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We often think of technology as a new app or the latest smartphone, but few of us think of the power tech has in education. Although some time might have passed since you were last in school, tech is being used to update and advance our current education system. View the full article

Hey Remotive peeps, I'd love to know your favorite productivity tool. What is the one app that you cannot live without? Vic Our Favorite Articles 💯 Top 5 Highest Paying Remote Jobs Of 2024, From Research (Forbes)TL;DR: 3 out of the top 5 jobs are in technology. Learn more → Why Thailand is making it easier for travelers to stay longer (CNN)Time to pack your bags! One of the top spots for digital nomads is calling your name. See details → Why You Feel Underappreciated at Work (HBR)We've all been there! Here's what you can do about it. Read on → The Harsh Truths of Building a $20B CompanyI really enjoy Shane Parrish's podcast conversations. Here's the latest episode on YouTube. This Week's Sponsor 🙌Remotive Accelerator • Unlock 30,000+ remote jobsFinding your dream remote job shouldn’t be a full-time job Find Your Remote Job Remotive Jobs 💼Is this job for you? 👉 Senior Fullstack Developer (Next.js+React.js) at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 Senior Frontend Developer (React.js+Next.js) at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 Senior Mobile Cross-Platform Developer (Firebase) at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) Free Guides & Tools​Public Job Board​We curate 2,000 remote jobs so you don't have to! ​Find your remote job →​ ​Exclusive Webinar​3 Mistakes to Avoid When Looking For A Remote Startup Job (And What To Do Instead) ​Register for free →​ ​Job Search Tips​Looking for a remote job? Here are our tips to help you work remotely ​Check it out →​ Join the Remotive newsletter Subscribe to get our latest content by email. Success! Now check your email to confirm your subscription. There was an error submitting your subscription. Please try again. Email address Subscribe Powered by ConvertKit View the full article

Join us as we chat with Tim Vaughan-Spencer, a freelance copywriter who calls Chiang Mai home. Tim takes us through his unexpected journey from a planned short stay to a more permanent settlement, all while balancing the best of both worlds—stability and adventure. Discover how his flexible freelance lifestyle, allows him to thrive both professionally and personally. Connect with Tim: tvscopy.com Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

. Chapters in this Story of Experiencing Buenos Aires 3AM. Time to get moving. Buenos Aires, Argentina was on the horizon As I rolled out …View the full article

Travel. Just travel. For those with wanderlust, travel is an empowering lightning strike to the heart that should never be underestimated. (This article is Part …View the full article

Travel. Just travel. For those with wanderlust, travel is an empowering lightning strike to the heart that should never be underestimated. And for those wanderlusters …View the full article

Hybrid meetings have become the norm, making hybrid technology that fosters engaging and productive collaboration vital for any business. Yet, according to the 2023 State of Hybrid Work report, only 37% of employers upgraded their video meeting technology in 2023. For enterprise businesses navigating the modern workplace, finding the right hybrid collaboration solutions is key to unlocking seamless communication and productivity. View the full article

Learn how Rosie structures her day to maximize personal freedom, balances work commitments with a flexible schedule, and the significance of finding time freedom in a busy world. Connect with Rosie: discoverysessions.com@thebeachbell on instagram Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

There is so much each and every one of us has to deal with, every day, to keep ourselves in check. To keep striving toward being healthy and accomplished. Sometimes it feels like, with all the things we’re supposed to do daily, there’s no room left in our mind for, you know, anything else. How The post Your default behaviors are under your control appeared first on RescueTime Blog. View the full article

