Did you ever get tired of traveling full-time?

Did you ever feel you missed something?

A healthy fitness routine, a decent work-life balance, and tranquillity in your mental patterns?

To us, traveling is our ultimate passion. We love it so much that we made it part of our job as digital nomads and wrote a very long and detailed article explaining why we believe traveling is so important in life.

I said that, with my girlfriend Isa, we often happen to change places every other day: for work, to meet up with friends, or simply because we still have the urge to cram all the possible adventures into every day of our lives.

At the beginning of every trip, we love it!

As time goes on though, and days pass by, inside us often grows the feeling of being a bit “tossed around”, or as we describe it between us with a funny Italian word, we feel “sballottolati” (literally “tossed around like balls” – if you try to pronounce it, I believe you could pretty much get the description of the feeling I’m trying to describe 😉 ).

After traveling full-time for over 10 years, as backpackers before and with a self-built campervan in recent years, we slowly learned to create routines, little rules, and little tricks to make our long-term traveling more pleasurable, healthy, and enjoyable.

Today, we want to share this little 10 personal tips with you, as we thought that if even a single person could benefit from our experience, this would have been worth sharing 🙂

Enjoy the read (and the now!) 😉

1. Stick to Small Routines to avoid the feeling

of being constantly tossed around.

When you often change the place you sleep, it is easy to feel “tossed around”.

When I was hopping from hostel to hostel, I surely loved the vibe of a new place every day, but keeping a healthy work-life balance or fitness routine was extremely hard: different beds, different toilets every day, different restaurants where to eat, different kitchens were to cook, different people inviting you for different activities and different parties…

It was all amazing for short stays/trips, but honestly a bit overwhelming when traveling long-term as a digital nomad trying to keep up a proper fitness and working schedule.

I feel that our human brain needs some kind of order to focus on the things we truly want or need to do.

Because of this, when the environment surrounding us keeps changing, it is crazily important to have order within ourselves.

I found this order by establishing simple patterns (“routines” if you concede me the term), to be followed every day.

Here is a typical routine I was following when traveling full-time:

• 8.00 Wake Up and Wash
• 08.15 Skip Breakfast and go for a 45minutes walk / without a phone
• 09.00 Tiny Break to pick up the laptop and find the right place to work
• 10.00-13.00 Deep Work
• 13.00-15.00 Eat and Relax
• 15.00-19.00 Explore
• 19.00-20.00 Fitness Hour
• 20.00 Dinner Time
• 21.00-23.00 Social Time

Following this routine every day made my unpredictable days (in new places!), slightly more predictable, and helped me greatly to orient myself and help me keep on track to follow my objectives.

Of course, every person needs to craft their routine. I am not saying that you need to follow the routine at that time (I don’t even know you nor your goals!), but simply that having a routine will help you feel more at ease in your everyday life while traveling long-term, and feel way less “sballottolato“ 😉

2. Listen to your Body and

learn to Rest when you need it!

When I was in my early 20s, especially on my first shorter trips, I felt like a superhuman: every day a new adventure, a new hike, a new pub crawl, a new ride…

While traveling long-time though, I realized that there’s no need to rush every day and that slow-traveling is way much more rewarding for the soul and gentle on our bodies.

Starting traveling with my girlfriend Isa a few years later, I realized even more how taxing long-term traveling could be on the body – as she is physically more fragile than me and had quite a few back problems in the past – and how important is listening to it.

If your body is telling you today is not the day to make that hike or stroll around town, listen to it!

Destinations don’t escape: they are always there!

Visiting a place when you are tired or you don’t feel in good shape would hardly be a nice experience, and more often than not is simply best to postpone to a better day.

Long-term traveling gives you the flexibility to allocate the activities you want to do between days, switching and re-designing your trip as you see fit: use that flexibility to your advantage to feel better!

