Live where you feel best and work happily
"Where are you from?"
"My passport is French, but I've been living in London for the past eight years".
Does it sound familiar? This could be quite an ordinary chat between two people in 2022, between two digital nomads. They know precisely when they were where because their time is more important than the place, but they have not been home for years. They are those who store their professional lives inside a laptop and a smartphone but change desks almost every day. They've been around for a while, but it's only after the Covid pandemic that they are becoming the new normal and are asking societies to integrate them, support them, and even think like them.
A bit of history
The first to detect them was the writer Arianna Dagnino in 1996 when she called them pioneers in her book 'The New Nomads'. She also defined them as "a new tribe, deterritorialized, heterogeneous and consciously master of new technologies. Modems, portable PCs, digital video cameras, and satellite mobile phones are more than servile electronic-mechanical prostheses capable of connecting the modern nomad with the whole world and the global village." But, the naming we are all using today came a year later with far-sighted academic work conducted by computer scientist Dr Tsugio Makimoto and professional writer David Manners. They coined the term 'digital nomads' based on the conviction that the human and anthropological need to move and the inevitable changes brought about by the development of new digital technologies would soon lead to the emergence of new communities of itinerant remote workers. Young professionals, therefore, who rejected the structures of traditional office work, the conventional 9 to 5, in favour of autonomy, flexibility and the possibility of travelling and working wherever they want. Since 1997, the phenomenon has grown out of the 'youth niche' and left the edges of society up to become central in today's economic-social ecosystem, helped by the revolution caused by Covid.
Again, the tragic pandemic that has struck the world since 2020 has been the ground for a social and economic revolution. Indeed, it has forced everyone to stop and re-evaluate the dominant belief of every productive economy that there is a coincidence between where you live and where you work. This change of perspective is life-changing, and we are embracing it. Covid caused this convention to be broken, showing that people can live where they want (or almost) and be just as productive as if they lived where the company has the office. Of course, remote working is mostly suitable for technology-based sectors that do not necessarily need a personal workspace, but modern remote working tools and technology make it possible for many people to communicate and collaborate from anywhere without needing in-person meetings. As long as there is a strong internet connection, it simply works.
To give you some numbers, Upwork (the world's largest job marketplace) has revealed that 36.2 million Americans will work remotely by 2025, an 87% increase over pre-pandemic levels. Also, the most striking fact is that today, 69% of the so-called Millennial generation is okay with sacrificing work benefits for more flexibility: they are quitting their jobs altogether rather than giving up the new flexibility of working remotely. It's called 'The Great Resignation', an unprecedented phenomenon that sees people quitting their job because it no longer meets their life needs. The traditional idea of work-life balance is being pushed in new directions: there is a new lifestyle that requires a balanced combination of freedom of time and travel with professional growth. It also seeks to support the economic, social and cultural development of the communities in which one lives and works.
It’s no longer a matter of moving where your job is, but rather searching for places where it is better to live and work. As Marc Andreessen described, this is a permanent change of civilization, the "permanently divorcing physical location from economic opportunity". A new society is shaping day after day, and we strongly believe in it because it focuses on life rather than work, well-being, and the pursuit of happiness. This new generation of professionals without a badge is more aware and attentive to their quality of life and their own environmental and economic impact than ever. Small seaside towns, ski locations, and countryside villages are what they are looking for. Most of them are no longer interested in big city life but want to regain a relationship with nature and a more chilled and even rural lifestyle. This leads to a new interest in what was considered marginal or uninhabited areas up until now. Those areas that have needed a fresh breath of life for a long time. Mediterranean countries, for example, turn out to be attractive destinations in the eyes of digital nomads. According to recent research by the Italian Association of Digital Nomads, 93% would be interested in living in small towns and villages in the marginal and inland areas of Italy, which are considered places where the quality of life is better than in large urban centres. Similarly, according to another English real estate agency research, 54% of people no longer want to move to London but rather live outside the city. They only need to have wifi.
This shift from big crowded cities to the suburbs is increasingly supported by countries worldwide with '100% anywhere' job offers and conditions to attract digital nomads; it's something we call a virtuous circle, it comes along the 'good practice' of revitalising and repopulating small towns in favour of a life focused on well-being rather than profit, and we want to be part of it. This is why we strongly believe that each professional can find his space to collaborate on international projects choosing to live where he feels best: in a tiny village in the French Alps? In Bali facing the rice fields? In the town where he was born to be close to his network and family? Why not. Now more than ever, life needs demand to be met more than work needs because the latter can happen anywhere and remotely, anyone can reach them.
(Photo by Anastasia Nelen / Unsplash)