No matter what some blogs, Instagrammers, or VanLifers might claim: the digital nomad life is not all sunshine, rainbows, lollipops, and ponies.
There are many, many things to consider before setting your mind on becoming a nomad.
In this article, I will highlight some of the less attractive sides of being a digital nomad.
After you’ve read this article, don’t think the nomad life is all doom and gloom.
We have another article right here, where we have outlined all the amazing benefits of this type of life.
01. Working long hours
Many people look at the nomad life from the outside and think it’s easy and relaxed – or even some kind of lazy approach to life.
I can assure you, this is not the case.
Digital nomads tend to work more and harder than regular workers.
Multiple studies have already confirmed that overworking is a common thing in the nomad community. In fact, one third of digital nomads have admitted to having problems with shutting off at the end of the day.
When your work is always available to you, there is a pull to just keep going. The need to shut down, relax, and recharge your batteries can get totally silenced by that.
Especially new nomads, who do not have the luxury of established income streams, will feel an additional pull to perform well. Otherwise, they might not be able to maintain their new-found lifestyle.
It should not come as a surprise, that the first few months of digital nomadism can be the hardest. Not just emotionally – which is what many new nomads already instinctively expect – but also work-related.
02. No dedicated workspace
Unless you plan thoroughly ahead and only visit places with co-working spaces, you will probably have to occasionally work from more “make-shift“ places.
Like small cafés, for example, or even hostel beds.
This, of course, is a less than ideal situation.
Working in a noisy and busy place like a café or even worse, in a hostel’s dorm room, will prove difficult, if you are the kind of person to get easily distracted.
And as your concentration fades, so does your productivity.
03. Sightseeing FOMO
Digital nomads work a lot. And they work in a lot of different places around the world.
This condition makes it only natural to feel like you are missing out on fantastic travel and sightseeing opportunities.
Imagine arriving at a new place, fully charged to do some exploring – but then you realize, you urgently have to finish some work-related task.
Or your new hostel friends might invite you to join them for a trip to the beach, but you have to decline, because you need to meet a deadline on the project you are currently working on.
This type of FOMO will make it really hard to stay motivated at times.
04. Leaving your family behind
As a digital nomad, you will spend long periods of time away from your family and loved ones.
This alone, will already be emotionally straining. But it gets worse.
Life does not stand still while you are out and about, exploring and working in different parts of the world.
The lives of your family members go on as well. They will grow older, reach important milestones in their lives, and celebrate holidays together. Often without you.
Being a digital nomad means missing out on significant parts of the lives of your loved ones.
Don’t think you can just always go home for every event that might happen. Some things can not be planned for. That’s just how life is.
05. Limited backpack space
It’s no fun, having to haul a huge suitcase around with you, everywhere you go.
That is why nomads want to travel as light as possible.
Traveling with just a carry-on makes you much more flexible. And the flights will come at a more favorable rate, too.
However, there is not much room in a carry-on backpack.
Since backpack space is so valuable, you will have to focus on just the most important necessities.
Therefore, you really should only carry things that serve a relevant purpose.
Storing various trinkets from your adventures doesn’t really suit the nomadic life.
And if you want to bring gifts for your loved ones, from all the exotic places you’ve been, you should probably just send them via mail.
06. Burnout and travel fatigue
Another point based on the premise that digital nomads are prone to working too much.
But work is not the only factor, that will increase your chances of getting burnout.
Traveling too fast, wanting to see too many places in too little time, will actually do the same to you.
Fast travel usually comes with ever-changing work environments, no proper routines, and a whole lot of uncertainty.
Constantly having to adapt to new living conditions is incredibly stressful.
At some point, most nomads will be glad to not have to travel for a while.
07. Bureaucracy
Digital nomads often have to deal with mountains of bureaucracy.
If you have to apply for a visa for your next destination, you will have to find out about the available visa types and their requirements. You will have to understand the application process and then gather all the necessary documents.
