Welcome to “A Location-Flexible Life!” In the beginning of 2013 I left my 14-year position at MIT to become a “digital nomad.” It took me several years of thinking, dreaming, and planning before I felt I could make the leap, and now I have no regrets. I love this way of life!
If you’re new here, you may want to start with these posts:
As a digital nomad, I worked from many locations (like Oaxaca, Budapest, and Chiang Mai) from 2013 through 2018. I was a freelancer, with my own business.
In 2020-21, the COVID pandemic caused a grand experiment with remote work. Many employers had their eyes opened to the possibilities. And many employees loved it.
However, some companies are stuck in the past and not even considering it.
I see so many advantages to it though, both for workers and for employers. And also for freelancers. So I’ve been collecting information & news stories about remote work. (See more advantages in my 2013 post on this blog).
Here’s a list. I hope it will help you make the case with your employer for allowing remote work. Or find another job that does.
The Case for Letting People Work From Home Forever – Wired
“Do you want happier, productive, more engaged, and more fulfilled employees and coworkers? Well, you should campaign to let them work remotely. Here’s why.”
Do Chance Meetings at the Office Boost Innovation? There’s No Evidence of It. – New York Times
“For some, the office even stifles creativity. As the pandemic eases in the U.S., a few companies seek to reimagine what work might look like.”
An example of successful innovation by distributed teams: academia – Matt Clancy
“Why remote collaboration is becoming so common in academia, and what we can learn from it.”
Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future – The Atlantic
“It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.”
The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future of Work is Remote – GitLab
“52% of remote workers noted that they would consider leaving their co-located company for a remote role — particularly significant given the global job market volatility. If remote work was suddenly no longer an option, 1 in 3 respondents would quit their job.“
Employers win, too
“Increased productivity (42%) , increased efficiency (38%) , a reduction in bureaucracy and politics (24%) , and improved documentation and process (20%) were cited as top benefits to employers by enabling a remote environment.“
Work from home or a $30K raise? Employees said it wasn’t even close. – The Business Journals
Employees Are Quitting Instead of Giving Up Working From Home – Bloomberg Wealth
More than a third of the respondents in a survey said they save at least $5,000 per year by working remotely
Survey: Amid Higher Productivity, 43 Percent of US Workers Question Need to Return to Workplace – Conference Board
Return to Office Hits a Snag: Young Resisters – New York Times
‘A Mass Exodus’: Inflexible Remote-Work Policies Could Bring Major Staff Turnover – Chronicle of Higher Ed
Remote Work Is the New Signing Bonus – Wall Street Journal
“Workers are trading jobs, enticed by the guarantee of flexible schedules and continued work from home.”
Big tech companies are at war with employees over remote work – ArsTechnica
“CEOs want workers back at their desks. Employees and the virus have other plans.”
30 Companies Switching to Long-Term Remote Work – Flexjobs
Some examples:
How to Achieve Sustainable Remote Work – The New Yorker
“Companies must move away from surveillance and visible busyness, and toward defined outcomes and trust.”
Distributed Work’s Five Levels of Autonomy – Matt Mullenweg
Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work – McKinsey & Co
What we learned after one month of operating a hybrid office – Quartz
Advice | Build Your Remote-Work Policy on a Foundation of Trust – Chronicle of Higher Ed
The Ultimate Remote Work Policy (In 3 Words) – Corporate Rebels
What if Remote Work Didn’t Mean Working from Home? – The New Yorker
Our Work-from-Anywhere Future – Harvard Business Review
Your Company Needs a Digital Nomad Policy – Harvard Business Review
Digital Nomads & Portable Tech: A Brief History – by Lauren Razavi
Digital Nomad History – Nomadic Notes
Huge list. Many of these blogs and books inspired my nomadic life.
The Incredible Disappearing Return-to-Office Plans – Bloomberg
“The next hot perk should be a pay raise to account for the extra costs associated with working from home. But that would require employers to accept that they’ve lost the battle for the physical office.”
The Pandemic Reset the Balance Between Workers and Employers. How Bosses Respond Will Shape the Future of Work – Time
“Now, in order to attract and retain the workers they need, leaders are having to reassess their organizations’ practices. The starting point for many is to offer more flexibility to employees in terms of when and where work is done.“
Many job boards, like Glassdoor, offer a way to filter by “remote.”