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.” ― Larry Page, co-inventor of the Google search engine. Is there anyone in the Western world who hasn’t seen (or at least heard about) the Terminator or Matrix movie franchises? As much as we’ve loved our Tamagotchis, Furbys, and Roombas, we still worry our digital and robotic creations will grow beyond us so fast and so far they’ll learn to hate us or simply become indifferent to our presence, destroying us in the process. Even the late Stephen Hawking, probably one of the most intelligent people to ever live, worried it might happen. Hawking aside, those who fear technology typically do so because they don’t understand it. This has occurred throughout history. Some cavemen probably rejected that newfangled spear-thingy—until it proved itself in action. Consider weaver Ned Ludd, who supposedly destroyed two stocking-knitting machines in 1779, afraid they would take his job. Some alarmists in the 1800s thought riding trains would kill them, because the speed would rip them apart or cause them to suffocate; and parents in the 1920s refused to let their children listen to the radios for fear it would “enthrall” them. Those fears proved groundless. In the 1980s, many people thought computers would replace them, when in fact they just made most of us more productive. This type of mistrust has also hampered the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Computer scientists first proposed AI in the 1950s, though research stalled for decades starting in the 1970s, due to the fears so well illustrated by the abovementioned movies. Since the beginning of the 2020s, however, research in AI has boomed, with the resulting products now starting to revolutionize business… in a good way. Generative AI (GenAI), which can create new content based on prompts human users input, has proven especially productive. Consider these good reasons to welcome these handy programs. AI is easy to use. The hardest part is installing the program, and that’s not hard at all. When you’ve got your GenAI tool up and running, you can provide it with simple text prompts, telling it what to create or how to edit an existing text, image, song, or other “modality,” as the industry calls them. Some AIs can even convert one modality to another, like an image to a text. AI can automate repetitive tasks. The ultimate goal of GenAI—contrary to popular belief—is to make jobs easier, not to replace them. GenAI is a tool, just like your computer, printer, phone, or other software. If you have repetitive tasks you take care of every day or week, like standardized reports, spreadsheets, or other routine documents, you can use GenAI to handle them. It’s also great for data analysis, research (much better than search engines), and administrative tasks. It can even organize your calendar, take care of some email, or schedule meetings. AI works great for customer service. GenAI can offer customer service agents real-time recommendations on how to respond to customers during support calls. Such programs can also provide links to internal documents that explain technical issues. One study has shown that AI helpers can make customer support workers 14% more productive by it making easier to address customer issues. Less experienced and less-skilled workers saw even greater results from GenAI use, boosting their productivity by an average of 35%. AI can help coders write software. In one study involving 70 experienced programmers who regularly coded an average of nine hours per day, half used a GenAI tool to help them perform a specific programming task, while the others coded without using AI at all. Those who used the AI tool finished in an average of 1.2 hours, while the control group took an average of 2.7 hours. That means the GenAI tool helped its users complete their tasks more than twice as fast (126%) as those who didn’t use the tool. Imagine your workers producing twice as much in a single week, just because they adopted a simple-to-use software program! Moving Right Along You may be thinking, “Generative AIs seem almost too easy to use.” Maybe so, but it’s poised to take productivity to a whole new level. Not so long ago, fears of triggering apocalyptic scenarios hamstrung efforts to develop AI for benevolent uses. But the recent business benefits are impressive. Some alarmists still scream about the perils of chatbots and virtual assistants, and fiction editors hate AI, for good reason. But it’s proven profitable and safe in business contexts, and it hasn’t taken over the world. So far, so good. © 2024 Laura Stack. Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE is known as The Productivity Pro®. She is an award-winning keynote speaker, bestselling author, and noted authority on personal productivity. For 30+ years, she has given keynote speeches and workshops on increasing workplace productivity in high-stress environments. Stack has authored eight books, including the bestselling What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do. She is a past president of the National Speakers Association and a member of the exclusive Speaker Hall of Fame. To book Laura speak at an upcoming meeting or event, contact her at www.TheProductivityPro.com. View the full article

by Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE “Artificial intelligence would be the ultimate version of Google. The ultimate search engine that would understand everything on the web. It would understand exactly what you wanted, and it would give you the right thing. We’re nowhere near doing that now. However, we can get incrementally closer to that, and that is basically what we work on.” ― Larry Page, co-inventor of the Google search engine. Is there anyone in the Western world who hasn’t seen (or at least heard about) the Terminator or Matrix movie franchises? As much as we’ve loved our Tamagotchis, Furbys, and Roombas, we still worry our digital and robotic creations will grow beyond us so fast and so far they’ll learn to hate us or simply become indifferent to our presence, destroying us in the process. Even the late Stephen Hawking, probably one of the most intelligent people to ever live, worried it might happen. Hawking aside, those who fear technology typically do so because they don’t understand it. This has occurred throughout history. Some cavemen probably rejected that newfangled spear-thingy—until it proved itself in action. Consider weaver Ned Ludd, who supposedly destroyed two stocking-knitting machines in 1779, afraid they would take his job. Some alarmists in the 1800s thought riding trains would kill them, because the speed would rip them apart or cause them to suffocate; and parents in the 1920s refused to let their children listen to the radios for fear it would “enthrall” them. Those fears proved groundless. In the 1980s, many people thought computers would replace them, when in fact they just made most of us more productive. This type of mistrust has also hampered the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Computer scientists first proposed AI in the 1950s, though research stalled for decades starting in the 1970s, due to the fears so well illustrated by the abovementioned movies. Since the beginning of the 2020s, however, research in AI has boomed, with the resulting products now starting to revolutionize business… in a good way. Generative AI (GenAI), which can create new content based on prompts human users input, has proven especially productive. Consider these good reasons to welcome these handy programs. AI is easy to use. The hardest part is installing the program, and that’s not hard at all. When you’ve got your GenAI tool up and running, you can provide it with simple text prompts, telling it what to create or how to edit an existing text, image, song, or other “modality,” as the industry calls them. Some AIs can even convert one modality to another, like an image to a text. AI can automate repetitive tasks. The ultimate goal of GenAI—contrary to popular belief—is to make jobs easier, not to replace them. GenAI is a tool, just like your computer, printer, phone, or other software. If you have repetitive tasks you take care of every day or week, like standardized reports, spreadsheets, or other routine documents, you can use GenAI to handle them. It’s also great for data analysis, research (much better than search engines), and administrative tasks. It can even organize your calendar, take care of some email, or schedule meetings. AI works great for customer service. GenAI can offer customer service agents real-time recommendations on how to respond to customers during support calls. Such programs can also provide links to internal documents that explain technical issues. One study has shown that AI helpers can make customer support workers 14% more productive by it making easier to address customer issues. Less experienced and less-skilled workers saw even greater results from GenAI use, boosting their productivity by an average of 35%. AI can help coders write software. In one study involving 70 experienced programmers who regularly coded an average of nine hours per day, half used a GenAI tool to help them perform a specific programming task, while the others coded without using AI at all. Those who used the AI tool finished in an average of 1.2 hours, while the control group took an average of 2.7 hours. That means the GenAI tool helped its users complete their tasks more than twice as fast (126%) as those who didn’t use the tool. Imagine your workers producing twice as much in a single week, just because they adopted a simple-to-use software program! Moving Right Along You may be thinking, “Generative AIs seem almost too easy to use.” Maybe so, but it’s poised to take productivity to a whole new level. Not so long ago, fears of triggering apocalyptic scenarios hamstrung efforts to develop AI for benevolent uses. But the recent business benefits are impressive. Some alarmists still scream about the perils of chatbots and virtual assistants, and fiction editors hate AI, for good reason. But it’s proven profitable and safe in business contexts, and it hasn’t taken over the world. So far, so good. © 2024 Laura Stack. Laura Stack, MBA, CSP, CPAE is known as The Productivity Pro®. She is an award-winning keynote speaker, bestselling author, and noted authority on personal productivity. For 30+ years, she has given keynote speeches and workshops on increasing workplace productivity in high-stress environments. Stack has authored eight books, including the bestselling What to Do When There’s Too Much to Do. She is a past president of the National Speakers Association and a member of the exclusive Speaker Hall of Fame. To book Laura speak at an upcoming meeting or event, contact her at www.TheProductivityPro.com. View the full article

