How to Become an Asynchronous Digital Nomad
No Office, No Limits: How to Work When and Where You Want
Note: this is part 3 of a series on How to break the shackles of monocountrism and become free
Here are the two articles in the series:
You can become one when you can make a living from your activity entirely online, whether it's a profession carried out completely remotely, or your own business.
But first :
Does being a digital nomad mean wandering around all the time?
Although this expression is often used in this sense, I don't agree with this definition.
A digital nomad is simply someone who has freed himself from the tyranny of location.
Completely - no need to be in a particular time zone - or partially - with the obligation to remain in a time zone + 3 hours or - 3 hours from the main country where customers are because you need to do Zoom Calls all day long, for example.
I call the reach of your digital nomadism the range of time zones to which you have access .
I have an online application in progress which goal is to show you how many jurisdictions you have access to, based on your time zone range and the country where most of your customers are located.
If you are interested in it, drop me a comment below, and be sure to subscribe to the blog :)
And digital nomads will use this freedom to find the place, within their geographical range, that suits them best.
It could simply be that piece of countryside that makes you dream, rather than that big polluting city that stresses you out, or it could be traveling all the time, or 6 months of the year.
These possibilities will depend in part on how well you understand what you can do.
Degrees of nomadism and sovereignty
People who start working completely remotely may go through different degrees of understanding of the freedom it gives them:
Level 0: I work from home rather than going to the office
Level 1: I move to an area that I like, not too far from where I live now, for example in the countryside, rather than living in a polluted city that stresses me out.
Level 2: I realize that, in fact, I can finally go and live in that little corner of the country that makes me dream, by the sea or in the mountains, or both.
Level 3: I'm stunned to realize that I can in fact move to the country of my dreams, which belongs to the continent I'm in.
Level 4: Actually, no, I can go and live in the country of my dreams if it's not too far away from my time zone. Wow, that's a lot of possibilities. I look for the country that makes me dream the most.
Level 5: I've integrated the fact that there's a market of jurisdictions vying to attract me, and that I can find the optimal combination for me between quality of life, mild climate, low taxes and happiness, in short, the best value for money.
I also realize that it's preferable for me to practice the same profession as a freelancer, rather than as an employee within my company, as this reduces the charges for my employer, and lowers the tax burden for me (with the right organization), enabling me to create my own pension more efficiently, which is important, as I've realized that my country of birth probably won't be able to provide it adequately anyway.Level 6: I understand how liberating this is, because the Leviathan-Internet gives me some of its powers, which counterbalance the powers of the Leviathan-State, and I am part of the first wave of people to benefit from major structural changes in society, similar to those brought about by printing and gunpowder in their time.
Many people stop at levels below 4, but with what you've read so far, you know that it's quite possible - and desirable, in many cases - to go all the way to level 6.
Extend your reach with asynchronous enterprise
As I've mentioned several times in this blog, my business is based on asynchronous operation.
And this can greatly increase your geographical reach, by eliminating the need to communicate in real time.
Because until recently, companies had only one possible way of operating: communications had to be live.
Employees had to be in the same place to communicate effectively, and decisions were made in meetings or real-time conversations.
The telephone has made it possible to extend collaboration distances, but while still retaining the obligation of live communication.
Technological progress - the very progress that is disrupting nation-states - has now made another form of communication possible: asynchronous communication.
In other words, communication that doesn't need to take place in real time.
So, as I indicated, in my company :
We have no offices. Everyone works remotely.
We have no office hours. Everyone works the hours they want.
We work asynchronously. We discourage meetings and live conversations, and use tools like Asana to communicate.
So it doesn't matter where the team members are located.
Including where I am !
Real-time conversations are not forbidden, but strongly discouraged
We don't hold meetings or make phone calls, and we don't interrupt people in their tasks - they decide when to check their communications1 .
We use mostly Asana to communicate and organize our tasks and projects.
