One of our alumni recently visited our offices in Santiago, Chile. It was great to see her and catch up- I’m always so happy when I hear from former Blacksmith attendees.
She explained that she was roaming around the world, traveling from country to country, and working “wherever she had an Internet connection.”
My response, naturally, was “so you’re doing the Digital Nomad thing…”
She didn’t like that “label”, but let’s call a spade a spade.
The Digital Nomad lifestyle is the new Lifestyle Design.
Where as “LD” was largely about “mini-retirement,” like going to Argentina for three months to learn Tango dancing, Digital Nomadism is all about working when you want, where you want, from some of the most interesting and exciting places in the world.
Look, I get it. This sounds really enticing to a 20-something.
Freedom. Travel. Adventure.
And a treasure trove of opportunities for great selfie photos to show off how great your life is to everyone else.
It’s 2017. Tech-savvy young people have learned that there are plenty of ways to earn money, no matter where in the world they happen to be.
And it’s true.
Within the Digital Nomad subculture, people are frequently drawn to one of three categories of business models, including e-commerce FBA businesses; location independent services like web development or copywriting; and blogging (travel hacking, nomad lifestyle, etc.)
Each of these can earn you a comfortable living while you update your Instagram with exploits from Bali, Chiang Mai, and Medellin.
What’s not to love? Earn money while living in an exotic place? Sounds great.
And it can be.
But there’s a big cost associated with this lifestyle that few nomads take into consideration.
Most of the nomad content out there focuses on financial costs.
How much it costs to live abroad; how to hack airline points to cut your travel costs; top 20 cheapest places for nomads to stretch their monthly budgets.
Occasionally the content probes the emotional costs of the digital nomad lifestyle—how to make relationships work, social integration, and getting over the fear of taking the first plunge.
But there’s a bigger cost than all of these: Opportunity Cost.
The opportunity cost is what you’re missing out on. And with the nomad lifestyle, it’s a lot.
Time is by far our most precious resource. We only have a finite amount of it.
More importantly, if you’re young, I would argue that it’s even MORE valuable.
You only have one time in your life where you’re grown-up enough to make your own decisions… where you don’t have a family to feed or mortgage to pay or elderly parents to take care of.
That time is in your 20s. You basically have ten years. That’s it.
You can invest that time for long-term future growth by trading it for knowledge and incredibly valuable professional skills.
Or you can consume it, trading your precious valuable time for cool personal experiences.
But make no mistake, whether you realize it or not, you are making that trade.
As you get older, obligations start to pile up… and it becomes increasingly difficult to learn grow, and take action.
Yes, you’ll have an Instagram account full of enviable photos.
But you will have missed out on a major opportunity to develop unique and critical skills.
Why? Because as a Digital Nomad, you’re spending time around people just like you. You might even be hanging out in one of the top nomad hotspots where everyone else is doing precisely what you’re doing.
But you don’t improve by spending time around people just like you who are doing what you’re doing.
You improve by deliberately seeking out people who are BETTER than you, who are more successful and experienced than you… people who constantly challenge you and demand your absolute best, and then raise that level just a little bit more each time.
It’s hard to truly tap into that learning growth when you’re by yourself… or the people you’re spending time with are basically at your level.
The guy* you’re going to be able to learn the most from isn’t one-man band running his business from Starbucks.
He’s half a world away from your Digital Nomad enclave, building and training teams while you’re uploading photos of yourself ‘working’ from the beach with a beer in hand.
Don’t get me wrong- there are some very serious people running some very successful businesses, who, at least initially, identified as “nomad”.
But nobody gets to that level prioritizing leisure and lifestyle.
The larger point is that, if you truly want to learn, you have to prioritize professional growth and skill development over accumulating personal experiences… especially during those precious few years you have at the beginning without any obligations.
This means deliberately seeking out, spending time with, and learning from highly successful people who are way more advanced than you are, wherever they happen to be in the world.
That relationship could be as an employee, subcontractor, associate, student, or anything else that gets your foot in the door.
If you don’t, and you want to continue following the same crown around from place to place, go for it. It’s your life, do what makes you happy.
Just understand that you are making a conscious choice to sacrifice supercharged professional growth.
* Disclaimer: I’m a man, therefore I use male pronouns when I speak hypothetically.
I don’t go out of my way to appease cry-bullies and say things like “The woman you’re going to be able to learn from. . .” because I’m not a woman. It’s pretty simple.
If you’re offended, feel free to replace “he” and “guy” with gender-netural pronouns of your choice, once you crawl out from under your safe space, of course.