Want to Stay Relevant? You’ll Need to Push Yourself to Do This. . .

On the move again. . .

A few years back, I decided I was an Anywhereist. I had lived in 7 places in 5 years. At this point, it’s been 9 years, and I’m about to add living place number 8. . .

Since we got married in 1988, my husband and I have moved from Upstate New York to Central Florida, to the Republic of Panama, to South Carolina, and back to Central Florida, with some local moves here and there.

Next Monday, we’re scheduled to move to a new city. We’re staying in Florida for now, but switching locations for a variety of reasons, mostly family related.

Although this is one of the shorter moves we’ve made in terms of distance, in some ways it’s proving to be the most challenging.

Why? Because of some of the reasons I talked about in the last newsletter — mostly ambiguity.

You see, our moving date has been uncertain for weeks. We were fortunate that we found a place to move to before we put our current home on the market, but then everything came to a screeching halt.

We discovered that the house we’re getting had some serious electrical issues. Serious, like, the house could go up in flames due to an electrical fire kind of serious. So we had to wait until an electrician could come to make some changes. . . and right now, contractors are hard to schedule because they’re all very busy.

So we waited. And we waited. And we waited some more.

Well, the work’s finally been done, and we have a moving date. I should be able to send my next newsletter from my new digs.

All of which is a long-winded way of saying, if you want to be an Anywhereist, you need to stay relevant. You have to be able to learn new things, roll with the punches, and be flexible. That’s true in your work-from-anywhere business, and it’s true in every other part of your life.

One of the areas we need to be most flexible and constantly willing to learn is in dealing with technology.

The 20-somethings don’t have a lock on new tech. Neither do the Gen-Xers, or us Baby Boomers. It’s a challenge for everyone to stay up to date with technology, but if you want to create a successful portable business, you need to welcome the uncertainty and the change.

Read: Are You Ready to Start a Profitable Business You Can Work from Anywhere?

Tips & Tricks

Where to go

Are you a digital nomad? Wondering where to go and where to avoid?

The good news is, more countries are adding digital nomad visas — Sri Lanka is the most recent.

Here are a couple of lists of best and worst places for digital nomads.

Read: The best cities for remote-working digital nomads ranked

Read: These are America’s 10 worst states for remote work

Habits

Is it possible to get more, better quality work done in less time?

Last September, Dorie Clark committed to taking Fridays off. After all, studies of workers during the pandemic showed that productivity increased once they were working from home.

She learned four important lessons.

Read: What I learned from taking Fridays off

Creativity

Creativity can be elusive.

You never know what will spark an idea, or help you see something old from a different and interesting viewpoint.

Michael Thompson recommends that creatives hold conversations every week with 5 types of people.

“Sometimes the best way to gain clarity is by allowing ourselves to share loose thoughts,” he notes. It can also help you connect the dots in new ways.

Give your creative juices the opportunity to flow by having these five conversation.

Read: 5 Conversations Aspiring Creatives Should Have Each Week

Tools

JR Raphael describes these note-taking apps as “shape-shifting genies” and asks, “Are they note-taking apps? Are they word processors? Or are they task management tools, project management tools, or perhaps even just broad ‘collaboration utilities?’ . . . Ultimately, I suspect what we call ’em depends on how we’re using ’em at any given moment. . .”

The 3 apps are Workflowy, Coda, and Notion. He lays out what they’re “ideal for,” and explains a bit about each one.

You may find your perfect note-taking app among these three!

Read: 3 next-level note-taking apps that’ll change the way you work

Mindset

Schott Shute is head of Mindfulness and Compassion at LinkedIn (who knew there was such an entity?), and he tells us that doing these three things is “a strategy for misery.”

If you want to be happier — in your work, your career, and your life — do these three things differently.

Read: We’re defining success wrong, and it’s hurting our happiness

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In Case You Missed It. . .

The second Bridget Jones movie opens with Bridget losing track of what she’s doing — while skydiving! — and landing face down in a large pigsty.

If you don’t want to come to your senses, as Bridget did, in a large vat of metaphoric excrement, you need to do some planning.

Fortunately, in the first movie, Bridget also gave us 7 actionable planning steps to use to create your best Anywhereist work and life. . .

Read: 7 Planning Steps Bridget Jones Can Teach Anywhereists

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