Columnist: Kelly Sheldrick from Cycle Trekkers

In my first post in this series focused on 6 challenges of being a working digital nomad, and last week I shared tips about how to get and stay connected. But once your connected how do Digital Nomads stay motivated to work while travelling on the road?

We’re travelling. We’re doing what we love. But we’re human! Sometimes we procrastinate, or need a boost to get over a motivational slump. Today I’m sharing my top 3 tips about how I maintain my motivation while working on the road. If these don’t work for you, have a look at the ways Jay and some other nomads maintain their work/life balance momentum. 

What tips do you have? Please leave us a comment and share what works for you.

Kelly’s Top 3 Tips for Keeping Motivated

Working on the road definitely requires a lot of self-motivation and focus, and here’s my Top 3 Tips for how I achieve it and avoid getting dragged down into a procrastination spiral:

1. Try completing work at the start of the day, which will leave you the rest of the day free to explore the city and hang out with new friends.
2. Reward yourself for your efforts. When I’m finding it hard to keep motivated I treat myself to something after I’ve completed all the work for the day.
3. I also find it helpful to plan my day out in advance and write lists prioritizing my workload.

Shannon’s Top 3 Tips for Keeping Motivated

Shannon Moor Martin is a self-employed copyeditor, who blogs at Two who Travel shares her motivational tips:

1. I believe in going with the flow, which is one of the reasons I feel I’m so productive with a flexible schedule.
2. Take advantage of productivity bursts and leave room for downtimes, jet lag, revitalizing.
3. You have to know yourself. Does your energy/creativity wane in the afternoon? I know I won’t write as much then, so I might plan activities, relaxing time or more mundane tasks. If you’re not a morning person, as a nomad you might check out a “late oriented culture” as a place you’ll feel at home and be in sync with the schedule.

Jay Artale’s Top 3 Tips for Keeping Motivated

I use online tools to keep me on track. I’m usually juggling so many different projects and tasks, that if I didn’t have those online tools to help me prioritise, I’d only work on the tasks I wanted too, and wouldn’t get the other ones done.

1. Set realistic deadlines to help you prioritise what you need to achieve for the day. When you know what you really need to get done, it’s easier to stay on track and avoid procrastination. I use two different tools to manage my tasks – Trello and Asana.
2. I give myself days off. It’s so easy to end up working 7 days a week from morning to night, and then you stop being productive and your procrastination levels rise. So I make sure I give myself time away from my laptop, so that I can come back fresh and revitalised to carry on making progress through my task lists.
3. I like organising my working time to take regular short, scheduled breaks. This approach is based on the Pomodoro Technique of time management. You do your tasks for a set period of time, and then reward yourself with a short break (I usually use these breaks to hop on over to social media). The recommended approach is a 25 minute burst of activity, followed by a 5 minute break – rinse and repeat. I’m not that structured, but I do take breaks when I start to feel burnt out by a task or I’m switching to start working on something new. I use Toggl to track the time I’m spending to each task or project (this is especially useful to help you with estimating how much time it takes you to achieve specific activities.

Amy Scott’s Top 3 Tips for Staying Focused

Amy has been location independent since 2004, and created Nomadtopia in 2011 to share her experience and resources to help others achieve the nomadic lifestyle she enjoys. 

This is the constant balancing act for digital nomads and anyone who needs or wants to work while traveling. Just today, I heard the question once again: How do I stay focused on work when there’s so much to see and do?

• I focus on my desire to keep my clients and readers satisfied; this provides major motivation to continue to make work a priority no matter where I am.
• I remind myself that the travel funds will eventually dry up if I neglect work for too long.
• I enjoy every moment I’m able to spend exploring the world.

Find out more about the 5 strategies Amy used to get work done while enjoying where you are

Susan’s Top 3 Tips for Regaining her Focus

Susan Moore dreamed of living a nomadic life for many years and in 2015 she left Austin Texas to live a life of slow travel. She blogs about it on Solo Trips and Tips. For momentary lapses in motivation she relies on the following techniques:

• Change up my routine – go hiking and have a great meal, then work.
• Crank up the tunes and dance for 15 minutes.
• Take time to have a phone call with a good friend or family member, someone that makes you smile.

Here are some other ways that digital nomads stay motivated:

By Eating Frogs:

“Eating a frog” is an antidote for procrastination, in which nomads start each morning (or work session) with this least tasty treat. In other words, they do the least appetizing, most dreaded tasks on their to-do list before they do anything else. This is a great technique for being ultra productive. advice from the Nomad Guru

By Avoiding Empty Work:

If you find that your set schedule or your work routine consists of mundane, repetitive tasks like refreshing your email – stop. It’s time to plan. Leave the premises. Write up a to do list. Go to a coffee shop. Take an hour or so to really calibrate your plan and come back with important tasks to do–and these should not be checking your email. advice from Banker in the sun

By Changing your Wallpaper:

I often get asked what the screen app I use. It’s actually an extension for Google Chrome called Momentum. Everyday it gives you a different inspirational background, a to-do list, and you can add a single main focus of your day. To quickly help you navigate to your most important pages you can add link widgets. There is another Chrome extension called Motivation, if you ever wanted to see your life ticking away. You need to provide your date of birth and will then get your exact age counting up and up and… It eventually made me so nervous though so I am back with Momentum. But it is a sweet extension to stop procrastination and get stuff done! advice from Carolin at Breathing Travel

By Choosing a Role Model:

To stay motivated, I selected some role models that inspire me. For example, Sharon from digitalnomadwannabe.com helped me through several rough times. When I was down, feeling like I was wasting my time on running a business that would never be profitable, I thought about her story. If she can do it, why not me? … When you find someone who lives your dream, someone normal like you and me, keep this person in mind when you have a motivational breakdown. This will help you keep going! advice from Digital Nomad with Kids

By Planning:

Staying organised will keep on top of your work and help you stay motivated. Start by putting together a business plan – write down your goals, financial requirements and figure out how to translate these into work. You know how the saying goes… good planning is the key to success! advice from Marta from a Girl Who Travels

By Creating a Routine:

Get into routines even if it sounds weird from someone who broke out of the system. Routines and structure help you to stay focused and motivated on the road. Take enough breaks whenever you need them not to trap into the next rat race, the entrepreneurial trap.. advice from Marcus, founder of @DNXGlobal

What tips do you have? Please leave us a comment and share what works for you.

Kelly Sheldrick Bio

Kelly is a regular contributor to The Nomadic Times, using her experience as a digital nomad to help other bloggers overcome the challenges of working on the road.

Please view Kelly’s Author Bio Page for more information about her website Cycle Trekkers, and her two ebooks, Cycling Canada: Coast to Coast Trip Notes, and France to China by Bike.

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