What happens when digital nomads don't get enough work while on the road? Meet Josh Cooper, a resilient freelance video editor from the UK, who shares his journey through the rocky landscape of the UK TV and film sector. But it's not all about work; we also discuss the emotional and physical hurdles of a nomadic lifestyle. Josh opens up about dealing with work-related stress, personal health issues, and the emotional complexities of returning home in his mid-30s. Listen to my first interview with Josh: Josh' Journey (Pt 1): Starting The Digital Nomad Lifestyle Connect with Josh: @heyjoshcooper on instagramhjcproductions.com Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

During more than a full school year of remote learning, millions of educators and students participated in the largest distance learning experiment ever seen. New educational technology tools that embraced video connection and collaborative workspaces showed us all the potential of the classroom of the future. View the full article

Effective collaboration is essential for driving innovation and success in today's fast-paced business world. For enterprise businesses navigating the challenges of the modern workplace, embracing hybrid collaboration tools is key to unlocking seamless communication and productivity. View the full article

Dive into the transformation of workplace communication with this detailed look at Microsoft Teams. With a vast user base exceeding 300 million, Teams has evolved into a cultural staple, providing effortless collaboration and integrated features for advanced video conferencing experiences in 2024 and beyond. View the full article

Kendra is back with an update about her digital nomad life. In this episode, Kendra and I chat about her travel plans, first time nomading in SE Asia, and going from in-person to online coaching. Connect with Kendra: @selflove_journey_ on instagramOn her website Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

If you’ve spent any time consuming productivity content in the last few years, you’ve likely been exposed to “digital minimalism” rhetoric. It’s all these proclamations that claim to be the be-all-and-end-all of healthy ways to navigate a world increasingly uncomfortably surrounded by screens. Monitoring screen time like a hawk. Keeping your phone in your pocket The post Digital minimalism, again, for real appeared first on RescueTime Blog. View the full article

Video conferencing meetings are central to the way we work. Whether your team is in-office, hybrid, or remote, most meetings have at least one remote participant. Face-to-face communication is important, even if you can't all meet in person. With the right video conferencing platforms and solutions, teams can work together or with customers and clients effectively, no matter where they're located. View the full article

Hey folks, If you cannot travel right now, for whatever reason, ​this website​ will take you on a real-time, virtual walk in a city of your choosing. I find it strangely relaxing. We have a great lineup of articles for you in this newsletter edition. Happy reading! Vic Our Favorite Articles 💯The Most Important Part Of The Job Search (LinkedIn)Sharing another fantastic post from Katie McIntyre's LinkedIn. Before you start applying for jobs, do ​this →​ Europe’s Least Visited Places (EuroNews)Discover these off-the-beaten-path spots and be a part of the solution to overtourism. ​Read more →​ Were you offered remote work for $1,200 a day? It's probably a scam (CBS News)Catherine Fischer from LinkedIn shares great insights on recognizing job scams and keeping safe. ​See details →​ Local Coworking Spaces Thrive Where WeWork Dared Not Go (Wired)Who needs WeWork when you can work in a chapel? ​Learn more →​ This Week's Sponsor 🙌Borderless, the newsletter for global citizensEvery week, the SafetyWing team handpicks the most interesting, weird, and wacky goings-on in the worlds of nomads, remote workers, and expat communities. Whether you're in Bali or Bucharest, Borderless is designed to help you navigate the quirks of working on the internet and living across borders. Subscribe now ↗️ Remotive Jobs 💼Is this job for you? 👉 ​Product Designer​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉 ​Generative AI Content Creator​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉 ​UGC Content Creator​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉 ​Marketing Strategist​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉 ​Fullstack Engineer​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉 ​Lead Generator​ at Contra (Worldwide) 👉​ Content Writer​ at ProWriterSites (Worldwide) 👉 ​Senior Fullstack Developer (Next.js+React.js)​ at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​Senior Frontend Developer (React.js+Next.js)​ at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​Senior Mobile Cross-Platform Developer (Firebase)​ at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​Senior Ruby on Rails Developer​ at Proxify (CET +/- 3 hours) 👉 ​French, German or Mandarin online teachers (night shifts)​ at AE Virtual Class (Americas) Free Guides & Tools ​Public Job Board​We curate 2,000 remote jobs so you don't have to! ​Find your remote job →​ ​Exclusive Webinar​3 Mistakes to Avoid When Looking For A Remote Startup Job (And What To Do Instead). ​Register for free →​ ​Job Search Tips​Looking for a remote job? Here are our tips to help you work remotely. Check it out → View the full article