To ask questions and read the latest news about remote work, see Remote Workers on LinkedIn.
The Remote Working Show
Conversations with leaders from top remote companies.
Building Remotely
Interviews with founders and thought leaders about best ways to build a remote company.
I hope you found this list useful. If you want to work remotely, I encourage you to give it a try! It makes for better work/life balance, and you can still collaborate, innovate, and socialize with your co-workers, even if you’re not with them in person.
(p.s. If you, like many of my readers, are a librarian — you might be interested my 2013 post, “Why librarians are well-suited for location-flexible work.“)
The image at the top of this post is a photo I took in 2015 at Punspace, a coworking space I enjoyed in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
In the summer of 2020 we decided to get new bikes. We’d been thinking about e-bikes for a while, and after some research decided that we’d go ahead and get them.
One thing to know about us is that we don’t own a car. On purpose. I’ve been free of car ownership since 2005 (most of that time I was living in Boston), and James since 2017 (he was living in Vermont). So these bikes were to be our primary transportation.
Tucson is very flat and has lots of bike trails and good weather. It’s also a very car-oriented city with most people driving everywhere. Some people we’ve met can’t fathom that we would choose to live without a car. But we love it. Saves lots of money and gives us more exercise. We do use a Lyft or Uber from time-to-time if we need to go somewhere not convenient to bike to. The public transportation here is OK, but not super-convenient. And if we go on vacation (or staycation), we rent a car for local road trips.
When it comes to exercise, you might think that having an e-bike is the lazy way out! But no. The battery gives you extra power, but most of the time you are still pedaling. And you can chose the level of “pedal-assist” (our bikes have 5 levels). There have been studies that show that people with e-bikes get plenty of exercise.
“As it turned out, electric bicycle riders ended up slightly edging out pedal bike cyclists in terms of total exercise each week. The study’s authors largely attribute this to the increased amount of time that e-bike riders spend on their bikes, compared to cyclists and the longer-distance trips taken by e-bike riders.”
– from Believe it or not, study shows e-bike riders get more exercise than cyclists.
We did plenty of research online in order to decide which bikes to buy. We also test-rode some e-bikes back when we were living in Vermont. After learning more about e-bikes and their batteries, we decided that having a removable battery was a top priority. That’s because the extreme heat of Tucson summers would not be good for prolonging the battery life. Since we planned to keep our bikes in our garage, we wanted to be able to remove the batteries and bring them into the air-conditioned house at night.
Another consideration was whether to get a bike with a throttle. I didn’t see that as very important, but James really wanted a throttle. It turns out that now I’m glad we have throttles! I eventually learned that the best use for one is for starting up after a red light. When you want to cross a large, busy street quickly, a throttle gets you that instant oomph that makes crossing quick! So our bikes have pedal-assist and a throttle.
We also noticed that prices were all over the map. The lowest prices for quality bikes seemed to be around $1,500 each. And they can go up to over $8,000. You can get some cheap e-bikes for between $400 and $1,000, but most reviewers don’t recommend them. We ended up spending $1,500 each for a model called the RadCity Step-Thru. (now priced at $1,600). These are from a Seattle company called Rad Power Bikes.
One of the best sites we found for reviews was Electric Bike Review. They also have a useful YouTube channel. Here’s a review of the bikes we bought.
RadPower Bikes ships e-bikes with instructions for putting them together. Since we are not handy with bike assembly (we are both handy with computers, but not with bikes), we asked our local bike shop if they could receive and assemble them. They said yes!
Since it was in the middle of the 2020 COVID year, there was a backlog because so many people were buying bikes everywhere. We ordered them in July and they came in mid-August. The bike shop charged a reasonable fee ($180) to assemble the two bikes. They also said they could do future tune-ups and repairs. Fair Wheel Bikes is within walking distance of our house, so that was convenient for us.
Here’s some info about the accessories we bought. We ordered the following from Rad Power Bikes:
We also ordered some new Nutcase helmets from REI. (We love the polka dots!)
