can be really helpful if you're choosing a next digital nomad destination or also a a permanent next home in another country. The other reason I mentioned this is because I just listened to a podcast lately on All the Hacks Podcast, which you might have heard of before.  

Kristin:    00:22:20    It was an interview with a businessman, entrepreneur, and poker player named Bill Perkins, who I actually knew of from my days with my poker refugees company. And he wrote a book called Die with Zero: Being All You Can From Your Money and Life that also has about 5,000 really positive reviews on Amazon. The intention of this book is to help you make lifelong memorable experiences throughout life rather than waiting and saving money so that you can live out your golden years in some fabulous way, which you can also do, but it's about making the most of the time you have today and the time you have now to generate those experiences while then rather than continually putting it off. And what he said in this podcast, I'll link to that episode in the show notes, he talks about how there are certain windows of opportunity where you can have certain experiences that you can never have again.  

Kristin:    00:23:23    So for him, he gives the example of a situation where he had the opportunity to go wake boarding with his friends, I think it was in St. Bart's or something like that. And he really felt like just sitting on the beach and relaxing. But because he wrote this book and because he identifies with his own philosophy and he optimizes his life for fulfillment, he realized that because of his age and because of the conditions, the place he was, the people that he was with, this would probably be the last time in his life that he would ever go wakeboarding. So he went wakeboarding. I've been noticing this, looking at my old photos, making my scrapbook, just seeing myself jumping off of a boat in Fiji with a surfboard or riding a horse in Costa Rica with my mom, or taking that road trip down to Mexico with my girlfriends.  

Kristin:    00:24:17    Each of those experiences were appropriate for that time in my life and the places that I was and the people I was with. And I don't know if I'll ever go on a surf trip to Fiji again, I don't know if I'll ever see some of the people in these photos again, some people who have passed away already, whether they were young like my age or or whether they were my relatives who were older and passed away. And so it really is a reminder to seize the day, as cheesy as it sounds, because the window of opportunity for experiences sometimes only opens one time. And as Bill Perkins said, if you missed it, then you blew it and he really doesn't sugarcoat it. So digital nomads who are constantly in different places, you might be feeling like you're seizing the day and you don't need this advice.  

Kristin:    00:25:15    But I also think there comes a time where if you have had many adventures in life, it's really helpful to reflect and process what happened so that you learn from those experiences and you really absorb that experience, not just in the moment, but also when you're thinking about it. Because what Bill Perkins says is that part of the enjoyment of having experiences is reflecting on those experiences. So that's the place that I'm in mentally right now. I am going through 20 to 25 years of travel experiences and looking at them with the lens of the future, you know, reflecting on these and, and just appreciating them and feeling gratitude for them, and also remembering things that I otherwise would have forgotten. And maybe when I'm like 90 years old and I can't remember anything, my <laugh>, my niece and nephew can read my scrapbook to me or something and I'll get enjoyment from it.  

Kristin:    00:26:18    I don't know. But hopefully that helps you. I'll link to this interview on all the hacks with Bill Perkins. You can check out his book, Die with Zero, really interesting concept, but also very practical concept because one of the reasons that I felt drawn lately to books like Sapiens and The World in Six Songs is because I realized that I really didn't understand much about ancient human history like 2 million years ago, a hundred thousand years ago. And I think a lot of the feelings of stress and anxiety that come with modern day society, I have begun to understand them better now in an evolutionary context. So whenever you're feeling stressed at work or lonely or disconnected or just kind of melancholy or out of it, a lot of the reasons for that just simply come through our environment and our lifestyle. So if your location independent and you have the great opportunity to be able to choose your location, it's such a benefit in your life because you don't have to be locked in a cubicle in front of a screen all day.  

Kristin:    00:27:46    You might be in front of a screen many hours per day, but at least you can go outside and have a coffee on a cobblestone street in France, or go for a hike up a mountain in Bulgaria or join a drum circle on the beach in Thailand. You know, whatever you wanna do, wherever you wanna be. This really adds so much to our lives from an evolutionary perspective because what humans have evolved to do is a get physical activity outside, not be sitting in a chair in front of screens all day. B, connect with other human beings, something that we don't get much time to do in the rat race type of lifestyle. And sea eat healthy food. We evolved to eat, we were hunter gatherers, you know, we ate fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts, roots, and also hunted in groups and ate in groups and everything was very community oriented.  

Kristin:    00:28:57    And now a lot of us just, you know, put something in the microwave or order Uber Eats or Postmates or whatever it is, and it's just very unnatural. So just remembering more about the origins of our species and how we lived before the agricultural revolution and before the Industrial Revolution, it just makes me feel better when I don't feel good because it just reminds me of what I can do to feel better going outside, connecting with other people, eating nourishing foods, and just generally taking care of our mental and physical health. The other thing with connectivity is just thinking more about connecting with fewer people on a deeper level rather than having many acquaintances. Because in Sapiens, Harari talks about how we evolve to have interpersonal relationships with anywhere from 100 to 200 people, but these days we can communicate with thousands of people, especially online and very few people in real life.  

