Working From Anywhere - The Unsexy Reality and Transition

Hey DN's 👋🏽, I've decided to sell almost all of my possessions and work from anywhere.

I'd like to share the "unsexy" reality and my experience in this transition.

I see so many posts from people looking to make the move to location independence, digital nomadism and working from anywhere, I thought there might be value in sharing my current situation and experience. I didn't initially set out to go all in on becoming a digital nomad, but 2020 seems to be the year of exploring possibility.

I'm usually based in London, but since COVID hit, I've been based in Taiwan. It was only meant to be a month, but I'm now on month 7 and counting.

Instead of paying for a place in London while COVID rolls on, I've not only decided to move out of London, I've decided to sell my apartment in Edinburgh which I've rented out on Airbnb and manage and host myself remotely as well.

Moving out of London, remotely from Taiwan

Definitely didn't think when I rolled out my carry on back in January that I'd be sitting on Zoom calls guiding a stranger to go through my stuff, pack it up and help me move out of my place. That's been interesting!

The lessons learned there are:

Moving out when you're not physically there is easier. You're constrained by time and don't procrastinate with what things to keep, sell and throw.
Using platforms like Task Rabbit to get help is really simple and easy and costs less than you think. I paid ~£15 p/h
Creating a system for how you go about guiding the person is really helpful for efficiency. I began with the limited stuff I wanted to keep, then moved on to sell, donate and throw items.

I now have one large suitcase of possessions being stored in London, and the carry on I brought with me to Asia.😅

Selling UK property while you're out of the country

It was a struggle to find a suitable lawyer who could do conveyancing remotely. All those I contacted told me it couldn't be done and I had to come back to the UK. Both Identity checks and signing the Transfer of Deeds were the main issues supposedly.
Eventually I found a conveyancer who could do it remotely. Identity verification was done electronically, and the only part that'll need a wet signature and physical sending will be the transfer of deed.
For that, they can email it to me, I sign it physically and send it back by mail.
MUCH better than the prospect of having to go back to the UK just to do that.
The apartment is now on the market and we'll see how that goes.

Income Stream Setup

Along with property income, I run an education company and pre-covid would run workshop experiences for large corporates. Since being over here, I've pivoted the focus to online experiences, and lately digital products.
Now I'm looking to channel my focus on online experiences and digital products and evolve my income streams in other ways.
I've taken a few weeks of reflection to figure out what I'm naturally talented at, that I may be able to turn into income streams. Through that process, I found it pretty difficult and there's a lack of practical frameworks and playbooks out there to help. So, I've since created a step by step course to help people in a similar situation to figure out their natural talents and turn them into income streams. I'm calling it, Do You!

It might be helpful for some of you who want to explore your talents, revive what you do with your time and don't want to go through the "find your passion" fluff out there.

Not sure how this pivot and transition income wise will go, but I'm going all in on this experiment to try mo' shit!

Location Decisions

Since COVID isn't going away any time soon, and borders for locations that I'd like to go to (Vietnam, Thailand) aren't open, I've been lucky enough that Taiwan has been kind with their visa extensions which gives a bit more time to figure out where's next - which isn't the UK.
Taiwan has been a safe haven and a bubble of normality in this weird and wonderful time, however, I'd like to go somewhere that's a little more culturally diverse.

This isn't the first time travelling the world, I did an 18-month trip in 2016, so for me now, I'm focused on the places that offer diversity of culture, good food, great infrastructure for remote working and the addition of the future possibility of handling the pandemic well...and yep, that I hear you all say, is everything you're all yearning for too. I'm not in a rush, unless I get kicked out of the country because of visa extensions running out.

I hope this is valuable to some of you who are either considering making the move, or have already done so and want to hear someone else's experience doing the same.

Aspirationally I see loads of great posts about how wonderful DN life is and how much freedom it gives you, however, I wanted to provide an alternative, perhaps less "sexy" view of what life's like. It's not as sexy as it looks. It can be lonely, draining and mundane at times. You have to be super flexible, able to handle the unknown unknowns and face uncertainty head on, but the same can be said for life in general. And you know what? That's OK. 😁

It'll be interesting to see where this journey goes for all of us. I'm threading the whole process over on Twitter, so you're more than welcome to keep tabs over there.

In the meantime, if you've got this far, thanks for your time and attention.

Feel free to ask me anything about my transition or if you have any tips or thoughts to share, I'd love to hear them.

Stay well.🙏🏽