Later we ordered these items from other vendors:
So there were a few things to learn when we first got these. First, how to remove the battery. They each came with a key for locking the battery to the bike, turning it on/off, and removing the battery. It took a few times to learn those three positions for the key. It was recommended to charge the battery after every use of the bike, so we always remove them and bring them into the house for charging every night. It gets very very hot during Tucson summers and leaving them out in the garage would shorten the life of the batteries.
Next up is the display. When you turn the bike on (via a switch on the left handlebar, the display lights up.
In the photo above you’ll see a number 1 in the lower left corner. That’s the level of pedal assist. It goes from 1 to 5. By pushing a button on the left handlebar you can increase it to give you more power while pedaling. My favorite level is 3. I find that around our very flat neighborhood with quiet residential streets, 3 gives a comfortable level of assistance (so I rarely use anything higher). If I was in an area with steep hills, I’m sure I’d use level 4 or 5 sometimes. There is something extra nice about feeling that extra power while you are pedaling. It makes you want to go farther and spend more time biking around.
It’s also nice to see what your speed is while biking. 20 mph is the maximum, and if you get up to that, you’ll feel some drag if you try to go faster. You really can’t go faster than that. Probably a good thing. The only time I get up to 20 mph is on a particular long straight street that slopes slightly downhill and goes on for several blocks without stop signs or traffic lights.
Another nice feature is the built-in headlights and rear light. The rear light comes on automatically when you turn on the bike (it’s a brake light), and you can activate the flashing mode by pushing a button on the light itself. We always use the flashing mode, even during the day.
For the headlight, you long press the power button together with another button on the left handlebar. It’s very bright and we always use it in the early evening and after dark. It’s nice that the lights are built-in, so you don’t have to remember to bring lights with you (like we did on our old bikes). We often bring our old bike lights anyway and attach them to the luggage rack facing out on each side. We like to be seen well from all directions. We also have reflective stickers and spoke reflectors. And we each wear a reflective sash at night.
In the photo below you can see James with the bike lights on just after we picked up takeout Mexican food.
Since we have two types of locks (each with a different key) and the battery pack also has a key, we now have 3 new keys on our keychain. At first it was easy to mix them up.
Bike theft is a huge problem everywhere. It’s bad in Tucson. I’ve heard many sad stories of bikes disappearing out of people’s yards or public bike racks. We are happy that our rental house has a garage so we can safely store our bikes.
Since we bought these bikes during COVID, we haven’t had a chance to lock them up anywhere for any length of time. We both work from home (before, during, and after the pandemic). We usually get our groceries delivered. We go out to pick up takeout food sometimes, with one of us going inside and the other staying with the bikes. So for most of our rides we aren’t stopping to lock them anywhere.
We did make sure to buy extra strong locks, though… two different kinds for each bike: ABUS Wheel Lock and ABUS Bordo Granit X-Plus. We use those to attach to sturdy bike racks if we are going to both be inside a location for a while.
At some point we should find a way to lock our seats to the frame. In the past (with our old bikes) we had our seats stolen when we left our bikes locked up overnight near a store. The reason we did that was because it was suddenly pouring down rain and we had groceries and didn’t feel like biking in the flooded streets, so we called an Uber. We walked back the next day to find our seats had been stolen (including the seat posts!). What a pain.
In the past our renter’s insurance covered our bikes as part of the policy — including theft or damage when away from home. But this doesn’t work for e-bikes. Most renter or home-owner policies don’t cover them, it seems. So we shopped for e-bike insurance and found a policy from Markel Insurance. We pay about $33 per month to cover theft and damage for the two e-bikes. It has a $200 deductible. It also includes liability coverage. So that gives us some piece of mind in case they are stolen.
Now that all the practical stuff is out of the way, I want to talk about how fun these are! I’ve been a bike commuter since 1987 (most of that in Boston), and wow, these are so much nicer than regular bikes I’ve had in the past. I don’t get so hot, tired, sweaty, and I still get plenty of pedaling in. James often says that these are the best form of transportation he’s ever experienced.
We’ve biked along a bike trail nearby, around a duck pond and city parks, across the University of Arizona campus, to our local independent movie theater for outdoor movies (keeping our bikes next to our chairs since it was outside), and just for fun around the neighborhood. We haven’t yet made it out to the famous Loop bike trail in Tucson, just because we live a bit far from any entrance to it and we don’t have a car to put them on and drive there. I hope we will do that sometime when the weather gets nicer (in November the extreme heat will be over and it’s perfect).
