Changing from beeing employed to being an entrepreneur at the start of 2015 didn’t alter the challenges of our profession. Logic, creativity and concentration aren’t spatialy bound, but we noticed that different locations support the different aspects of our work not equally well. In contrast to our former post, this time we don’t want to focus on numbers, but our different homes. By now we have quite a good impression where we feel the most productive for a specific phase in the software development process.

Metropolis

Living in a Metropolis such as Barcelona, Lisbon or Rome offers quite some distraction. This is awesome if your project is at a point where you’ve got to do some routine work for a couple of days. The suroundings then help you to get some entertainment in a time efficient manner to recharge your batteries for the upcoming workday.

But not just right in the middle of a project but at its very start while drafting ideas such a metropolis is a good place to be. Due to the high concentration of people from different kinds you can qucikly get a gasp of the everyday life and use infrastructural advantages such as coworking spaces to quickly get in contact with them.
This yields benefits while beeing in the phase of project aquiring where you often communicate with potential customers and new requirments and impressions pop up vastly. The easy way to reach distracton then can help to come up with new points of view and make room for new Ideas without getting blocked in a locked in syndrom manner.

The hidehout

On one hand places can be very big, on the other they also can be small sometime. For instance Heinrichshorst, where ‚small‘ doesn’t stand for the house itself we lived in, but for the urbanisation of the area around. Until today, we’ve met very interesting people as our hosts at this special places. People, who follow their dreams can be very inspiring as well as their properties.

We look for these places in particular, when we’ve collected a lot of energy, impressions and ideas. That way we can concentrate on the realization of concepts or the finalisation of a project idea. These places have their own magic, supporting alternative thinking and therefore leading to even surprise ourselves what we can reach within few weeks. This way a stay of few weeks in a cottage in Osserain can evolve to be one of the most productive times oft the year.

Something in between

And then there’re places, which combine aspects of all these categories. They’re appealing in a special way, so you need to be there for at least one time. A coderetreat combined with surfing lessons in Las Palmas or a boat trip with working routine and a diving lesson – new experiences result in new insights for your working day, every time.

Interacting with people of different nations helps, viewing problems from a different perspective If you see them living their various lifestyles and handling all day challenges in different ways, is always enriching.

Family and friends

If you’re born in a less urban region, as we are, your only option with our profession for a regular employment is to move to a bigger city or nearby.
Nowadays, this is true for a lot of people. It also means living apart from friends and family. Therefore, for us one oft the great advantages of being digital nomads is, that we can always go to the places where we’re needed.

Surely, one of the less considered aspects of the cheesy working-at-the-beach-nomad-life. To have the opportunity to settle where a lot of your friends live and work for half a year, that’s enriching the concept of mobility in an amazing manner. We’re very grateful that this is possible for us by now.

To sum it up

Traveling all the time brings a lot of flexibility and the possibilty to fit your environment to individual necessities and needs. But if you stay at these places only for few weeks, it is challenging to find new local friends – even tough it is not impossible. It is better, if you’re friends are already living at the placces you’re visiting or if you’re looking for places with people of similar lifestyle nearby, like e.g. CoWorking Spaces, DNX-Camps or Coderetreat-Locations. CoWorking Locations are a great possibility to getting to know people, because these places combine leasure time, office, networking and sometimes even staying overnight in a clever way. There is no other place, where you can meet so many people with the same lifestyle. Especially recommendable for early phases of projects an generating ideas, less for work intensive times of projects.
Reviewing the time, we’re happy we already had a great and big social network with various fields of interest located all over Europe. Also, after several years of regular employment, we chose a perfect point in time for getting self-employed. We wish you a lot of sucess and luck, if you have similiar plans.