Growing up in New York, first in the city and then later in Albany, a young Herman Melville made frequent trips to stay with his uncle, Thomas Melvill, who lived on a farm near Pittsfield, in the Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts. In 1850, Thomas decided to sell his property. Melville, now with a young family of his own, arrived that summer for what they believed to be his final visit to the area. It was during this fateful trip that Melville learned that the Brewster farm, consisting of 160 acres abutting his uncle’s plot, was up for sale. Fueled by impulse and nostalgia, he borrowed $3000 from his father-in-law and bought the property. He would come to call it Arrowhead in reference to native artifacts he found in its fields. Melville’s plan for his time at Arrowhead was to write. He had recently published a series of bestselling adventure novels, drawing from the half-decade he spent wandering the Pacific as a sailor. He felt confident that his literary success would continue and the time was right to fully invest in this vision. A few days ago, I travelled down to Arrowhead, now preserved by the Berkshire Historical Society, to better understand the writing-centered life that Melville constructed. The original house is small, its second floor needing to fit Melville’s own family, as well as his mother and multiple sisters. He none-the-less claimed a sizable east-facing room for his office. Melville used a dining table to write, giving him ample room to spread out his books and notes. He pushed the table against a window offering a direct view of the hump-backed Mount Greylock in the distance: (Legend has it that the whale-like appearance of the mountain inspired Moby Dick. We know this can’t be true because Melville conceived the novel before moving to Arrowhead, but his orientation toward the mountain, both physically and psychologically, clearly marks it as an important source of poetic inspiration for his work.) Melville’s desk is flanked by bookshelves. A fireplace behind him boasts a poker forged from a whaling harpoon. According to the docent who led us on a tour, this setup, impressive as it is, was only temporary. Melville’s eventual plan was to raze the house and build a grander structure featuring a “writing tower.” How did Melville make use of these spaces? We can gain some insight into his daily routine from a letter he wrote to a friend during this period: I rise at eight–thereabouts–& go to my barn–say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast…My own breakfast over, I go to my work-room & light my fire–then spread my M.S.S. on the table–take one business squint at it, & fall to with a will. At 2 1/2 p.m. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise & go to the door, which serves to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be. . . . The thirteen years Melville would spend at Arrowhead, writing half of each day at his dining table desk overlooking the mountains beyond, were the most productive of his career. The works he completed at Arrowhead included, most notably, Moby Dick, but also Pierre, the Confidence-Man, and Israel Potter, not to mention some of his best-known short stories, such as I and My Chimney, Benito Cereno, and Bartleby the Scrivener. (Tragically, these works were largely critical and commercial failures during Melville’s lifetime, leading him to eventually fall into debt before returning to New York to take a desk job. They wouldn’t become recognized as American classics until the early twentieth century.) A couple weeks ago, I wrote a dispatch from the writing shed I was working from this July to help jumpstart a new book project. Melville’s Arrowhead provides a nice example of these same creative principles pushed toward a more notable extreme. Melville wanted to write, and knew that to do so at the level that could produce something of the caliber of Moby Dick would require great attention paid not just to what he was working on, but also where these efforts took place. #### In other news… On the most recent episode of my Deep Questions podcast, I explored small habits that can lead to big results in the quest to find depth in a distracted world. (watch | listen) Meanwhile, for those who are still curious about my new book, Slow Productivity, Big Think just published a useful video in which I explain the book’s main principles. The post Dispatch from Herman Melville’s Farm appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Growing up in New York, first in the city and then later in Albany, a young Herman Melville made frequent trips to stay with his uncle, Thomas Melvill, who lived on a farm near Pittsfield, in