Two Sushis in Japan 🇯🇵

We all know it: a trip gets planned, and then this happens:

• Travel time takes up a significant chunk of the vacation (arrival, departure, jet lag)

• Because time is so tight, everything is stressful and tightly scheduled

• Little room for spontaneity

A new way of working offers a remedy: Digital Nomads are people who have found a way to do their work not in an office or home office, but untethered, on the road.

Said and done... or something like that. After various preparations, a bunch of vaccinations, and doubts about whether it would all work out, we set off into a completely different world.

It's now almost been a year since two Sushis, Astrid and Martin, tried out this lifestyle and started their months-long journey through Southeast Asia in Japan. Here, in hindsight, we're sharing our experiences.

When people ask us in hindsight "would you do it again?" our answer is a clear yes, although we would do quite a few things differently.

Lessons from the first few weeks are:

• schedule fixed work days and working hours

• set aside time for sightseeing and adventure

• and definitely plan time for rest - doing nothing

In the first few days we barely took the time to really arrive, nor did we have fixed work days, which meant we used every tiny opportunity to pull out our laptop and keep working - so now we know pretty much every Starbucks in Southeast Asia. 🤭

There was barely any room to process things or simply enjoy them. We went sightseeing during the day, worked in between, and once we arrived at our accommodation in the evening, we kept going straight on until late at night, only to get up early again the next morning to see as much as possible.

After three weeks of hustling, our nerves were shot - we had to change something.

In the beginning, our top priority was to be as free as possible - to keep all our options open, plan nothing, so we could act spontaneously. However, this freedom turned out to be illusory, as we realized after a short time.

Nearly four weeks later, once we arrived in South Korea, our first To Do was to reorganize ourselves and plan a bit more after all. Fixed work days were on the agenda; we still sometimes worked in the evenings too, but already with more calm and balance.

What we never managed to do, though, and only realized months later back in Vienna, is that you also need recovery days.

For our next "Digital Nomad trip" we plan to maybe travel to just one country, so we can experience the time as calmly, enjoyably, and in as balanced a way as possible.

One thing is clear: that time was one of the most wonderful experiences we've had the privilege to live through so far.