🔎 Guest: Desk to Destination: Mixing Freelancing & Travel with Rita
🔎 Guest: A Digital Strategy Specialist who has embraced nomading
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🔎 Guest: These are featur interviews with experienced and fascinating Women Nomads, which was inspired whilst visiting Tirana in 2022.
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Meet Rita Batalha, a freelancer and contractor with over 15 years of experience in Digital and Strategy. Since 2021, she has been freelance contracting for companies, whilst embracing the nomadic lifestyle and advocating for remote work.
She loves writing about her transition to freelancing and helping others with her experiences. She has been interviewed by Salt and has several blogs on her Medium.
During her solo digital nomad lifestyle, Rita has visited 12 countries, discovered nomadic traveller communities, and met small businesses and entrepreneurs.
She is currently based in London, England (her home base), after exploring South America for three months, doing remote work in Mallorca and Cornwall, and taking some recharge time in Portugal earlier this year.
TLDR: 🫱🏽🫲🏾 In case you don’t know me already, I am Ro, I am based in Zaragoza, Spain with my Location Independent, somewhat Nomadic (4-6 months a years of nomading) family. For work, I am a Remote Work and Digital Nomad Expert, Advisor and Writer, oh and a Linkedin Top Voice.
All my web and FREE resource links are here and you can book a 1:1 here.
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🫶How do you take care of yourself when Nomading?
I am usually fully booked with client work, so my routine and rituals depend on the current project/work situation, location, time zone, and ability to access a community and network with like-minded individuals.
My typical daily plan includes:
Early morning: Personal and business time, including LinkedIn interactions, prospect engagement, and writing on Medium.
Morning/Afternoon: Focus on client work, with breaks for walks or digital-free activities like visiting museums and galleries.
Late Afternoon/Evening: Minimal work in the evening, occasional email checks, and leisure activities like chess, reading, cooking, and community events.
✴️ How do you find community as a nomad?
Finding communities while travelling can be a challenge, especially if you are solo travelling and living by yourself. Isolation and loneliness can be one of the biggest difficulties of being a digital nomad and remote worker.
To avoid feeling isolated, I prefer:
Staying at Selina locations, known for catering to digital nomads with co-working spaces, recreation, wellness, and local experiences.
Connecting with locals on LinkedIn and joining social media groups for travellers, digital nomads, and remote workers.
Using Meetup or local advertisements/word of mouth to participate in local experiences and find local communities, like the Quiet Meet-Up in Falmouth, for quieter, like-minded locals.
🌱 How do you consider the planet and minimise your impact?
As a global citizen and digital nomad, sustainability and climate change have become a top priority when it comes to travelling, shopping, or simply making day-to-day decisions to help reduce carbon footprint.
Some of my actions include:
Maximizing the use of public transport to reduce my carbon footprint.
Choosing products with sustainable packaging and clean ingredients.
Shopping at second-hand and vintage shops to promote reusing and upcycling items.
Using natural shampoo bars to minimize plastic waste and for travel convenience.
Carrying non-perishable items like salt and pepper to reduce food waste during frequent location changes.
My next aspiration is to start offsetting emissions from my flights by contributing to certified climate projects that encourage the expansion of renewable energy and help us transition to a net zero economy.
May the road rise to meet you,
love n light,
💚 Ro