the Berkshire mountains of Western Massachusetts. In 1850, Thomas decided to sell his property. Melville, now with a young family of his own, arrived that summer for what they believed to be his final visit to the area. It was during this fateful trip that Melville learned that the Brewster farm, consisting of 160 acres abutting his uncle’s plot, was up for sale. Fueled by impulse and nostalgia, he borrowed $3000 from his father-in-law and bought the property. He would come to call it Arrowhead in reference to native artifacts he found in its fields. Melville’s plan for his time at Arrowhead was to write. He had recently published a series of bestselling adventure novels, drawing from the half-decade he spent wandering the Pacific as a sailor. He felt confident that his literary success would continue and the time was right to fully invest in this vision. A few days ago, I travelled down to Arrowhead, now preserved by the Berkshire Historical Society, to better understand the writing-centered life that Melville constructed. The original house is small, its second floor needing to fit Melville’s own family, as well as his mother and multiple sisters. He none-the-less claimed a sizable east-facing room for his office. Melville used a dining table to write, giving him ample room to spread out his books and notes. He pushed the table against a window offering a direct view of the hump-backed Mount Greylock in the distance: (Legend has it that the whale-like appearance of the mountain inspired Moby Dick. We know this can’t be true because Melville conceived the novel before moving to Arrowhead, but his orientation toward the mountain, both physically and psychologically, clearly marks it as an important source of poetic inspiration for his work.) Melville’s desk is flanked by bookshelves. A fireplace behind him boasts a poker forged from a whaling harpoon. According to the docent who led us on a tour, this setup, impressive as it is, was only temporary. Melville’s eventual plan was to raze the house and build a grander structure featuring a “writing tower.” How did Melville make use of these spaces? We can gain some insight into his daily routine from a letter he wrote to a friend during this period: I rise at eight–thereabouts–& go to my barn–say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast…My own breakfast over, I go to my work-room & light my fire–then spread my M.S.S. on the table–take one business squint at it, & fall to with a will. At 2 1/2 p.m. I hear a preconcerted knock at my door, which (by request) continues till I rise & go to the door, which serves to wean me effectively from my writing, however interested I may be. . . . The thirteen years Melville would spend at Arrowhead, writing half of each day at his dining table desk overlooking the mountains beyond, were the most productive of his career. The works he completed at Arrowhead included, most notably, Moby Dick, but also Pierre, the Confidence-Man, and Israel Potter, not to mention some of his best-known short stories, such as I and My Chimney, Benito Cereno, and Bartleby the Scrivener. (Tragically, these works were largely critical and commercial failures during Melville’s lifetime, leading him to eventually fall into debt before returning to New York to take a desk job. They wouldn’t become recognized as American classics until the early twentieth century.) A couple weeks ago, I wrote a dispatch from the writing shed I was working from this July to help jumpstart a new book project. Melville’s Arrowhead provides a nice example of these same creative principles pushed toward a more notable extreme. Melville wanted to write, and knew that to do so at the level that could produce something of the caliber of Moby Dick would require great attention paid not just to what he was working on, but also where these efforts took place. #### In other news… On the most recent episode of my Deep Questions podcast, I explored small habits that can lead to big results in the quest to find depth in a distracted world. (watch | listen) Meanwhile, for those who are still curious about my new book, Slow Productivity, Big Think just published a useful video in which I explain the book’s main principles. The post Dispatch from Herman Melville’s Farm appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Talib transitioned his role at his brick-and-mortar business in Toronto to fully remote to become a digital nomad. In this episode he shares how he runs his brick and mortar business remotely, and what he learned from traveling while working. Connect with Talib: www.everevolving.caIG: @everevolving.ca Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

