Digital Nomads

Last Sunday's Washington Post offered up a front page article on "digital nomads."

We've talked before about telework and the benefits, as well as the challenges, it offers. The concept of digital nomads refines that a bit, suggesting that your teleworkers are spending more time out of their homes and in coffee houses, parks, ornate hotel lobbies, and other spots that strike their fancy.

The proliferation of WiFi in public places during the last few years has made it possible to stay in touch while working, which was always one of the challenges to telework. If you needed to communicate, or work online rather than just on your own laptop, you needed that connection, which often meant staying home. As WiFi has expanded in commercial spaces as well as open spaces, your teleworkers have more places to go, and now are even starting to find like-minded people with whom to associate during the day. There's an interesting advantage here: you can't normally pick your co-workers, so if you don;t like them you're still stuck with them, but you CAN pick whom you choose to meet up with at the local Panera Bread shop.

So, there's a big benefit: your Creatives can choose their surroundings, not just the physical structure but the people surrounding them, too. This can help overcome the boredom of sitting in the same little cubicle day in and day out. They can also pick a place appropriate for their mood of the day, someplace that shakes them out of a bad emo sense so they can get some good work done, or some place that complements their feeling of excitement about a project. Whatever they're looking for, they have more choice, and that's a big factor in the quality of life in a job.

The nomad life also overcomes one of the big problems associated with telework: the lack of clarity between work-life and home-life. Working at home means you're always surrounded by your work, and it's tough to stop thinking about it; that was tough for me as a PhD student. But by moving around to different places they can have a definite starting point and ending point for their workday.

Getting out of the home and finding other people also helps those Creatives who feed off the energy of a crowd rather than doing their best work solo. While some people prefer quiet, others prefer background noise or talking with others throughout the day, and as the article pointed out, informal groups are forming at some nomad spots that may be recreating the office environment but in a way that's more supportive for certain employees.

There are still challenges associated with telework, of course. In addition to the increased security issues that come with working in public places you also need to make sure your Creatives have the tools they need to be mobile if you agree that's a good option for them. But as the advantages of telework become more obvious, in many fields it gets harder and harder to say it's a bad idea.

So take a look, and see if it's right for you.