For people in our situation, the biggest hurdle for becoming location independent is having a sufficient income that you can earn from anywhere. If your solution is finding a job you can do remotely, obtaining that position isn’t enough to guarantee success. You really need to work hard to demonstrate your value, to stay connected and to succeed.
Whether you’re working for yourself or working for somebody else, working remotely, when you don’t have somebody looking over your shoulder… you’ve got to be self-motivated. I’ve found that having a routine and sticking to it helps, especially because my coworkers have some confidence about when I’m going to be available.
Working remotely is a personal decision, one that you can’t allow to disrupt your professional obligations. For us, this means that I’ve got to try to align at least half of my workday with the regular working hours for my US counterparts. In Australia, for example, a 14 hour time difference will probably mean that I’ll be working from 4am-noon so that I’m online from noon til 8pm US Central Time and can schedule meetings during those times.
Another big concern is WiFi availability. I’ve already worked in rural areas in Indiana with poor connectivity. There is concern about how reliably the internet is going to work in countries with less developed infrastructure. Ideally, we’d love to travel to the smallest non-tourist communities with high speed internet, but my main hesitation is I’m still uncertain how to feel confident in what we’ll have before we arrive. Cancelling a BnB would be costly but staying at one without reliable internet would be disastrous.
For us, a backup solution that’s untested (to this point) is a GlocalMe MiFi device that we can use as a backup hotspot if the in-home network is insufficient. There’s also coworking spaces, but those can be quite an investment (>$350/month). Living on a budget just to make it from place to place, I’m not yet prepared to make that our first choice.
That’s where we are right now… I don’t have the answers yet, but Internet connectivity is our primary consideration. We’ll be searching the blogs and using internet searches. Wikipedia provides some information. We’re also confident that our MiFi device has coverage as a backup in most of the places we’re visiting.
Work hard, demonstrate value, stay connected, don’t become an aggravation. That’s where my head is right now, on our road to everywhere.
Tips:
Work comes first
Be prepared to be flexible to make things work
Identify as many alternatives and backup options as you’re able