I've lived in fifteen countries in the last three years.
UK, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Brazil, Guatemala, Panama, Colombia, Spain, Morocco, Egypt, Singapore and Cyprus.
And a bunch of places in between that I've lost count of.
(top left: Antigua, Guatemala. top middle: Medellín, Colombia. top right: Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. bottom left: Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. bottom middle: Paradise Valley, Morocco. bottom right: Minca, Colombia.
Some of those places I got an insane amount of work done.
Others I barely opened my laptop in.
And for the longest time I thought the difference was discipline.
Like, if I’d just woken up earlier, planned better and locked in harder, then I'd be equally productive everywhere.
But as I’ve come to find out…
That's not how it works.
The places where I got the most done were the places where I was happiest.
Every single time.
Without exception.
In Chiang Mai, I was breathing toxic air during burning season and couldn't leave my apartment for weeks, and my output massively dropped.
Every March the burning season in northern Thailand (where farmers burn stubble to prepare for new crops) makes the region’s air quality one of the worst in the world.
In Cyprus, I spent a month stressed about tax structures, apartment hunting, and trying to make the maths work on a country that didn't feel right.
I barely shipped anything meaningful that month.
In Da Nang right now, I wake up, walk to a cafe, order a Vietnamese coffee for $1, come back home, open my laptop, and work for six hours straight without thinking about it.
My Da Nang workspace. It makes me happy. And I get more done as a result.
I'm shipping faster than I have in months.
Nothing changed about me.
The only thing that changed is that I'm somewhere that actually makes me happy.
This sounds obvious. It's not.
The entire digital nomad/indie hacker/founder space online is obsessed with optimising for the wrong things:
visa length
cost of living
co-working spaces
whether or not the local cafe serves oat milk
These things matter, but they're not the thing that determines whether you actually do your best work.
For example, I spent a month in Cyprus optimising for tax efficiency and it was the least productive month of my year so far.
I'm now in Vietnam where I pay more tax than I would have in Cyprus, and yet I'm building faster than ever, and making more money too.
Productivity follows happiness.
Not the other way around.
You can't grind your way to good output in a place that drains you.
I've tried. It doesn't work.
(that’s why I left the UK)
Your brain just finds ways to procrastinate, and you end up spending more energy trying to focus instead of actually focusing.
What I'd tell anyone choosing where to live and work remotely.
Ask yourself a simple question: where do I feel good?
Not where’s the cheapest, has the best tax regime, or looks best on Instagram (I promise Bali isn’t as cool as it seems).
Where do you feel calm, energised, and excited to open your laptop in the morning?
Go there.
The productivity will follow, and so will the money.
I learned this the hard way, and I'm still learning it as I continue to travel and build.
But if there's one thing the last three years of moving around has taught me, it's that your environment is not a background detail in your life.
It's probably the biggest input into your output, besides your health.
Pick it accordingly.
(And if you don't have an answer yet, that's fine. Pick somewhere, go for a month, and you'll know pretty quickly whether it's the right place or not.)
Question for you: where's the place you've felt most productive, and was it also where you were happiest? Reply and let me know. I read every single one :)
See you next Tuesday.
You've got this.
- Rob
P.S. No founder breakdown last week because I've been sick. But there's one dropping this Friday that’s one of the best breakdowns of SEO and AEO I've ever heard and I’m so excited to share it. You can subscribe to catch it when it’s out.
