photo credit: DDFic

My journey to Location Independence began out of frustration. Frustration with how wasteful the business world ran, and how poorly most old-school businesses leveraged technology. There may have been a girl involved too. I’ll get to that later.

Several jobs and self-employed businesses made up my work history. They always followed the Standard American Dream 9 to 5 model. Jobs brought with them the same mundane things: the commute, the office space, the far-away promise of retirement someday, the Mondays. My forays into self-employment were not much different, because I was using those models.

At the time of my change, I was a well-paid salesperson at a manufacturer in a field that I loved. What could be wrong? Like most traditional jobs, I had to be there in an office when they wanted me there, and they wanted me there a lot. This left me little time to travel or enjoy life outside of work other than the occasional weekend. I could not find a way to look forward to another 50 years of this life. I knew there was a better way.

Leaving the Office

That corporate sales position got traded for another company as a self-employed contract salesman. I didn’t need to come into the office, but would have to visit various customers all over the state, and pick up new customers along the way. It was in the same field I loved, and a step in the right direction toward my freedom, but still very wasteful in many ways.

If you’ve ever sat in traffic in Los Angeles during rush hour, you know what I mean. If you’ve ever had to drive back and forth all over Los Angeles, you know that rush hour last all day. That’s what I did. This wasn’t an ideal solution.

The face time at customer’s shops was just how things had “always been done” in the industry. I weaned the existing customers off these regular monthly visits. Orders were not affected at all, and I had a lot more free time to spend on things apart from driving.

I would still regularly check on them, but now I only made a quick call or email reminder instead of hoping they’d be there when I made the trek out to their shop. They liked it better too. I was able to spend that extra time getting new customers and increasing sales, with only occasional visits to shops.

(A similar strategy is in Tim Ferriss’ best-selling book The Four-Hour Workweek. I had just never heard of the book at the time, and was only making this up as I went.)

Making Travel Possible

Now that I arranged my work so that I didn’t need to be anywhere in particular, I was able to travel more. I had taken regular vacations to Florida from my home in California. By this point, my intent was to make a permanent move.

Remember the girl I mentioned earlier? Yeah, it’s a long story, but she lived on a different coast when we accidentally met. Remember, life is not all about work, so these things are important.

I was now able to be in Florida for ten days at a time every month. While there, I was able to pick up new business in the state, all while still serving my west coast clients. It was no longer technically vacation, as I was always available by phone or email, but it was now just the life I was making happen.

There were still some obvious inefficiencies with my system, but it was infinitely better than having to be on a particular spot on a map for 75% of my waking hours. Using the internet and email, with only a laptop and a cell phone, I could go virtually anywhere and still make a living doing almost exactly the same job.

The Next Level

After making this up as I went for a year or two, I finally got really smart* and looked around online. It turns out that there are thousands of people using the technology available to us in the 21st century, who are doing a far better job of being Location Independent. I was on the right track, but there are better ways of becoming Location Independent than the stumbling path I took. When I finally found my way here, I learned a tremendous amount, and have made quite a few changes to the way I do things.

really smart* – This is sarcasm for “What I should have done in the first place before stumbling around on my own like a buffoon.”

I started this journey by looking for a way to spend more time living my life, traveling, and enjoying the world instead of sitting at a desk all day. I did make the move to Florida several years ago. We are now working on deciding where to go for longer than extended vacations.

Whether we travel overseas indefinitely or start with exploring North America by RV, we now know that we don’t have to wait for that someday when we retire to live our lives.

How I Freed Myself from the Office to Become Location Independent is a post from: Live Collar Free

Is the iPad the perfect device for today’s Remote Workers? While no device or tool is perfect for every job or person, the iPad may very well be just the thing for me.

Using today’s technology, Location Independent Professionals work from anywhere. Cell phones, near ubiquitous coverage of wi-fi networks in the city, and relatively inexpensive 3G connections when off the main grid have all shifted the concept of work in recent years. Go to any coffee shop and you are bound to see at least one person banging keys on a laptop, and that guy in the faded jeans thumb-typing on his iPhone may very well be closing a sale or placing an order.

