Work Year Review: Digital Nomad Life

It’s that time of the year to write year-end review posts. And yes, if you are wondering why I am writing this in early November, it is because I am now following the traditional Indian New Year calendar. (you can know more about the Indian calendars here).

So how was this work year?

It’s been a mixed pot. Very enjoyable but since the work-year review should take into consideration incoming revenue also, I guess this year was a mixed pot. In the earlier year, I was working full-time for many months with a European company and so it was very lucrative. However, I also realized that digital nomad-ing and a full-time job doesn’t work for me.

Digital Nomad Life doesn’t work with a Full-Time Job for me

Remote though it is, a full-time job requires a lot of hours, every day of the week. And when the weekend arrives, I may want to read a book, cook something nice, just chill or chat with friends and relatives. So effectively, the only real time I get to explore the place as a traveller is early morning (tough) or late evenings and a couple of weekends. Late evenings and night are often not convenient if I am in a small town or conservative culture. Moreover, nightlife and pub hopping isn’t something I do.

So, after a few months of working full time & being a digital nomad, I decided that this doesn’t work. So I pulled out of the full-time role. And decided to focus on short-term projects. Short-term projects also provide me with a month or two of full holidays when I can plan cycle touring expeditions or other more ambitious travel projects.

I travelled for 7 months in the last year. Read my travel year-end review for more deets on that 😉 

Generating Short-term Projects

The problem with taking up short-term projects is that I now need to generate projects that are exciting and in line with my interests often. I need a pipeline of projects in place to make this a lucrative option. Otherwise, it would be like, I work on a 4-5 month project, then go travelling for 1-2 months and once I return I have to spend another 2 months getting a new project. That’s problematic. So towards that, I created –> www.priyankadalal.com. This should eventually grow into a project pool for me. It offers free business growth resources. I anyway chat with people about work and dole out a lot of free advice. I am happy to put this info out there for everyone.

And moreover,

I really enjoyed creating this Free Email Course on the Growth Process every business needs. Because I work with so many clients, so often, they just don’t have their basics in place. A clear audience segmentation, buying funnel, goal setting are some very basic things. But a lot of companies, big and small, don’t have it set. So I was happy to create this email course towards that end.

Pic Source: The photo of the lady holding the tablet is from Shutterstock.

I need to grow the site a lot more. But it’s a long-term plan. Over 2 years I think I can grow it to something exciting.

Digital Nomad Life isn’t about traveling more and working less. I think it is important to envision how we want our life to be. And then go about making it that way. Being a digital nomad, for me, is about leading life in a way that makes sense. If I feel the need to travel more currently, I can do that while balancing my work. If I feel I need to focus on my work for a while, I can find a nice place to stay and work. 

First Time with Shopify

As it happens, I am working on an interesting project recently. It’s for a client in skincare who is launching a Shopify e-com store. I am quite excited about it. It’s my first time with Shopify. And as usual, creating a brand from scratch, the launch strategy and various miscellaneous tasks are very exciting. I am happy to work on this.

This is a Mumbai client, so I have had offline meetings too whenever I am in Mumbai.

These are basically the few major developments regarding my work stuff.

There are two other smaller matters,

I Finally Enjoyed Teaching

I have been taking social media lectures at XIC for 4 years now. This is the first year when I truly enjoyed my classes. It has to do with a few factors….

++ I took the classes at the beginning of their term. This helped immensely because the students were a lot more receptive.

++ I have changed my syllabus and made a lot of stuff DIY. This relaxes me … cause I tell students that they should read/work on something if they are interested. The ones who aren’t may not. And that’s all. Asking and expecting ALL students to do a deep job is very tough because many of them are simply not interested. In this syllabus change, I also included a few relevant YT videos and other external material that allows me to sit back and relax. While the students still gain the required understanding.

++ Probably, after 4 years of teaching, I am also more relaxed and getting used to it.

PR, Travel Writing & Media Publications

I wanted to get into travel writing for a while but I kept sidelining it. Now I am helping (probono) a nonprofit organization with some PR and media publication stuff. Along with this work, my travel writing might also become a professional thing. Let’s see how that goes. It’s been interesting so far. This is also my first foray into active PR related tasks. Curious about it.

Though I would always want to keep Business Growth projects as my first work priority. I enjoy it a lot more. PR & writing for media publications seems like a good side thing to do considering my deep travel experiences but I doubt I would enjoy it too much over time.

That’s about it for this year…

What about you? Do you do a work year review? And how has your work year been so far?