Why Now is the Time to Unlearn Everything Weve Been Taught About Work

a few years ago

i left pretty much everything behind to

explore the unknown so with my laptop in

one hand

and my backpack in the other i’ve been

working

all the way from the mountaintops in

georgia

the night train through kazakhstan and

the jungle in sri lanka which wasn’t my

best idea

but to understand why i went on this

digital nomad journey in the first place

let me just back the tape to 2017.

so first just to give you some context

so

i was a high school dropout who

ended up breaking the idea of who can

become successful

so in 2017 i was running an

award-nominated company within the music

industry

supported by angel hayes and wu-tang

clan

i was living in the city of my dreams

barcelona with a partner in

a beautiful apartment so objectively

i had it all pretty much figured out

but in a matter of a few months i

lost it all

so one morning during an extremely hot

summer in barcelona

i woke up with severe

stomach cramps at first

i thought oh it’s going to go away it’s

going to pass after a day or two

but they never did a few months later

i was diagnosed with a chronic disease

called gerd i

pretty much lost my ability to swallow

my own food

and as a result i became

so deeply mall nurtured that i could

hardly

use my legs and the consequence of being

seriously ill were that my company

started to fall apart

their relationship ended and

i moved out of our apartment and into

a hospital in the midst of this

chaos during new year’s eve

i got a call saying that my grandpa had

passed away in a massive stroke

this was a pivotal moment

i would say in my life where everything

i thought i knew

just shifted i was

navigating through a rough breakup and

losing one of the most important people

in my life

so me my grandpa had a very special bond

and very much shared that desire to

explore the unknown

when he was young and didn’t have any

money to travel

he took matter in his own hands and

crossed the atlantic ocean

on a cargo ship to get to south america

but he had to put aside his passion for

traveling

for over 40 years because

obviously he had bills to pay and kids

to

feed and a job to maintain

so when he finally reached his pension

and thought that he could finally

continue the adventure he hoped for he

passed away

and this was a game-changing moment in

my journey where

everything i thought was important

completely

melted yes i was

fighting a horrible disease

but it enabled me to look at my life

with clearer eyes

losing my grandpa and going through a

lot of grief

at that time made me realize that

i want to build my life around something

that he could be proud of

something beyond prestige and

accomplishments

something that truly fueled my soul

and for me the answer was simple

i wanted to become a traveling digital

nomad so let me fast forward seven

months

so seven months later i had just landed

a job

as a digital marketer at this tech

startup and the first thing i did was

walk up to rs the ceo of this company

and i asked him so would you mind if i

worked from a coffee shop somewhere else

and he was like cool that’s totally fine

and i replied with okay but what if i do

it from

say kazakhstan and he looked at me

and said well maybe not

that far so this startup

has a thing called a happiness

philosophy

which basically means that there’s no

business

if people aren’t happy which was one of

the reasons for why i

jumped on board in the first place after

persistently trying to convince him

arif eventually got back to me and he

said

okay i had some thinking and if this

really

makes you happy then let’s give it a go

let’s try it out

so guess what i did

i got home that day i

packed my bags bought the cheapest

one-way ticket i could find

and never looked back

so you might wonder how did you get

there

getting to that point i would say when

my mindset shifted

things started to shift in the external

as well

i met the doctor in gastroenterology

was the first one who refused to give up

until my symptoms were minimized

i started visualizing a life

working from the road and even through

my worst

days i made small

but profound choices that would lead me

to that dream

and at first those choices were simply

having the strength to get out of bed in

the morning

having the strength to walk to the

mailbox and back

and eight months later i landed

a new dream job and worked with the

world

as my office

so now after years of

working out in the world without a home

i realized

first of all how incredibly privileged i

am to

possess a powerful passport and be able

to travel this seamlessly

but that’s that’s another ted talk the

one memory that really

stuck was working from kazakhstan for a

month

so i’ve just spent a weekend in a remote

village

with 20 strangers the remote village was

called saty

i have a photo of that here

so in the evening me and six kazakh

women

were sharing a meal together and this

was like randomly at

someone’s house in the middle of nowhere

with no phone signal

and at that point my russian was pretty

much non-existent

so one of the women at the dinner table

started to paint in her notebook to

clarify questions she was trying to ask

me

and later into the dinner we were all

communicating

by painting in our notebooks exchanging

stories about life and love

the day after i got in a taxi back home

to alamati where i was living

but just to clarify so a taxi in

kazakhstan

basically means that you just jump into

a stranger’s car

and you negotiate a price so i was

sitting in the strangest car

driving through the mountains at sunrise

and this immense feeling of freedom

just hit me

it hit me that freedom didn’t have to

mean

breaking free from everything i could

still maintain a job and a career

but do it in a way that allowed me to be

the full spectrum of myself

so i would lie if i said that working

remotely

hasn’t been challenging i would say that

two of the most

important skills to attain when working

remotely

are self-leadership and self-care

to be disciplined enough to make sure

that everything gets done

and loving enough to listen to your

body’s needs

just want to underline though that not

all jobs are possible to do remotely

nor are all people a fit for it

so after advising some of sweden’s

biggest companies

on how to shift from the office to

working from home during corona

this is the three fundamental challenges

for us to overcome the fear of

shaking up the how it used to be

our world is immensely different from a

hundred years ago

when the nine to five was born the

generations that are

settling into the workspace today have a

different mindset and different values

it’s not like we don’t have the tools

for remote work

it’s more about daring to shake up the

old infrastructure

and redefine work to align it

with the century that we live in

two autonomy

physical presence is no longer an

indicator of

productivity at work why because

just like me people want to move through

life

and feel a bigger sense of ownership

over their days

and essentially across a lifetime

so allowing flexibility to an extend

doesn’t mean

letting go of control because management

isn’t about

walking around making sure people do

their work

it’s about giving your employees the

best conditions to do so

so how do we do that anchor into a new

type of leadership

that is based on trust and not

visibility so what is a trust-based

leadership

me compare to dating

so say that you’re going on a first date

and

things are going great you’re not all of

a sudden

going to ask for proof proof that

assures you that

this person is trustworthy that this

person

will be a good loyal partner to you

we trust until there’s a reason

not to trust and we need to adapt to

that approach

in the work life as well

so in order to work differently we need

a new toolbox

now as we all know the majority of the

workforce

has been forced into this new way of

working

without the tools needed to do it

mindfully

so when we change the way we work we

need to change the way we move through

our days

and one major key here is as i mentioned

earlier is to cultivate self-leadership

it’s to care for your health and knowing

when to turn off the computer

it’s implementing routines

in your life that fulfills your being

it’s setting up boundaries for yourself

and knowing that

just because you’re able to work

whenever does not mean

you should it’s time to create a

workspace

where people can live in their full

truth and not be tied up to an outdated

idea of how work is supposed to look

like

many companies today have adapted to the

technological aspect of working from

home

so now the challenge is to implement a

human-centric approach

in order to actually create a workspace

with longevity

because a massive revolution is

unfolding as we speak

and we’re not going back to normal we

are creating

a new one thank you