An essential guide to digital nomad trends in 2022

Curious to know what your fellow nomads are up to? 🤔 As of December, the digital nomad community reached 35 million members worldwide. While the community continues to grow, our habits are changing too. Here are some notable digital nomad trends in 2022.

Transform your world with slow travel 

Slow travel is all about entering new worlds. Rather than rushing to see the next tourist destination and posting it on Instagram, slow travel is about making connections. Connections with people, places, and cultures. It’s about making the mindset shift to learn to see the world differently through the eyes of a new culture.

Digital nomads are in the unique position of being able to engage in slow travel indefinitely. With a source of income wherever you are in the world, you can take the time to grow and develop at the heart of a local community.  

Help look after the planet with sustainable living

The next digital nomad trend of 2022 is sustainable living. This is closely tied to slow travel and is becoming a major way of life among digital nomads. Sustainable living is about minimizing the negative effects we have on nature, the local environment, people, and businesses. This is particularly important for us, as we live and work in different countries around the world. Our choices make a big difference to the local communities we live among.

As we all know, the tourism industry is not good for the planet’s natural resources. By 2050, 40% of the world’s carbon emissions are predicted to be generated from tourism. Package holiday resorts are often built on areas of natural beauty. And the money pouring into foreign-owned businesses is usually redirected out of the country.  

Some of the most effective ways we can limit the negative impact of the tourism industry is to:

1. Keep air-miles down. This means taking trains and buses if we can, and traveling locally on foot or by bicycle. If we need to fly, then direct flights have a lighter carbon footprint. 
2. Eat locally.  Buying naturally sourced ingredients to cook with is a great way to give something back to the local community.
3. Travel Slowly. Slow travel means boosting the local economy. Staying in locally owned accommodation, eating local food, and taking public transport all contributes to enriching the community’s resources. Rather than redirecting money out of the country, slow travel helps sustain local business.

Take time out for self-care 

Over the last few years, the importance of self-care has become increasingly recognized. It’s crucial to our quality of life that we don’t overwork, eat healthily, and take time to relax. 

A work ethic that finds time to switch off is also an ideal environment for building an online career. Burnout is not the path to success. And sleepless nights don’t get us more clients. 

This is an especially important message for digital nomads. When we work remotely from our laptops, it can be easy to end up working long hours with no breaks. Our time often isn’t divided up into office hours, and our lives can become dominated by work. Taking time out for self-care is an important digital nomad trend that reminds us to do more of what makes us happy.

Giving back to the local community

More and more digital nomads are seeing the importance of giving something back to the communities they live among. As we’ve seen, this can mean buying merchandise from local shops, cooking with locally sourced ingredients, and engaging in slow travel rather than traveling with exploitative tourist operators.

Collaboration tools

Online collaboration tools are becoming a staple ingredient of the digital nomad’s work kit. Programs like Trello, Asana and Slack are increasingly used to organize time, communicate with clients, collaborate with colleagues, keep in touch with your team, and generally keep online businesses running smoothly. If you’re a digital nomad and you haven’t tried one of these out yet, it might be worth taking one for a spin. 

Takea break from social media

Social media can be a great way to keep up with the world while you travel. You can stay connected with friends and family, and of course it’s a great tool for finding places to stay.  

But it’s an increasing trend among digital nomads to take a break from Instagram and Facebook, and live more mindfully in the beautiful environments they find themselves in. One of the best things about being a digital nomad is that you get to be out in the world. To live in it. To explore it. To inhabit it. Social media can get in the way of that, pulling your mind away to focus on other concerns.

Say “no” to hustle culture

More clients. More work. More money. Hustle culture is easy to buy into when you’re an entrepreneur. You’re in the game of building success. And it’s all too easy to feel guilty for taking a break – especially when you’re running your own business.

Here’s the thing about hustle…

It might help you get short-term wins, but it’s not sustainable in the long run. Digital nomads know that rest – not hustle – helps make them better entrepreneurs. And achieve better work-life balance while they’re at it.

Virtual networking events

In 2022, digital nomads aren’t the only ones working from their laptops. As WFH becomes more popular, more meetings and events are taking place online.

Connecting with other entrepreneurs via “coffee chats” and attending virtual events is a great way to build your network and find other digital nomads to collaborate with. A simple Google search will help you find virtual events in your field.

Share a home with digital nomads in a co-living space

Co-living emerged from the co-working culture that grew in popularity in the 2010s. While co-working spaces are designed for professionals to work together, co-living spaces are designed for digital nomads to live, support, and thrive inside a meaningful community.

The concept of co-living ties in with the themes of slow travel and self-care. Living alongside other digital nomads means more support, a safer environment, and more opportunities to connect with the local culture.

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