So to sum up, here are the advantages and disadvantages (for us) of having e-bikes.
Advantages
Disadvantages
About that last item. When we are getting ready to go out for exercise we say to ourselves, should we go for a walk or bike? Often it seems like a bit of work to get ready to bike if it’s just for some short exercise. We have to get out the batteries, install them, get the bikes out of the garage, make sure the tires have good pressure and if not, pump them up a bit, put on our helmets, make sure we have our water bottles filled up (we get thirsty in the desert), bring bags or backpacks if we’re planning to pick up food. And make sure we have our masks, just in case (during COVID). So sometimes we just go for a neighborhood walk instead of a bike ride.
Of course most of that would be true with non-electric bikes (except for the batteries). In the future, if we didn’t live in Tucson, I’d like to have e-bikes with batteries built-in to the frame… as long as we had a safe and not-extremely hot place to store them. It would be nice to just plug the bikes into outlets in the garage instead of taking those heavy batteries into the house each night.
In spite of all that, the verdict for us is that we are very happy to have e-bikes! We hope that after COVID is behind us (hopefully) and the world opens up more, we can do more biking to places around Tucson.
Are you thinking of getting an e-bike? Or do you have one? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.
(If you haven’t read part 1 yet, here it is: From nomading to nesting, part 1).
March 11 was the first day that we didn’t go out in public because of COVID-19. I happened to be working from home that day, and James always works from home. We were beginning to worry about getting COVID, so we decided to stay away from people as much as possible.
Just a few days before that, I told my boss and our department head of my plans to move to Budapest in late summer for a job at CEU. My contract was ending on July 31 (it has since been extended to Dec. 31), so I proposed that I could still work part-time for the University of Arizona Libraries — and do it remotely from Budapest. They liked that idea and said they would advocate for it. Later that became moot.
James and I soon realized that 2020 would not be a good year to move to Europe. The pandemic was raging there and would soon be raging in the U.S. We didn’t feel it would be safe to fly, let alone sell everything and plan a move. So we figured we would stay in Tucson for a year (or two, or longer) until things changed.
That meant that our tiny one-bedroom no longer seemed like a good place for both of us to be working from home. I used to go to my favorite coffee shops with my laptop while James worked in our living room. We had two desks in our living room, but I rarely used mine.
Now, with no coffee shops open, I was working from home full time. So I got in the habit of setting up a card table in our bedroom and sitting on the edge of our bed while working on that table with my laptop. That way I could close the door when James was interviewing astronomers for his podcast, or when I was making video recordings for online tutorials or for my online class. James has a lot more equipment and a bigger computer, so it wasn’t practical to move into the bedroom every day. I had only my laptop and an external microphone, so it was easy for me to set up and take things down every day.
At first I ended up with back pain from sitting on the edge of the bed all day, but eventually I got used to it. Still, it wasn’t ideal.
So we began to discuss moving. Maybe we could even buy a small house! We wondered if prices would dip because of the pandemic. At least we could rent a house with two or three bedrooms. So we started looking online.
Since we weren’t going anywhere during the pandemic we ended up taking a neighborhood walk or bike ride every day. As we started to find places for rent or for sale, we would arrange our route to go by one of them and see what the neighborhood was like. We were looking in our own neighborhood or nearby ones, since it’s easy to live without a car in these places.
We ended up loving these walks and rides! We went down all sorts of streets we had never been down before. We enjoyed the houses, the trees, the cactus, the birds, and all the desert plants. These neighborhoods are beautiful! We didn’t see very many other people out, so it was easy to stay far away from people.
After much research and looking at our finances, we decided it would be better to rent than buy. The prices weren’t going down much, and the down payment and other costs would have depleted our savings. We would rather have some money to buy some things for fixing up our new place. And it would be easier to move to Europe later if we didn’t have to worry about selling or renting out a house.
Eventually we found the perfect rental house for us. It’s in a neighborhood called Sam Hughes, full of interesting and beautiful historic houses. Only a couple of miles from where we lived before. The streets are quiet and flat and perfect for biking. The house is small, but much bigger than our little apartment. And it has a free-standing garage that James has turned into a studio for his work. It also has a large backyard with a nice patio under a roof that extends from the garage.
