A Fully Remote Job Means Lack of Time Control...But that Downside is Trivial Compared to Those of Office Jobs

Let's see, six meetings today...five more tomorrow...I need to reschedule one to Saturday...maybe I can get up at 6am because that's the only time slot that works with his time zone. These are some of the monologues that are going through my mind as I scan my time schedule for my coming days. As an educational consultant, having meetings with students is my main job, but in the quest to make myself available for more students more frequently, I often quickly realize just how unscalable the work can be, no matter how much I try to be efficiently ubiquitous and responsive.

The problem comes down to the fundamentally limiting nature of one-on-one conversations. Whether Zoom calls or offline messaging, time spent on one person means taking time away from another. Multitasking is impossible if I am expected to do much more than just talk. As I attempt to think on their behalf, write down those ideas in words, and evaluate student writing in real time, the job becomes bogged down in the zero-sum nature of who I prioritize when. The only way to avail myself to all, dodging the question of sacrificing whom at the end, is to cut back on so-called leisure hours of nights and weekends.

But making a conscious decision to forgo rest, of course, is also a financial decision. As a freelancer, more hours worked means more wages earned. Digital nomad life can be surprisingly affordable, depending on where one chooses to live, but the law might still push one to show financial capabilities, through proof of income, mandatory insurance purchases, and other expenses of jumping through bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles. I can live on the cheap, but the government won't let me. That is when more hours worked are not only handy, but necessary.

Many a seasoned digital nomad writes online about how jaded they become of the concept after a few years of drifting. The idea of a laptop on the beach, margarita in hand, sounds idyllic, but not realistic. Co-working spaces end up becoming not so different from corporate offices, with the added anxiety of having to deal with complete strangers who see no incentive to be cooperative. And worst of all, everyone seems to struggle with how to balance just when to work and when to stop, when no one is really there to set the tone of what the company culture ought to look like.

Perhaps I, with my main job as an educational consultant and occasional side gigs to occupy non-meeting times, am finally coming to those very same existential questions. As the boundary between work and non-work hours and days of the week finally collapses, the daily grind, so accustomed to in the office jobs of the past, returns, only even more surreal against the backdrop of the ever-beautiful sunshine of the Maltese islands and the crystal clear waters of the Mediterranean Sea. It almost feels as if I am completely detached from the holiday spirit that constantly permeates my physical surroundings.

Yet, surprisingly, I don't seek an "out" to this fiasco. For I know that the grass is not greener on the other side. I do not look forward to the brutal urban commutes on packed trains, followed by semi-mandatory going out to bond with coworkers. I do not look forward to waking up hours in advance to make myself presentable to millions of mere passersby. I do not look forward to having to fulfill social obligations to family and friends just because they are nearby. And I particularly do not see the point of all these downsides when coupled with insufferable, extreme weather conditions and higher living costs.

Perhaps the complaining digital nomad veterans pin their despair on the practical to avoid discussing the emotional. They miss the familiarities of their homelands' cultures, foods, languages, friends, and families. But explicitly saying violates the free-spiritedness that defines the digital nomad. Instead, they blame work, its precarity, and lack of structure as risks to personal and professional well-being. I understand the risks, but both they and I should know that moving back to a physical location does not automatically change the calculus. 

So I go back to my time schedule, no longer seeing the filled pages as a problem but a reality to simply accept. After all, it could be much worse. My six meetings may be bookended with sweaty walks. They might be interrupted by coworkers barging in with emergencies. And yet still the threat of redundancies does not disappear. The downsides of a fully remote job, one that can stretch into wee hours of the night, should be acknowledged. But every job has its cons. Among the cons that I could imaginably compare, these cons seem to be the least debilitating.