I am rarely the first person to go out and buy the latest and greatest new thing. I am a bit of a minimalist that has never owned an iPod or a flat screen tv. My smartphone has the “Smart” turned off, so it is only rarely used for phone calls and text messaging.  I no longer use a desktop computer. My laptop is more than enough for my needs. I could work exclusively from a computer in the public library if I really needed to, and not have to own a single gadget.

The laptop is still too big to want to carry around wherever I go (a 5 year old Toshiba). I had tossed around my tech “ideal” of a Kindle, an iPod Touch, and a netbook at some point. The iPad would do just fine for all 3 of those for my needs in a single item.

When producing, I do a lot of writing and other content creation. Not heavy graphics-intensive CAD stuff that would need more processing power. Word processing, blogging, internet, email, spreadsheets — all basic things that any netbook could easily do.

I consume a lot of information on the web. When surfing the web or answering most email, I don’t normally write a lot. I didn’t expect to do a lot of work stuff from anywhere but the laptop. But a lot of what I do for research or in my free time is still online. The iTouch is a fantastic portable solution for most of this that is also great for music and podcasts, of course.

I read as many as 3 books a week, but refuse to stockpile a massive library. When I finish a book, it goes off to live where someone else can benefit from it. I only read magazines or newspapers online now. A book reader is something I definitely want. I read most books through the Kindle App on the laptop already.

The iTouch would be for sitting around in a coffee shop, campsite, or a park but not really working. The netbook for short trips where I didn’t want to bring the laptop (and may eventually replace the laptop). The Kindle would be for reading all the books I then would not have to carry around.

But Apple announced the iPad, I compared it to this previous ideal to see how it stacked up against these other gadgets for the needs of a Digital Nomad.

iPod Touch

The iTouch is a good little web, email, music, book reader, and game tool. I actually got one as a gift earlier this year, and it has already received a lot of use. I read 5 or 6 books on it the first few weeks I had it. The tiny screen makes page-turning more frequent and is a bit harder to read than a big screen.

It’s only a backup for the times I didn’t have a netbook or laptop with me to get on the web, as browsing on a tiny screen is less than ideal. The wireless-only usually works just fine, since there are wi-fi networks almost everywhere now. I wouldn’t be able to send emails if I was away from civilization, but that’s about it.

The only real advantage the iTouch has over the iPad is the portability. It can be carried in a pocket, but the iPad does everything that can be done on the iTouch. Heavy advantage goes to the iPad here.

Kindle

E-Ink is the screen tech on Amazon’s Kindle. It’s basically a non-backlit screen, which is easier on the eyes, especially for reading full-length books. Backlit screens like the iPad are lights, so it is hard on the eyes to stare at them all day. And you can read them easily outside in the sunlight or anywhere except in the dark.

Kindle’s e-ink screen is not color. The iPad has a gorgeous full-color screen.

The iPad can be read in a dark room. I’ve read books in bed late at night on my iTouch. If I wanted to do that with the Kindle, I would have to turn on the light. The iPad may be hard to read outside in sunlight. This advantage depends on which was a bigger trade-off: reading in the dark or at the beach.

Kindle is a great book reader, and they now added the ability to use Twitter and Facebook. You can download books in seconds, and be reading from anywhere. But that’s all it does.

If you want a very good book reader, the Kindle is tough to beat. If you want a very good book reader that can do several hundred thousand other things, the iPad wins by miles. Kindle replaces books. iPad replaces books and several other gadgets.

Netbook

The netbook for me would be mostly for content generation, but again, it was a kind of overlapping redundancy to the other gadgets. It’s inconvenient to type more than a paragraph or two on an iTouch. The netbook is good enough to type on with a tiny screen, but it’s like another laptop to lug around when I want to read a book in bed.

Netbooks can do more than the iPad. They use a full Operating System that run almost every application I can run on my full-sized laptop. The iPad still requires a computer to synch with. You have to have a computer to use an iPad (at least initially. Anyone want to correct me on this part?).

