The reasons for the growth of nomadic working
Progressively, over the last ten years, my working style has shifted to give me mobile access to all the facilities I would find in a conventional office environment.
With more people having portfolio carriers and the corporate world moving towards flexible hours, hot desking and multiple office locations, the need to change the way we work has increased.
What needs to be considered to work efficiently as a digital nomad?
Security
Before we even start to look at the technology, possible locations and how they can affect the type of work that you can do we first need to mention confidentiality and security.
Which falls into two main areas of consideration:
- You need to look at the tasks you are going to undertake documents, calls, meetings and decide if they need to take place in an environment that will stop others from observing or learning information they should not.
- Digital and information security which covers the data passwords, backups, cloud, encryption and data regulations.
The Digital Nomads Tools
When looking at tools, it is important to separate them into distinct categories that make it easier to select, the majority of these will provide physical or services/apps you need to mirror the facilities you would have in an office.
Physical
- Primary Device – this is the main machine or device that will allow you to meet all of your needs, edit documents, manage email, administration, plan projects, diary, contacts and provide a source for relaxing reading books and watching tv and films.
- Phone – at the bare minimum this should manage calls, texts, email, diary, contacts, a camera to record and scan physical documents. It is true that is is hard to find a phone that is limited and may be able to in some form proved the same services and your primary device.
- Paper Storage – mobile paper storage is still a requirement as not everyone you deal with will be entirely digital, and you will still need in most cases manage recipes and tickets.
- Bag – you do need to be able to carry all these items around.
Services and Applications
- Email, contacts, calendar this will in most case be a provided by your organisation, or cloud provider such as google and will allow the synchronisation between your devices.
- File Storage – on and off device storage is critical if you need to be able to access information from any location or device. There are different ways to support this based on device and security requirements by example service would be Dropbox.
- The Note Book – it is critical to have a quick tool to take notes and retrieve them from this could be a traditional note book or a digital service like Apple Notes or Evernote. (I will follow up on this in more detail in a later post).
- Standard Office Applications – The standard office tools that are provided by Google, Microsoft or another provider will in most cases be personal preference as compatibility and formats are now standardised.
- Task Managment – it is also critical to manage your tasks from multiple locations this may also require the adoptions of systems such as GTD.
What Next
The first of a series of my thoughts on being a digital nomad and is extremely high level I will look at the different elements and demands in more detail in later posts.