🔎 Guest: Ensuring health is a priority for all Digital Nomads
🔎 Guest: Ensuring health is a priority for all Digital Nomads
Meet Sarah, Head of Content at Genki & hear her 5 second rule for wellbeing
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Meet Sarah Kuhlemann, Head of Content at Genki and responsible for the Genki Guide, an online guide tailored to digital nomads and world residents with travel, lifestyle, health, and health insurance resources. As she has traveled lots but also lived abroad in India, China, and Vietnam, she hopes to give insights on little things, from the cost of living in nomad hotspots to useful links, everything to make travel planning easier to navigate!
Thanks to Genki, Sarah is covered with awesome worldwide health insurance and lives a location-independent life. Whether she works from Patagonia, Nepal, from a coworking space in Thailand, or in her future European home base - her job is flexible and allows her to balance her job and private life. Time zones don't matter, as Genki's team always finds an overlapping hour that fits everyone for a team meeting.
Additionally, Sarah founded Hub Hoi An Coworking Space, a 100% foreign-owned community & coworking space in Hoi An, Vietnam, which gained the coworker.com "2018 Members Choice Award". Sarah is super proud that Flo, the new coworking owner, re-opened on February 23rd and still receives support from the community she built during the first five years of the business.
🫶How do you take care of yourself when nomading?
As I am full-time at Genki, I don't need to search for other employment, projects, or new clients, and I use this time for regular morning yoga, meditation, and weekend excursions rather than for job hunts. Having a stable contract increases peace of mind. Additionally, I am not just a team member but also a customer, so I use Genki to keep up with health appointments, from regular checkups to teeth cleaning.
When working remotely, I recommend training the muscles for discipline and persistence. But what helps more is a morning routine and the 5-second rule. The 5 seconds rule means that once I made a decision, for example, getting up early, I have to take action within 5 seconds. I count, and it helps me to do it. This works for many things, like an email I don't want to write, but I have to.
My morning routine includes the following:
a glass of hot water and lemon
a 30 min. YouTube yoga session
followed by a 20-40 min meditation
walking for 30 min
listening to the world's news with The Economist app during my short walks.
After completing this routine, showering, and having coffee, I feel ready to start the day!
✴️ How do you find community as a nomad?
I love Lindy Hop and swing dance. I also look for dance classes or social dance events on Facebook. Otherwise, I would join a co-working space as it is a great and easy way to meet new people.
As a couple, making new friends is sometimes difficult, so it is essential to keep my solo time during the day to reconnect with friends abroad or meet new folks, either through a dance class or coworking.
»»Similarly, Stella likes taking pole classes and that local activities can help you meet local people.
This Digital Nomad Stories 💚 is a free edition, so if you like it, you can donate to support my writing work here and I would really 💚 appreciate it!
🌱 How do you consider the planet and minimise your impact?
I avoid frequent continent hopping and try to spend six months on one continent. With my boyfriend, we spend mostly four weeks or longer in one place. We try to avoid booking through platforms, instead we:
explore the area
speak to locals
mostly reserve directly with local people
I also have other environmental practices when that help me keep as a minimalist:
I buy when something is completely broken.
For clothes, I "shop" in my sister's flea market box once a year, and I make great finds in her wardrobe. After one year, I return the clothes to my sister, who lets me choose something new.
I buy local and organic food and rarely eat meat.
Additionally, my dad is an electric engineer, so I grew up with parents teaching me to switch off everything before I leave the house. I don't know why people use AC anyway!
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