Kristin:    00:30:07    Now, this doesn't change any of my decisions about wanting to connect with you on social media or publishing this podcast or creating YouTube videos and chatting with you in the comments. It's just given me pause to balance that online interaction with in-person interaction. And that is something that fortunately we can do from anywhere in the world. I've been thinking that perhaps the optimal way to live based on all of this research is actually to live in a co-living community, a traveling co-living community like Wi-Fi Tribe or Hacker Paradise or Remote Year because it's the closest thing to how we used to live as Hunter-gatherers. But the difference is that the tribe changes often. So it's not the same as growing up with one tribe of people and roaming around with them. It's like you're with one group of people for two weeks or one month, or at a maximum one year if you do Remote Year for a year and then you move on to the next thing.  

Kristin:    00:31:16    So it's probably the closest way to replicate that feeling, but that's probably why I've naturally felt attracted to co-living either in a specific place like when I lived in Tokyo, Japan or traveling with a a co-living tribe or a group like Nomad Cruise, because you feel that tribal community feeling, but then going off and continuing to travel independently or to break off into smaller groups. That really works for me. I like having kind of that balance of interaction with people versus getting some introspective time. And then there's also the option to live in a sustainable community somewhere living off the grid in Ecuador or Costa Rica or somewhere like that. But that's a topic for another episode. So I'll link to all those books and resources in the show notes. And then to get to the topic of the future of this podcast. So for quite some time now, probably about a year or maybe more maybe two years, I've been mulling over the idea of potentially changing the name of Badass Digital Nomads to Traveling with Kristin or starting a separate podcast called Traveling with Kristin or Doing Nothing and just keeping things the same way that they are now.  

Kristin:    00:32:45    So I've linked to a Google form in the show notes, it's like a, a poll and a form to get your feedback on that. The reason why I've thought of changing the name of the podcast or starting a separate one is because this podcast originated as more of a business podcast about how to make money online and how to become a digital nomad. That was before the pandemic when many fewer people understood this concept of being location independent. Now it's quite mainstream, so I don't feel so much that we need to beat a dead horse as the saying goes, but I continue to bring on incredible guests who can share all of the different ways that they live an alternative and location independent lifestyle, or that they're doing something interesting in their lives with travel, what have you. But it has, the subjects matter has strayed more towards more of the content that I create for my YouTube channel, Traveling with Kristin, which is more about relocating to other countries living in different places, adapting to the culture in different places and less about making money online.  

Kristin:    00:34:06    So what I would like to know from you is if you want more content that is exclusively business oriented, how to make money online, how to grow your business, how to grow your freelancing business, how to find remote jobs, we've covered these topics in past episodes, but I'm just curious if you want more of that. So you might want that because you are graduating from high school or college and you're looking to start your career in a remote way. You might want that because you are making a career change or you're already in a career that you wanna learn how to make a side hustle income or make more money online, or you might be retiring and also want to have another side income, and you want an extra way to supplement your pension or your social security. So there's a lot of reasons why you would want to know that, or you could already be working, but you just wanna make more money.  

Kristin:    00:35:05    You wanna grow your business, you wanna grow your impact. So if that is very important to you, I will create more of that content here as I, it used to be more of a 50/50 balance between make money online travel. Now I think it's probably more of like a 70 or 80 to 30 or 20 balance of like more travel culture, living abroad, less nuts and bolts of how to fund that, which is, you know, also important. So if you want more of that, then let me know by clicking on the Google link at the top of the show notes of this episode. And also if you still like the other part you know of about travel and living abroad and, and moving different places and how to adapt once you get to those places. And we can just keep the same balance. But I know a lot of people don't necessarily identify with the title or the label of being a digital nomad.  

Kristin:    00:36:06    And so I don't want that part of the, the podcast title to detract from people that are like, well, I, I'm not a digital nomad so I can't listen to this, or I don't want to be a digital nomad, but I'm interested in the topics of these episodes, et cetera, et cetera. I've even had guests that said, well, I can't be a guest on the podcast because I'm not a digital nomad. And I'm like, well, it doesn't matter. It's, it's more of a, a mindset than a label. So that's one thing. And then the other is, do I then separate more of the cultural topics of this podcast into a separate podcast that is Traveling with Kristin that is more travel and living abroad tips, whereas Badass Digital Nomads is more making money online, remote career focused. I think this is a line that any podcaster in this space needs to tread because we're all talking about a range of different topics, whether that's Jason from Zero to Travel, Matt from the Maverick Show, chase from about abroad.  

Kristin:    00:37:17    There's a lot of other nomad podcasters, and we all have to find that balance of, of what we talk about. So the options are A, keep doing what I'm doing, keep everything the same, keep varying the content because you like, you like it all. B, change the name from Badass Digital Nomads to Traveling with Kristin just to streamline the branding of everything or see keep Badass Digital Nomads, but put more of the travel culture living abroad content on a separate podcast called Traveling With Kristin. And if I did that, that might change the publishing schedule of this one. Like I might go from weekly episodes to biweekly episodes and do biweekly on Badass Digital Nomads and biweekly on Traveling with Kristin. If I did that, these podcasts would also be separated into my two YouTube channels Traveling with Kristin and youtube.com/digitalnomad, which is currently dormant. But I want to change that this year. So thank you again to everyone who left a review or rating in the past month. Keep them coming. Love you guys. Congratulations to Darren on winning the gift card and check out those books. If you're also interested in culture, psychology, productivity, anthropology, and science, consider making a scrapbook someday and would love to hear from you. Fill out the Google form linked in the show notes and let me know your thoughts on Badass Digital Nomads slash Traveling with Kristin podcast and see you again next week.