This article is part of my 230 days writing challenge on my personal blog.
Yesterday I skipped my article from the 230 days challenge, for emergency reasons: I traveled. I spent almost the entire yesterday on the road, and I simply didn’t have time to write. I am visiting Palma de Mallorca for about a week and just getting here proved to be a consisted challenge. Funny thing: just 3 months ago, traveling would have been a reason to write more blog posts, but under these new circumstances, traveling has become a stressful, unpredictable activity.
Anyways, things have settled now and I am slowly re-entering into my routine, which means I can re-start my blogging challenge. As I’m adjusting to these new surroundings, I observed that some of my habits can be safely reused, no matter the location.
Working From Coffee Shops
After more than 10 years of being a digital nomad, some habits are already part of my “normal” life. For instance, in any new place I’m going, I’m always make sure I have at least two phones with generous data plans (you don’t know how public WiFi is over there). I may not pack a toothbrush, but I will almost automatically pack 2 phones, just to make sure I have enough Internet, no matter what.
On the same topic, I also always pack a USB battery (specifically for the phones in the paragraph above) and make sure I have enough USB cables to charge / re-charge everything.
Also, some of the first things I did this weekend was a bit of reconnaissance: what coffee shops are available on a 2 km radius from the place I’m living, what’s their schedule and general cost of a coffee. Again, I feel like I need at least 2-3 options.
Aggressive Budgeting And Cost Control
Another very useful habits I developed in the last 3-4 years was aggressive budgeting (and cost control). I keep a specific budget for each month, split the expenses on categories and always make sure I can save something, even if it’s as little as a few dozens each month.
But now, living in a different place (even if it’s for just a week) can easily make a big dent in your budget. All is new and, in the beginning, you simply don’t understand on what you “have” to spend, just to make yourself comfortable there. And having this aggressive budgeting habit drastically diminishes this dent. Because you somehow plan ahead on what you spend and, by enforcing some aggressive cost control too, you keep the expenses low.
Hacking Habits
The concept of “reusable” habits is something I inferred from coding, again. In the Object Oriented Programming paradigm there is this concept of modularity and reusability. If you write a class, you may reuse that class in other parts of the code. It’s more complex than that, but you got the idea.
Going forward with this analogy, I think habit forming can be “hacked”, in the sense that the entire process can be adjusted constantly. For instance, one of this adjustments is to try developing those skills and approaches that have a greater chance to be reused. Instead of trying to form a habit related to a very narrow context, you aim at those habits that can be easily used in any context.
Aggressive budgeting, for instance, is a habit that can be re-used anywhere where you use money. Forming the habit to go to the sauna, on the other hand, as healthy as it may be, it’s not something that you can reuse just as easily, simply because sauna, as a process, is not something so widespread in this world.
But more on that in a future article.
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I'm a geek, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Hive you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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Beeme.icu is hacked and could you help about this issue, sorry irrelevant topics reply!!
Certainly sounds it. We have travel plans at the end of the year and we're waiting and seeing how things play out as we'll cancel if we still have to do the two weeks isolation on either side of the travel as it will eat into holiday time when we go and being stuck in a hotel room with two teenagers and one not-teenager-yet when we come back is not appealing XD
Seeing as you're spending a week wherever you are now I'm guessing you're in the same country if nothing else and probably just had to get through regional checkpoints? I say "just" like it's easy, if it's anything like the ones here it's probably a headache XD
Inspirational article and for sure I need to try being a digital nomad and create my HIVE content in a coffee shop. I just need to find a cozy place, but I pretty like the idea of it.