Truth in the Nomading World – Are People Really Negotiating Out of 9-5?

Recently there has been a lot of talk about lifestyle design, The 4 Hour Work Week and negotiating your job to allow you to have a nomadic lifestyle. I was just reading a Muselife blog by David Walsh on how to negotiate a remote work agreement. There are lots of good points in it. Timothy Ferriss also spends a lot of time in his book discussing the same thing. In fact, in our upcoming book we touch upon it as well.

Believe me, I’m a big supporter of the idea. Surely there is an inordinate amount of wasted time happening in corporate America – time that could be morphed to allow a person to function outside of the office while maintaining their productivity and working from wherever they please. It all makes a huge amount of sense.

At the same time, though, I have to be honest about what I’m seeing. In my 3 years so far writing on the subject and interviewing nomads I’m running into a lot of self employed entrepreneurs and freelancers. In fact, most of us blogging on this subject I believe fit this description as well. I have as yet to find a nomadic individual who is getting their paycheck from a larger entity where they have negotiated a remote work agreement. That’s not to say they aren’t out there. I have heard about them – just haven’t met one yet. Which leads me to wonder how many people are negotiating remote work agreements successfully and traveling the world?

I’m actually hoping to draw some disagreement here and be introduced to a wealth of people who fit this category because there is a part of me that wants to be wrong about my suspicions. Perhaps the latest survey put out by Location Independent Living and Free Pursuits will shed some light on my question.

If I’m wrong please introduce me to some of these folks because I’d love to know more about what they’re doing and for whom. If I’m right – that most people actually nomading are self employed, what does that mean? What I believe it means is that or society hasn’t quite arrived to embrace this concept yet and that those folks out there with the balls to push their employers and be at the forefront will pioneer a movement from which everyone will benefit in the future.

  • http://www.simpleproductivity.com Sean

    I am lucky in that I love my job. It gives me the freedom to schedule with a lot of openness. Unfortunately, I also need to maintain a land line for the phone, dedicated high speed internet, and my address for UPS shipments from my employer.
    I am a professional field interviewer for social research projects. There are several research centers in the US, usually through universities, which employ people all over the country. My territory in the Charleston, SC coastal area. I’ve thought about how this job could be made more location independent, but I need the aforementioned umbilical ties to make it work. The privacy and confidentiality of the people we interview our primary concern. The university that I work for does not even permit the use of our cell phones when calling respondents!
    My wife are developing our streams of income that will eventually allow us to cut our tethers. One of the most effective things for us would be an employer who is comfortable with Nomadic teleworkers.

  • http://www.thewordcorner.com Liz

    I think you’re correct. From my experience and that of my colleagues there is resistance against telecommuting in the workplace. In general, it’s OK to outsource an entire department to India but it’s not OK to allow a regular employee to work remotely. (That was the case at my last job).
    If your supervisor allows it, upper management may frown on it (that happened to my sister and she had no choice but to resign even though she was a key employee and even though many of her clients complained about losing her).
    Like you said, I would like to think I’m mistaken and there are many companies out there that are the exception.

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