If your visa is running out, but you wish to stay longer, you will have to find out if an extension is possible or how to apply for a residence permit.
Which, in turn, will require you to gather even more documents and deal with the issuing authorities.
If you stay long-term in a place, you might want to open a local bank account – which obviously would entail a certain amount of paperwork to deal with.
And if you have, at any point, become tax liable in a country, you will have to navigate the intricacies of foreign tax law. Minding the tax periods, understanding what’s deductible and maybe how to apply for grace periods.
If you hate bureaucracy, you will need to set up your nomadic life in a way that allows you to evade as much of this as possible.
08. It’s hard to stay focused
Traveling is an integral part of being a digital nomad.
However, all the new locations, activities and people, that unfold in front of you, can seriously stifle your productivity.
Even with adventure knocking on your door, nomads need to be able to focus.
If you are constantly distracted by the surrounding glamour, you won’t get your work done.
An extreme form of this is, what people like to call, “falling into the vacation trap“.
It is usually new nomads, who will get caught up in this trap.
They embark on their journey, and as soon as they see the sunny beaches and the great nightlife of a foreign destination, they forget all about work and act as if they were on a vacation.
Broke and disillusioned, after a few months they will have to return home and be forced to go back to the corporate life, they had wished to escape.
09. No private space
Unless you can afford to rent an apartment, there is a good chance you will have only minimal private space during your travels.
Dorm rooms in hostels are probably the least private way you could live.
The only thing that might be less private would be, if you were to spend your nights outside in a public area.
Living in small rooms with six to twelve (and sometimes even more) strangers leaves no room for privacy.
And even hotel rooms can leave you missing your own four walls.
While you have a lot more space to yourself and good privacy (aside from occasional visits of the cleaning lady), you will encounter many hotels or even entire countries, where it’s frowned upon to bring other people to your room.
This will make it hard to invite new-found friends over for a relaxing evening together.
10. Every new location will be a start from scratch
When arriving at a new location, the streets will be unfamiliar.
You won’t know the way to your accommodation, or where to get all the things you need to live.
You don’t know how the public transportation works, either. Or which bus line will take you to the places, you want to see.
If you want to have a social life, you will have to make new connections and new friends, because you left your old ones at the last location.
Also, you won’t have any routines set up yet. And old routines might not work any longer.
What are you going to have for breakfast? Where can you do cost-efficient shopping? What is a good price for an item, and what is overpriced?
You will have to figure these things out for every new location you visit.
And after a while this can become truly cumbersome.
11. Shallow friendships
We digital nomads make friends wherever they go.
Unfortunately, there are friends and then there are friends.
Due to the limited time nomads spend in each place, the friendships we make are rarely progressing beyond a superficial level.
Sure, your new travel buddies might be nice and helpful, but the deeper connection, like the one you might have had with your old friends from school, is missing.
Friendships develop over time. And with, what is essentially an expiry date on each new friendship you make, nomads tend to live more in a limbo of copious amounts of nice, but superficial acquaintanceships.
12. Long-term planning becomes more difficult
It is hard for nomads to make plans for a distant future.
Simply due to the fact, that the nomadic life is an ever-changing one.
You never really know where you are going to be in a year from now.
Government regulations are changing on a regular basis, and all around the globe. A country that is currently mostly closed to nomads, could become the new mecca for digital nomads in just a few months of time. The opposite could happen, too.
Especially in times of global events, such as pandemics, that seriously narrow down the opportunities for touristic travel.
But also smaller, personal events, such as a declined visa application, will have a dramatic effect on the planning of your travels.
13. Communication with clients and co-workers
You might need to keep your clients updated about recent developments. Or you want to strategize the next step on a project with your team-members.
Often, it’s just so much easier to meet in-person to discuss recent issues.
As a nomad, however, you will almost always have to communicate via email, messengers or occasionally through Zoom or Skype calls.