The apartment we lived in before was cute, and the location was great, but it had several downsides for living in during a pandemic. First of all it was behind locked gates, and delivery drivers needed to text us to come out to the parking lot whenever something arrived. There were no buzzers or doorbells. We were getting packages from online stores, grocery deliveries from Instacart, and takeout food from DoorDash. Our mailboxes were located outside on the street, so we need to go through locked gates to get the mail as well.
That meant constant interruptions during our working day. It was also a struggle to keep our indoor cat from running out into the courtyard, which he liked to do from time to time.
Another downside, now that we were cooking and eating at home for every meal, was the tiny kitchen. It had a smaller-than-usual fridge, and no dishwasher. I washed SO many dishes. I don’t mind cleaning, because I’m not much into cooking. James loves to cook and is very good at it. But wow, it’s nice to have a dishwasher and a full-sized fridge in our new rental house!
We also didn’t have enough space to store food that we were stocking up on. So we put packages of pasta and cans of beans inside the lower levels of a cat tree that our cat Max liked to sit on top of. We laughed when one day he dragged some of the packages out and put them near our bedroom door! As if to say… don’t put your stuff in my cat tree!
Like many people, it was easy to freak out about the pandemic and the state of society (especially in the U.S.) Every time we had a little cough or sneeze or throat tickle we worried. Is this it? Are we getting COVID? Luckily we haven’t got it (so far).
Moving and setting up a new place gave us a welcome relief from thinking too much about all that. Instead we obsessed with finding the best place, and then setting it up. It was fun! A huge decorating project. I’ve always loved decorating my living space. It’s one of the reasons I enjoyed nomadic living for those five years. I kept having new places to fix up. Or I could choose an already furnished place based on how I liked the interior. Both were fun.
Before I became a nomad, I had a condo in Somerville, Massachusetts (part of Boston). I enjoyed decorating it and I thought I would never want to leave it. But my spirit of adventure and wanting to live as a nomad won out. Since 2013 I’ve decorated the following:
All were fun! The furnished places I lived were already in a style I liked. See Oaxaca, Los Angeles, San Diego, Portland, Budapest, and Chiang Mai.
We worried about how we were going to move safely during a pandemic. Especially since we live car-free (for me since 2005, and James since 2016). In normal times I would rent a car for a week during a move to help with errands and shopping, etc. But not this time.
Luckily we found good movers for a reasonable price: Team Hustle. It was 3 guys and a U-Haul. They wore masks. James (and our cat Max) went to the new house first in a car driven by my co-worker/friend Maribeth (we all wore masks). I stayed to direct the movers on what to do (the door was kept open). Maribeth came back to get me after they got everything out and drove me to the new house then. We got takeout hummus plates from our favorite bakery/grocery: Time Market. The three of us sat around eating (with the house doors open) while the movers brought in the final pieces of furniture. Max the cat stayed near us in his little tent-like catio (so as not to run outside).
So it is possible to live without owning a car in Tucson and get everything done, even during a pandemic.
Before moving day we spend about a month getting rid of stuff, bit by bit, so that we could have a lean moving experience. Normally we would sell a few things, but we didn’t want to have contact with people who might have COVID. So we donated some things to people in our apartment complex. We dropped off used clothing in a neighborhood donation bin for Boys and Girls Club.
The biggest thing we donated was our bikes. We gave them to our upstairs neighbor (hers was stolen). We had already ordered new e-bikes from Rad Power Bikes – due to arrive about a month after we moved. And we didn’t want to deal with trying to sell our old bikes during the pandemic.
By the way, we now have the new e-bikes (Rad City Step-Throughs from RadPower Bikes) and we love them! I’ll write another post about that sometime.
Living in so many different locations for six years (2013 – 2018) made it easier to adapt to the pandemic. You wouldn’t think so, since now we can’t travel. But the flexibility I had to learn for adapting to new situations and cultures somehow made it easier. And of course, I was completely used to working remotely.
I feel so lucky to have the kind of skills that lend themselves to remote work. I’m glad to see that more workplaces are learning to trust their remote workers (…well not all are and some invade privacy with surveillance tools). Many managers are learning that people can be productive (even more productive) when they work outside of a traditional office. (See The Office As You Know it is Dead).