What drives someone to leave the comforts of home and venture into the unknown, visiting 134 countries while working remotely? Meet Orest Zub, a Ukrainian trailblazer in the digital nomad community. He transformed a humble travel guide website into a thriving travel agency and now leads Nomad Media, a cutting-edge travel tech company. Connect with Orest: nomadmania.com@orestzub on instagramYoutube Connect with Anne: Leave a review or voice message at digitalnomadstories.coOn instagram @annes_nomadstoryLearn more about my business: The Podcast Babes

I’m writing this from a rental property, on a hillside overlooking the northern reach of the Taconic Mountains. A key feature of this property is a small outbuilding, designed and built by the current owner as a quiet place for visitors to work. Spanning, at most, twelve feet square, it features a daybed, a heating stove, and a desk arranged to look outward toward the distant peaks. A ceiling fan moves the air on muggy afternoons. Here’s a view from the desk: This rental property, in other words, includes a canonical example of one of my all-time favorite styles of functional architecture: the writing shed. (Indeed, as the owner told me, I’m not the first professional writer to use this space for this purpose in recent years.) In my daily life in Takoma Park, Maryland, I don’t lack for interesting places to write. We designed the library in our house, which includes a custom-built Huston & Company library-style desk, specifically with writing in mind. (If you’re interested in what this looks like, the Spanish newspaper El País recently published a profile that includes a nice shot of me at my desk.) When I need a change of scenery while at home, I’ll also write on my front porch, where, during the grossest days of the DC summer, I’ll use a large floor fan to blow away the mosquitos and moderate the temperature. I also spend a considerable amount of time working amid the comforting din of our local coffee shop. But as long-time readers of this newsletter know, I’ve always felt that there was something particularly special about the idea of writing in a quiet shed nestled in a quiet piece of natural property, such as what was enjoyed by Michael Pollan, David McCullough, and, perhaps my favorite example, E.B. White: Which is all to say that I was excited, on arriving at this rental property, to spend a few weeks wrangling the early stages of a new book in a writing shed of my own. So what have I learned so far? Writing sheds don’t make the specific cognitive act of writing easier. It’s tempting to believe that the right aesthetics will usher in the muse and transport your efforts into a time-warping flow-state. But this doesn’t happen. Writing is still hard, requiring you to marshal multiple parts of your brain to work in synchronized and focused tandem toward the impossibly demanding task of producing well-crafted sentences. But these sheds do seem to improve many of the general factors that surround this act. For example, they’re wonderfully effective at dampening the siren call of distraction. These rooms are used for a single purpose, so they lack the associations with other activities or interests that can so easily hijack your attention. The calming, natural environment beyond their windows also has a way of lulling the parts of your brain uninvolved in the writing task at hand into a harmless quiescence. Meanwhile, the novelty of their setting seems to lower the energy investment required to convince your brain to slip beyond its cacophonous inner-chatter and enter a deeper state more conducive to focus. This all combines into a notable increase in mental stamina. Sessions that might have lasted ninety minutes at home can easily stretch to two or three hours amid the slow quiet of the shed. The writing is still hard, but it’s a more sustainable sort of hard. There’s a lesson lurking here that extends beyond just writing: when it comes to cognitive work more generally, psychological factors matter. Whether you’re writing a book, or crafting computer code, or solving a business problem, or analyzing noisy data, you’re attempting to coax sustained abstract focus from a human brain not necessarily evolved for such intensely symbolic processing. Of course elements like setting should really matter, as should other subtle elements such as how many total tasks you’re juggling, or the degree to which your day is necessarily fragmented by distraction. In knowledge work, productivity is about psychology as much as it is about tools and process. But we often ignore this reality. As I can attest from personal experience, as I sit writing this essay, watching the clouds of an early morning rain shower clear off the distant mountains: If you really care about producing quality work, these softer factors matter. The post Dispatch from a Writing Shed appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