Plans can change all the time, and health comes always first, so don’t feel guilty and take that extra afternoon at the beach guilt-free when you need it! 🙂

3. Stay connected to your Homebase,

without losing focus on the Now

Keeping contact with your loved one back home is extremely important to maintain strong relationships, and of course, can contribute to make you feel good and give you an extra push during your trips.

Said that it’s also of utmost importance to strike the right balance between calling home and living tin he moment.

Being too often in contact with your homebase, can take you out of context and damage your immersion in a new reality.

If you get too busy “narrating/showing” what’s going on there through socials, you might lose the everyday bits that make long-term traveling truly a life-changing experience.

Personally, after years of experimentation, I found that calling home 20 minutes once a week is the perfect amount of time to get updates while staying in the present moment.

Of course, depending on how long you’ve been traveling, your right amount could be much more or even less than that!

My tip for you is to grow conscious of what’s happening while you’re calling home and try to analyze for yourself how that connection makes you feel: if it contributes to your happiness, if it impairs your ability to live the now, or if it’s a pretty neutral action.

Last but not least, for some travelers, staying connected also means continuing mental health care remotely.

Online therapy options, like those offered by the Manhattan Mental Health Counseling make it possible to access professional support from anywhere in the world, helping you stay grounded even when you’re far from home.

All in all, be conscious, be aware, and I am sure you’ll be striking the perfect balance! 😉

4. Define your Fitness goals

and Create a Sustainable Food Strategy

I love fitness and I love going to the gym: bench press, lats, pull-ups, curls…you name it!

I have a fitness routine I would have liked to have followed for years (8 years by now!!!), but which I always failed to follow while traveling long-term.

The reasons I thought were several: one-entry gym memberships were too expensive, gyms were not always available, finding the right food was complicated, I didn’t have my own kitchen for cooking…

After all this time, if I think back, I realize how those reasons in reality were just EXCUSES!

I failed to follow a fitness routine because I did not PLAN my environment, and I just went with the flow accepting the false conviction that my head created that “traveling and doing serious fitness don’t go well together”. So WRONG!

When I think about it now…cooking is possible everywhere (a portable stove costs a few euros and they sell it everywhere in the world and every hostel has a kitchen!), while there are apps and fitness routines to fit every kind of life (ex. I could have chosen to practice calisthenics instead of stubbornly doing nothing because there was no gym around!).

If I think it now, my tip for you would be: to define your goals!

Once done, design a comfortable environment that supports you in doing the “right thing” and that aligns you with your goals.

You don’t need to eat just anything just because you are traveling, almost everywhere there are options, and else just plan ahead and cook something beforehand!

If you don’t know how to cook, traveling long-term is a valuable chance to learn! If you have some fitness goals, find the right fitness routine that aligns with your travel schedule.

Right now, it has been 3 years since I’ve been traveling with a campervan full-time, and often we happen to park far away from anything.

Training outside is awesome, but sometimes sadly not possible.

Outside might be too hot in summer, or extremely freezing in winter, or sometimes we are parked in a not-so-fancy parking in a random industrial area…

Fortunately, I found a routine that allows me to train even in those 2 meters squared that is our van: of course, it’s not a gym, it’s not ideal, but it’s much better than doing nothing!

Remember: healthy fitness and a sustainable diet start with thinking, don’t let travel take the helm of your life (like happened to me for many years!), but take the time to steer it and align your goals with your long-term wandering! 🙂

5. Don’t forget to Build Movement

into your Days to avoid excess Laptop Hours

As digital nomads, there were (and still are sometimes!) days when we spent the whole day in front of the laptop.

It’s work yes, but no matter where you are, spending the whole day in front of the laptop can be pretty alienating.

If you’re not doing anything special during a day, it’s easy to forget it as it never happened, and that’s something I always try to avoid: that’s why I choose to travel in the first place – to make every day different and not re-live the same days over and over! 😀

Building movement into your travel routine is not only healthy for the body, but it also gives you time to reconnect with yourself, your dreams, your life,and your goals.

