Guest Post: 6 Reasons to Work from the Road

Why is the nomadic working lifestyle so popular these days? More people are using new strategies and lifestyles to get work done from anywhere they happen to be, instead of setting down roots in a particular brick-and-mortar location, whether that’s an office, or even a home office.

Let’s talk about some of the top reasons to take this kind of transient approach to modern work life.

Skip the Bills

Essentially, there are a lot of costs involved in owning property or leasing it long-term.

Above and beyond the base costs of housing per month, you have utilities and everything else. That cost can be considerable, where people who are working out of a mobile home or some other portable location typically won’t have a lot of these monthly bills. Either they will have different fees involving parking a mobile home, or maybe all-inclusive parking and utility costs that are much smaller than the costs of paying on a financed home.

That savings in itself leads to a sense of freedom and experience, as career pros accomplish those life hacks that allow them to work well from the road. Being mobile also makes a career professional more versatile in ways that we’ll cover below.

A Change of Scenery

Many psychologists would say we shouldn’t discount the value of getting different impacts from a range of environments as we make our way through our careers.

Basically, staying in the same place can become stagnant over time. People talk about “pacing the same square of carpet” or getting “stuck in a rut” in some sort of home or office location. That feeling of being stuck, bored or uninspired is more common in the work world than many of us might think, and for some, life on the road is the ideal solution. Working from the road often empowers people to think about things in a new way, with all of those neat and interesting new scenes to inspire them.

Moving for Opportunities

Another key point about a roving career lifestyle is that it puts you closer to new opportunities as they come up.

One of the big drawbacks of having a fixed home or office location is that you can’t just move to where a particularly compelling job is, or where you might be needed most by an employer at a given time.

The transient job lifestyle solves all of this. You can find excellent opportunities to live in a given community, through all-inclusive resorts or campgrounds, or some other kind of living setup that combines all of your financial needs into one neat package. You can “get centered” and get going without a lot of the up-front cost of moving somewhere more permanently.

Multitasking

There’s also a compelling value to quick moving when it comes to multitasking. That’s your ability to manage one two or more things at the same time.

When you’re on the road, you’re actively managing everything about your lifestyle as you move. Working from the road provides you with that bread-and-butter sustenance you need at the same time. You’re doing all of the things at once, and wearing many hats, but it typically pays off for people who like this kind of ambulatory lifestyle.

A Thought Leader in Your Field

Want another reason to work from the road?

Part of that experience is likely to give you a broader base on which to comment on whatever field or industry you are a part of.

That’s because as you go, you can see different businesses and different ways to approach a particular market or industry.

You can see more about what works and what doesn’t work, and what’s popular in your field. All of this leads to what the experts call thought leadership – or thought authority – the ability to comment from an informed place on what’s common in a particular business process. In fact, thought leadership is so important that companies are investing in it quite a bit – through their blogs, in continuing education, etc.

“To stay at the top of thought leadership in your space, you need to constantly evolve and embrace new ways of communicating with your market,” writes Forbes Council member Aaron Agius. “What are your largest competitors doing? Why do you think they’re doing that? A little competitive research goes a long way.”

So that experience is going to be important, too, as you move around and enjoy life without a more permanent fixture.

Working for a Cause

Working in a mobile way can also get you closer to particular movements and causes that you believe in, whether it’s a charity project or a nonprofit that needs your expertise and skill to help others.

That’s another value of living and working on the road where you’re not tied down to a particular place.

Take a look at these and other reasons to engage in boondocking or camper lifestyles or some kind of nomadic career setup.