I’m writing this from a rental property, on a hillside overlooking the northern reach of the Taconic Mountains. A key feature of this property is a small outbuilding, designed and built by the current owner as a quiet place for visitors to work. Spanning, at most, twelve feet square, it features a daybed, a heating stove, and a desk arranged to look outward toward the distant peaks. A ceiling fan moves the air on muggy afternoons. Here’s a view from the desk: This rental property, in other words, includes a canonical example of one of my all-time favorite styles of functional architecture: the writing shed. (Indeed, as the owner told me, I’m not the first professional writer to use this space for this purpose in recent years.) In my daily life in Takoma Park, Maryland, I don’t lack for interesting places to write. We designed the library in our house, which includes a custom-built Huston & Company library-style desk, specifically with writing in mind. (If you’re interested in what this looks like, the Spanish newspaper El País recently published a profile that includes a nice shot of me at my desk.) When I need a change of scenery while at home, I’ll also write on my front porch, where, during the grossest days of the DC summer, I’ll use a large floor fan to blow away the mosquitos and moderate the temperature. I also spend a considerable amount of time working amid the comforting din of our local coffee shop. But as long-time readers of this newsletter know, I’ve always felt that there was something particularly special about the idea of writing in a quiet shed nestled in a quiet piece of natural property, such as what was enjoyed by Michael Pollan, David McCullough, and, perhaps my favorite example, E.B. White: Which is all to say that I was excited, on arriving at this rental property, to spend a few weeks wrangling the early stages of a new book in a writing shed of my own. So what have I learned so far? Writing sheds don’t make the specific cognitive act of writing easier. It’s tempting to believe that the right aesthetics will usher in the muse and transport your efforts into a time-warping flow-state. But this doesn’t happen. Writing is still hard, requiring you to marshal multiple parts of your brain to work in synchronized and focused tandem toward the impossibly demanding task of producing well-crafted sentences. But these sheds do seem to improve many of the general factors that surround this act. For example, they’re wonderfully effective at dampening the siren call of distraction. These rooms are used for a single purpose, so they lack the associations with other activities or interests that can so easily hijack your attention. The calming, natural environment beyond their windows also has a way of lulling the parts of your brain uninvolved in the writing task at hand into a harmless quiescence. Meanwhile, the novelty of their setting seems to lower the energy investment required to convince your brain to slip beyond its cacophonous inner-chatter and enter a deeper state more conducive to focus. This all combines into a notable increase in mental stamina. Sessions that might have lasted ninety minutes at home can easily stretch to two or three hours amid the slow quiet of the shed. The writing is still hard, but it’s a more sustainable sort of hard. There’s a lesson lurking here that extends beyond just writing: when it comes to cognitive work more generally, psychological factors matter. Whether you’re writing a book, or crafting computer code, or solving a business problem, or analyzing noisy data, you’re attempting to coax sustained abstract focus from a human brain not necessarily evolved for such intensely symbolic processing. Of course elements like setting should really matter, as should other subtle elements such as how many total tasks you’re juggling, or the degree to which your day is necessarily fragmented by distraction. In knowledge work, productivity is about psychology as much as it is about tools and process. But we often ignore this reality. As I can attest from personal experience, as I sit writing this essay, watching the clouds of an early morning rain shower clear off the distant mountains: If you really care about producing quality work, these softer factors matter. The post Dispatch from a Writing Shed appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article