To avoid staying full days without movement, I would suggest you always reserve a time spot in your day for taking a walk or a jog. It can be in the morning before work, or in the evening after a long day of work.

Of course, for some types of travelers such the backpackers, movement happens naturally every day while traveling.

If you’re traveling with a campervan though (like us), you stay long-term in hostels/resorts, or join guided tours, moving every day is not so obvious.

Doctors say that we humans need at least 10.000 steps a day to keep healthy at our best, so keep that in mind and block slots of time in your schedule: you’ll be more relaxed, more healthy, more immersed in the now and more fit to endure all the challenges that long-term traveling might bring in to you! 🙂

6.  Take Digital Breaks

to reconnect with Yourself

Movement is one side of the coin: it keeps you fit and physically healthy!

Flipping the coin on the other side, we can say also that: digital breaks are what keep digital nomads psychologically in shape!

In modern days, phones have the power to attract our attention and retain it for hours and hours.

Did you know that all modern phones have a function that records how many hours you spend on your phone per day?

Well…I was expecting to spend using the phone 1-2 hours per day, but I realized I was using it up to 6-7 hours a day, crazy!!

I dared many friends to check out the same, and everyone I know was surprised by realizing how many long hours we spend on our phones every day it’s crazy, try to believe!

By becoming conscious about it, we get the superpower of being able to measure it and reduce it: my tip for you is thus to monitor the use of your devices, check out weekly statistics, and then draw your conclusions.

The benefits of taking digital breaks, according to research, are improved mental clarity (avoiding the overload of information!), better sleep quality, enhanced physical health (better posture!), strengthened real relationships (more opportunities for human interaction!), and boosted creativity (more space for your thoughts to wander freely!).

In conclusion, I would summarize it like this: remember to disconnect (from the technology) to reconnect (with yourself); you will see how a couple of hours without technology might enrich your journeys and make your days more memorable! 🙂 

7. Manage Money Smartly

and Track your Expenses!

For years I never tracked my expenses.

Money was going in, flowing out: didn’t know exactly from where, nor exactly where to!

I am not a financial advisor, and it’s not the objective of this blog post to fix how you manage your money, but I just would like to share something that worked for me: a tracker app!

Three years ago, I downloaded this free app called “Budget and Finances” and started recording all my travel (and life!) expenses.

Thinking about it now, I overly regret not starting it sooner!

With the help of technology, keeping track of the expenses has been a breeze: when I spent something, I got the custom of immediately just writing it down). Bus ticket? Wrote. Gift for friends? Wrote. Souvenir magnet? Wrote. Beer on the beach? Wrote…

And now I’m able to look back and remember where I spent every cent and analyze, what I did well and where I was too much of a squanderer; it’s crazy when you see it at the end of the year, divided by month and/or category of expense!

For example, I noticed that in one year I spent over 1000$ on beers, almost as much as I spent dining out! The year after, knowing that I paid more attention and by saving over half of that, I paid for a 5-day trip to Paris with my gf…crazy! 🙂

Learning to track your expenses will greatly help you to plan, and budget better your next routes, and overall help you to travel longer and cheaper.

Don’t wait over 10 years like I did! 😉

8. Learn to Carry only what you Truly Need,

and throw away the fluff!

Heavy pieces of luggage impair you down, heavy backpacks weight on your back, and an overpacked campervan might become very soon too claustrophobic.

No matter what your long-term travel style is, learning to bring just the essentials is a key part of your journey.

As a rule of thumb: the less you bring, the more flexible you become.

Think for example that when luggage/backpacks are light, you can decide to walk instead of taking a taxi (saving money!), and you can walk longer distances and sweat less in warm climates.

The most common pitfall we fall into during our traveling is bringing too many clothes, thinking it would always be cumbersome to wash them… well, that’s the wrongest assumption ever, that most people tend to make: WASHING MACHINES ARE EVERYWHERE!

