‘Everything else is excess baggage’: how digital nomads are reinventing work with little more than a laptop and charger – and why governments are responding
- A life spent discovering new places sounds tempting, and digital nomads say they’d rather have ‘freedom and independence’ than their own furniture and a routine
- Now countries are looking to reap the benefits of the remote-work trend to offset the loss of tourism during the pandemic by offering short-term work visas
No office worker is immune from the dream of writing emails from a hammock, joining calls from the beach, or just working from a cafe, whether the view is of the ocean, the city or snow-capped mountains.
That pretty much sums up working life for digital nomad Christina Leitner, who has been travelling the world for 11 years, mainly following the seasons.
She spends the European winter in Cape Town, at the southern tip of Africa. Then she flies back home to Austria to enjoy the ski season for a few weeks. The rest of the year is hers to plan as she likes.
Leitner is a self-employed translator and travel journalist. One day she may set up her laptop in a co-working space, another it might be at a restaurant or an Airbnb.
Her clients never really know where she is, Leitner says, but that doesn’t bother them. Where she heads depends on her next assignment or whatever takes her fancy.