Not only does this give me a gigantic geographical reach, it also enables the company to search for talent wherever it may be - whereas most companies are condemned to looking for talent within a radius of a few dozen kilometers of their offices, I have the whole world in the palm of my hand.
And you can have it too.
In fact, I'm far from the only one to have opted for this organization. Among the best-known companies operating completely remotely and largely asynchronously, there are :
GitLab, which we mentioned in an earlier article, a competitor to the well-known GitHub platform - both offer a platform that enables open source developers to manage their software, along with their development. Some key figures:
Sales of $424 million in 2023
2130 employees in January 2024
Fully remote and asynchronous from the start
The company has no office
Zapier, the company behind the famous software that connects everyone else online:
Sales of $250 million by 2023
800 employees in over 40 countries by 2024
Entirely remote since its inception
Automattic, the company behind the popular blogging tool Wordpress :
Sales of $220 million by 2023
1908 employees in 2024
Entirely remote and asynchronous, for so long that it is considered a pioneer of the movement: a book2 was even published on the subject in 2013.
No centralized office, employees work from anywhere in the world
Buffer is a company whose software makes it possible to publish content on several social media at the same time.
Sales of $18 million by 2023
72 employees in 17 countries
Fully remote since 2012
Etc. I could go on like this, but this short list, like the example of yours truly, shows you what can be done.
How to join a community and make friends
The idea of living abroad is often frightening, partly because it seems difficult to make friends and integrate.
As with everything, practice makes perfect. I'm very happy today to have a network of friends all over the world, but it wasn't always like this.
When I moved to London (where I stayed 3 years, before moving to Dubai), there were times when I felt lonely. This was because I hadn't yet acquired the skills to make friends quickly in new places.
Here are a few tips to help you make friends quickly:
Engage in regular activities that allow you to meet people easily
Like sport
Or artistic activities such as dancing. Special mention for the latter, by the way, which is really a great way to make a network of friends quickly.
Attend events on subjects that interest you: you can easily find using applications like Meetup, for example. You'll be able to meet people who share the same passions as you.
Digital nomads have a lot in common, and it's easy to become part of their communities when you are one (and even when you're not!).
Join Facebook discussion groups or forums, easily found by typing in the terms "digital nomads", and learn by reading the conversations and participating.
Choose places with a reputation for hosting large numbers of digital nomads. At the time of writing, this includes locations such as Bali, Cancún, Lisbon, Tallin, Malta, Cyprus, Dubai, Chiang Mai, etc.
Attend events organized by and for digital nomads
If you're single, use dating apps and all the other classic ways to meet your soulmate.
And, in general, get out of the house :). You're always more likely to meet someone outside than in your bedroom!
Digital Nomads as a proto-Network State
I'd also like to stress one point: the digital nomad community is a truly global community, friendly, organized and welcoming.
The events are legion, the discussion groups numerous, and the commonalities real. Perhaps it's even a proto-nation on a planetary scale, likely to integrate the first network states, which we'll talk about later, and to be among the first to test new models of governance to create a new kind of state.
Anyway, this community is awesome . I'm so happy to have friends all over the world thanks to it, and I strongly invite you to join us to take advantage of all the benefits it has to offer :).
Coming soon
In the next article, we’ll take a look at the no-man's-land created by mono-countries and how to take advantage of it.
Stay tuned ! In the meantime, feel free to follow Disruptive Horizons on Twitter and Linkedin, and join the tribe of Intelligent Rebels by subscribing to the newsletter :
And here are the first two articles of this series :
This is important, because a lot of research shows that being interrupted from your tasks - by a call, a message, etc . - is one of the worst sources of lost productivity and well- being. See :
The cost of interrupted work, Gloria Mark, 2005 //
Disruption and Recovery of Computing Tasks: Field Study, Analysis, and Directions, Eric Horvitz et Shamsi Iqbal, 2010. //
Multitasking, Learning, and Cognitive Costs, Buser, T., & Peter, N., 2020.
Scott Berkun, The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, 2013
It’s very difficult to reach level 2 when you have shared custody of children, but the idea still makes me dream :)