The first question to ask oneself is ‘Why, for what purpose?’ If one looks for freedom to move around and see new things, rejuvenation, adventure, and can live with the ‘uncertainty’ of not being able to tell upfront where his/her next place and workplace will be, then this way of life fits perfectly. For somebody who walks the traditional way ‘What I know is what I trust’, with predictability and comfort as core values, this would also be perfectly possible.

One can live the adventure in a smoother, more subjective or esoteric way, relatively close from home on foot or by bicycle – discovering the neighborhood or the town or even the entire world from one’s sofa without having to travel too many kilometers.

The second question is “What type of work and roles can fit to the lifestyle of a digital nomad?” It certainly applies to almost all knowledge workers, from Freelancers, Teachers, Programmers, Developers, Customer Support, Designer, Blogger, Social Media Marketer, Translators to Entrepreneurs, and the list goes on….

The third question is “How can one find all the information needed to draw a roadmap?” The richness of networking on this established community of digital nomadism is amazing as is a new industry with fantastic opportunities.

The majority of companies, have already concluded on the collaboration and workspace models they want to use improving the side effects that virtualization creates, while hotels around the world offer plenty of new services that can cover the life style needs of their new target group. No need to mention the information overload in the social community from FB, Reddit, etc.

Thinking on a larger scale, this new industry for a country like Greece is on the one hand, a great employment opportunity (working from anywhere) and on the other, a great tourism income prospect. The countries with tourism background have started a fierce competition with great offers while Greece keeps its own unique advantages: the sun, its landscape – diverse with extraordinary beauty, its lifestyle, tax legislation advantages, fast networks and optical cables, low cost of living and finally the astonishing islands.

I wonder if these “tax heaven benefits” should apply to domestic nomads as well, since local economies will flourish with the minimum infrastructure investment and would apply to all generations from the first job or the job before retirement.

Companies demonstrated an impressive capacity to adjust to the distance working which they constantly upgrade making the digital nomadism a real option for somebody. But first, they had to overcome the myth of remote works’ reduced productivity. In fact the exact opposite happens – productivity increases once employees are provided with the right collaboration tools.

Lynda Gratton in one of her articles in HBR “The Third Wave of Virtual Work” advises the organizations to focus on collaboration to innovate better, to reconceive the Physical workspaces, to reconstruct workflows to tap remote talent and to invest in intuitive technology. Before they proceed, they must comprehend their own culture, their own people on how they really like to collaborate, to chat, to work and then choose the social network that fits their style. Over the coming years, 1.3 billion of employees will work virtually.

In conclusion, before one decides if the virtual work and/or digital nomad work, works for them, I recommend to get a behavioural test such as the one presented by Andreas and Orfeas Stavrou from Evalion – SHL in their article in the current newsletter issue and then decide…“Going Digital or Going Holiday?”