All you need to know to work remotely from remote places
If the internet is crucial for your work, think twice before heading to a place with poor connectivity
Becoming a digital nomad and traveling the world while working remotely is a dream that, today, seems impossible to achieve. It all depends on your work format and where you want to go.
As Wesley Faraó Klimpel from Sem Chaves wrote, being a nomad in West Africa is far from easy. I've just had a distressing experience in the Amazon rainforest myself.
The common point in our experiences is the internet, a crucial tool for most digital nomads. Not having a reliable internet connection, which feels like being stuck in the '90s, is stressful.
Of course, you could argue that I was wrong to try working from the forest. In my defense, I was in the main hotel in Tabatinga, in the tri-border region of Brazil, Peru, and Colombia, in a city with almost 70,000 inhabitants.
I came here because of a book I'm writing with a friend. While working on this project, I still have my remote job with set hours to start and finish, and that's a challenge itself.
Here is everything you need to know to work remotely from remote places:
What's the internet like in the destination you're heading to? I assumed the internet in Tabatinga wouldn't be great, but it was worse than I imagined. I had no choice but to come here, so I tried to find the best hotel with the most reliable signal. If you're in a hotel, ask at the reception where the best signal spot is.
How urgent are your tasks in your remote work? There are various models of remote work. Mine has fixed hours, and I must handle urgent matters, which puts me in a position where I need accessible internet most of the time. If your work is more flexible, you must organize your schedule, knowing that the internet might be unstable.
What tools will you need to use? WhatsApp Web works perfectly fine for text messages. This method can work if you only need to communicate with clients and align a few things with them. In my case, I needed to use social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook and download photo and video files from Canva, which took a lot of time.
Are you highly frustrated with the internet? Try finding other places. I attempted a day use at the fanciest hotel in Letícia, Colombia. To my surprise, the internet worked even worse there.
In summary, if the internet is crucial for your work, think twice before heading to a place with poor connectivity. One option is to go there on vacation, but many nomads don't have that chance. However, if experiencing a remote site is essential, try to organize yourself to work as little as possible. Otherwise, the frustration with the lack of connection (and projects going wrong) can ruin the rest of your trip.
It's always a pleasure to be mentioned here. After some months traveling (and suffering with bad internet) in West and Central Africa, I'm having good experiences in the south of the continent. For example, I worked diary almost 3 weeks in a coffee shop in Swakopmund, a beach city at Namibia. Good Wi-Fi + delicious coffee is the best equation ever for a digital nomad or a full time traveler.