I was used to communicating with coworkers using various technology tools. I also became good at scheduling my work day to coordinate with my best energy levels at different times of day. When we thought we would be moving to Budapest, my University of Arizona colleagues were willing to advocate for extending my contract so that I could work for them from afar.
Now I’m working remotely for U of A while living only a few blocks from campus. I’m also working remotely for CEU in Budapest. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, I could be living almost anywhere in the world and still working for both universities.
The other thing I got used to during my nomadic years was being physically alone most of the time, but virtually close to my friends. Just like now, during the pandemic.
Two of my closest friends (Melissa and Evelyn) were in the habit of staying in regular touch by texting, email, and Facebook Messenger. Several of my other friends would Skype with me from time to time, or arrange to talk on the phone for a while.
After I met James in Vermont in 2016, I left for the winter in Tucson (for 7 months). But he was great at keeping in touch virtually! We had online dates where we watched Westworld together and chatted online about it at the same time. Fun!
Of course I wasn’t alone all the time during those years. Evelyn visited me in Oaxaca, Budapest, and Portland. I made a new friend in Seattle (Philip) and later he visited me in Tucson. I also dated various people from time to time before I met James. But most of the time I was alone with only virtual communication. So I was used to feeling connected that way. I know it’s not the same as being physically with people, but it helped me feel connected.
I’ve been free of car ownership since 2005 (when I lived in Boston). I’ve always loved not owning a car. It’s been easy with so many options — public transportation, Uber, Lyft, biking, and walking. I get more exercise, save money, and don’t contribute as much to air pollution and traffic.
As a digital nomad, I always chose locations that were very walkable and bikeable. I used Walkscore to find neighborhoods to live in when I was researching places to live. Yes, you can live without a car even in places like in Los Angeles (I lived in Echo Park) or Tucson.
So now that we need to stay isolated from people, it’s the first time that I ever thought having a car would make sense. We didn’t feel safe taking Lyft or Uber, or renting a car during peak pandemic times. And with hot Arizona temperatures being over 100 for days on end, it was not so comfortable going places on foot or by bike. At least not very far.
Of course we try not to go anywhere anyway. We get all our groceries delivered. We haven’t been to dentists, doctors, or hair salons. But sometimes you need to go somewhere. Like when some furniture we ordered came early (before we moved into the new house) and was left at a FedEx location for pickup. (My coworker with a minivan helped us then). Or when we needed to get our CSA food (Community Supported Agriculture). We used to live only one block from the pickup area and now we live a couple of miles from it. Our pickup time is between 4 and 7 pm on Wednesdays. There was a month-long gap between when we gave away our old bikes and when our new e-bikes came in, so we only had our feet to rely on. And it’s been super-hot, reaching 107 or 108 degrees many days.
In normal times if it was too hot to ride or walk, we would call a Lyft. But we didn’t want to breathe the same air as our driver, who may have been exposed to many people (with community spread so high here in Arizona). So I thought… just for pandemic times, it would be nice to have a car. But that wasn’t enough for us to get one. Life is so much better when you walk and bike every day and don’t have to deal with traffic, car repairs, maintenance, and all the related expenses.
Now that we have our e-bikes, it’s so easy to bike anywhere (like to our CSA pickup). Eventually the heat will subside and we’ll have seven good months of fabulous weather. (November through May is wonderful in Tucson). We currently bike for fun and exercise around our neighborhood. Lately it’s been mostly after dark since it’s so hot. We have very bright lights so we can be seen from all sides.
We are actually planning to rent a car for two days in late September for my birthday. We now live only a 30 minute walk from a car rental location, and they can meet you outside for the transaction. We want to go to a drive-in movie. (We miss movie theaters!) And maybe drive out to Gates Pass and look at the beautiful sunset in the desert.
So I’m hoping that the world will move more in the direction of alternatives to cars. I love the stories about cities that have made their streets more pedestrian and bike friendly during the pandemic. Let’s hope that leads to some lasting changes!
Stripes were painted on this intersection near our old apartment. It slows traffic and makes life easier for pedestrians and people on bikes.
(In a future post, I’ll write more about our e-bikes, which we love!)
A Location-Flexible Life 