These means are convenient, but also flawed and not a full replacement for a real life conversation.
Especially with text messages, it’s common to miss the all important subtext.
So, you will have to make extra sure the person you are interacting with actually understands what you want from them. Emails and text messages could also get delayed, lost, or overlooked.
And even phone calls are a less than ideal replacement for a good old face-to-face.
14. No more paid vacations
This holds true for self-employed and freelancing digital nomads in particular.
If you don’t work, you don’t make any money.
Paid vacations are reserved for the employed.
It’s a luxury many people don’t even think about, until it’s gone.
Taking a few days or weeks off, means you will have to live off of your hard-earned savings for that time. And if you are going through a rough patch, you might not even be able to take a vacation at all, until your savings have recovered.
15. No fixed income
This is another point that mainly affects the freelancing and self-employed nomads.
Their income fluctuates.
One month, they could be swamped with work and clients, and could work non-stop until their fingers bleed. And the next month they could suddenly face a serious drought, have no clients at all, and be forced to tap into their savings.
Being a freelancer is fickle.
And this kind of instability is incredibly stressful for most people.
On one hand, it puts the stress of overworking on them. But on the other hand, there is also the stress of not seeing a pay check for a while.
16. Varying expenses
If there is one thing digital nomads need, it’s budgeting skills.
Not only that your income might vary from month to month, but your expenses might do so, too.
Depending on the temporary home base you’ve chosen, your expenses will be differing.
In places like Southeast Asia or Latin America, you will be able to spend months for the same amount of money, you would have to spend when staying for only weeks or even just days in a European location.
Nomads need to keep this in mind when planning their travels.
If you do not have a suitable income yet, the access to some locations might be restricted to you, for the simple reason of a lack of funds.
17. Difficulties socking away money
From looking at the last three points I have made, it should become obvious, that saving money for rainy days can be challenging.
Living life as a constant traveler means, you will have to face all kinds of financial turmoil.
Varying income and varying expenses, plus no income when you’re not working, make for an incredibly unstable financial situation. Without a decent amount of planning, you will set yourself up for failure.
Financial planning is probably the most important kind of planning any digital nomad can and should do.
Without a proper strategy, you will soon lose track of your finances and end up spending more than you actually can afford to.
18. The feeling of “home“ becomes a thing of the past
On one hand, living on the road does rarely permit you to develop a deeper connection to a place. You probably won’t find a place that you could honestly call “home“.
On the other hand, living away from your family and your old home, will make you lose the connection to these places and people.
As already mentioned, life goes on. People change, and so do places.
From time to time you might visit your old hometown, and you might have a beer at the local bar, you and your friends used to hang out at. You might even revisit your favorite nightclubs or restaurants.
But the connection you once had to these places will have faded away.
The places remain familiar, but the emotional connection is gone.
19. Difficulties with romantic relationships
Dating is one of the most commonly cited challenges digital nomads have to face.
Living a free and independent life is a poor breeding ground for creating stable and lasting bonds to another person.
Also, with the majority of people around the world living tied to one place, your dating pool shrinks down significantly, to virtually nothing.
If you can’t find your soulmate among your fellow digital nomads, it is unlikely you will find a fruitful relationship, that is also sustainable over the long-term.
Unless, of course, you are willing to give up on your nomadic ways and settle down together with your new sweetheart.
20. The common challenges of travel
Traveling means having to deal with a number of small challenges every day.
This can take the form of a language barrier separating you from the local population. And therefore making it difficult to ask for directions, or ordering at a local restaurant. Which is especially annoying if you have specific dietary needs.
This could also mean, having to deal with missed flight connections, wrong busses, or in recent times, the validity of vaccination certificates and late PCR-test results.
And if you get unlucky, you might end up losing your passport or having your smartphone stolen.
Things like this can and probably will happen to every traveler once in a while.
As a digital nomad, you have to be ready to try to overcome such challenges.