The onscreen keyboard on the iPad was much easier to use than I had anticipated. You have to look at your fingers to type on the iPad. The keys are on the screen, so there is no feel to it. No home keys to find with touch only. Ergonomically, this can’t be a good thing for a lot of content creation. You have to look down the whole time you type, so this would not be a better solution, even with a cute homemade pillow like our friends the Technomads just got for their iPads.

The on-screen keyboard is good enough for answering emails, tweets, and other brief items from the to-do list. So no major advantage to the netbook for that. The bluetooth keyboard and some sort of case or stand to prop the iPad up like a monitor solves the ergonomic and touch-typing issues, but now you are back to lugging around as much as a netbook. The only advantage is the option to leave the keyboard behind.

The battery life being reported from iPad owners is better than any netbook on the market. Another concern when trying to travel light is carrying as few additional power supplies as needed.

iPad Beats Them All

The iPad may not be the very best solution in every area, but it covers so many tasks so well, it is hard to beat.

The form factor of the iPad is something that gives it an advantage over traditional netbooks. It’s simple. Like reading a notepad. It’s just a one-piece touchscreen. No clam shell and extra stuff hanging from it.

Developers are only just beginning to tap into the possibilities of this new device. With so many amazing things being done with iPhone apps, I am excited to see the many uses that people can come up with for the iPad.

Of course if you are heavy into gaming with high-end graphics, have no need for a book reader, and don’t need anything other than what you already have, there will be no point to buying an iPad. But it will be a huge seller. People panned the iPod when it came out. I thought the iTouch was silly when I first saw it (“it’s an iPhone with no phone??”) Then I got to play with one and realized how well it works and how useful it could be. Apple has sold millions of iPod Touches — they are going to sell a ton of iPads.

While the Kindle may be a better ebook reader, the iTouch is a smaller, more convenient web and game toy, and the Netbook is a more powerful content creator, the iPad looks to do all of those things well enough for me all in one beautiful overall package.

Are you planning on buying an iPad, or have one already? Tell us what you think in the comments below.

Apple’s iPad: Can it Work for Digital Nomads and Teleworkers? is a post from: Live Collar Free

Leaning back in the lounge chair writing, I found myself unconsciously humming along to the song playing somewhere in the atrium below. It may have been coming from one of the restaurants surrounding the fake walls of the reconstructed fort of St. Augustine below the balcony where I worked. The music in the huge air-conditioned space enclosing the back of the hotel was partially drowned by the sound of the several waterfalls, but I was pretty sure it was coming from near the sailboat.

Wait, working?

Being location independent for me means that I have structured my work to make my geographical location essentially irrelevant. I can write from anywhere. Most of the planet has internet access for email and online chores. Cell service is relatively cheap for the few times I need to talk to clients. My “office” resides in a backpack and has everything I need.

When my partner was sent on a 3-day business trip for some training at a nice hotel across the state, this freedom to work from anywhere showed one of its better qualities. It allowed me to join her on this pseudo-vacation.

With a regular job, I would not likely have been able to take the time off to join her through the middle of the week. I still had work that needed doing, but at least I could have my choice of two pools to enjoy on my breaks.

Her company was footing the bill for mileage, her meals and the cheapest room in the very nice hotel where the training took place. I had to pay for my own meals (like I always do), but otherwise work for me went uninterrupted.

The hotel had internet access to allow me to deal with emails, a nice balcony in our sixth floor room and other nice areas to relax while I wrote. Everything I normally have when I work was still with me, I was just in a nicer location for a few days.

They even upgraded our room for free simply because we asked. We travel as often as we can and have learned it doesn’t hurt to ask. They either say yes or no, so it’s either the same or better than not asking.

More work got done in those 3 days while I enjoyed the restfulness of the surroundings. The evenings allowed us time to enjoy the nightlife at the resort, and catch up with friends in the area.

It works best for me to change up the scenery every few days or so, even if that means simply working in another room. Staring at the same wall each day is not good for me, so sometimes the situation takes me to even nicer places than I usually frequent, and the ability to flow smoothly with these change of plans is priceless when we can work anywhere.

Unplanned Working Vacations when Location Independent is a post from: Live Collar Free