Everywhere in the world you can find an automatic washing machine, most hostels have a washing machine, most hotels offer the washing service, and worst case scenario, you’ll always find a sink to rinse your clothes in an emergency situation.

Thus, my tip for you would be: picture to bring on your long-term traveling the clothes you think you would need for one week. You’ll find out soon, that even those are enough for two weeks and that washing is really a breeze almost anywhere!

As for the other things, here are some further tips:

• Wanna bring books or writing copies? They can become very heavy, so stick to one or switch to a lightweight kindle.

• Need a cork-screwer? A tiny knife and fork? A screwdriver? A scissor? Get a basic Swiss-knife and will serve you in 99% of the cases.

• Do you notice you’re bringing deadweight you never use? Send it home or leave it, only when you make space by throwing the old you notice how you’ll be much more likely to mentally have the space for the new 🙂

9. Don’t forget to Nurture 

your Life-Long Learning Attitude

Travelling is an energy-intensive activity most of the time: you want to visit, explore, breathe in new places, get to know new people,e and make new experiences. Where you channel your energy, is up to you!

The world out there can be seen both as a giant playground and as a natural school, in the way that like children growing up, we travelers are faced every day with countless opportunities to learn something new and expand our knowledge about our planet and our mental boundaries.

To travel long-term and benefit from this lucky privilege (yes, because traveling long-term indeed IS a privilege you should always be grateful for), it is thus important for travelers to realize this magnificent opportunity and channel our attention away from being simple tourists, and into being conscious travelers with a life-long learning attitude.

Where can you grow your knowledge while traveling?

Think museums, expositions, free walking tours, chatting with local people, attending local events, travel guides, and books… when traveling long-term you have much more time than the one you need for running from one landmark to another, so make it a routine to dedicate part of your time to deepen your knowledge about what you see!

Doing this, you will become a much more interesting person and it will help you to put your traveler condition into perspective and make a greater sense of the world around you (which is one of the reasons you’re traveling in the first place right? 😉 ).

10. Give time to a places,

and learn to let the first impression sink!

“Right time, right place” they often say.

Sometimes (many times!) while traveling, can happen that by reaching a destination at the wrong moment you’ll get a bad impression of it.

This happened to me countless times, especially when arriving late at night: in the Airport of Hanoi in Vietnam everybody looked like a scammer to me, and walking the streets of Asuncion in Paraguay late at night creeped me out, when I reached Sao Paulo the first time I was scared the taxi driver would bring me to a favela to sell my organs, etc…

Tiredness, darkness, not understanding the foreign language, not knowing the local map… these are all factors that can help contribute to moving a sense of “alert, fear or doubt” within us and question whether a place is truly nice and safe as we heard before.

Getting in places on especially crowdy days might also turn them into absolute chaos and ruin your first impression if you’re not up for it: think about religious processions, city marathons, cycling events, football matches, large concerts…

Countless are the reasons why a place could leave you a bad impression from the start… my tip for you is to “let it flow”, take a day or two or break and relax, observe with an open mind, take a stroll around, take a second one, let the place sink in and give it another chance… you might be surprised how things can change.

I loved Asunciòn during the day, in Hanoi I was helped by everyone, and in Sao Paulo I spent the best 6 months of my life!

Give places a second chance, and you will not regret it! 😉

Conclusion

And here we come at the end of this article!

In this post, we shared with you 10 little tips from our experience that we try to follow ourselves while traveling long-term and which work greatly for us 🙂

What are your thoughts about them?

Do you have other ideas or suggestions that could benefit the other readers looking to improve their long-term journeys?

Let us know in the comments below, we always love to have some chit-chat with fellow travelers 😀

Hereafter I will leave you a few articles that you might be also interested in checking out:

• 15 Interesting Facts about Rome you didn’t Know!
• Travel Italy: Discover the most Beautiful Destinations in Italy and How to Visit them!

Thank you for reading,

And see you in the next article!