Becoming a Digital Nomad with Justin Gary (Episode 017)

What is it like becoming a digital nomad these days?

Over the past year, Justin Gary ditched his office, moved out of his apartment, and got rid of his car to become a digital nomad. Now Justin runs his businesses while traveling and living around the world.

Justin Gary is an award-winning game designer and entrepreneur.

He started his career in gaming at the age of seventeen when he won the Magic: The Gathering US National Championships. Justin then escaped from NYU Law School to pursue his dream of becoming a professional game designer (we discussed Justin’s journey in a previous interview on Never Normal).

He’s since made games for global brands including Marvel, DC, World of Warcraft, and Bakugan. In 2010, Justin founded his own publishing company, Stone Blade Entertainment and released the hit deck-building game, Ascension.

Justin has also taught creativity principles at the Wharton School of Business and to companies including Twitter, Zillow, and Google.

Earlier this year, Justin and I launched Quality Questions together, where we collect and send questions that help you apply the key lessons from self improvement books and lectures to your own life.

Justin’s latest project is the Level Up habit journal.

In this episode we talk about:

Running a creative company remote vs in office
Learning to prototype games as a fully remote team
The two weeks that changed everything (“It was a shock to us. Why weren’t we doing this before!?”)
How not being allowed to come to the office turned into a new marketing strategy for Justin’s company
The “kick in the ass” that finally prompted Justin to move out of his apartment
“Fear setting” – What’s the worst that could happen when you move out to travel?
“The opportunity is never going to be better than now…”
The mindset shift Justin had to make to become a digital nomad
Being conscious of when your assumptions no longer hold
Optimizing for “being open to what presents itself” and “Get what’s good where you are”
What was harder about being a digital nomad than Justin expected
Nightmare in Costa Rica
“Discomfort is the price of admission”
How to balance the trade off between comfort, adventure, and productivity
How things change once you’ve been a digital nomad for years
How to plan travel when you have unlimited options
Building travel around your bucketlist
The “positive pressure” effect of only being in a place for a short time
The “surprising best part, by far, of being a digital nomad” for Justin
What Justin would do differently if he started again
When you should be willing to spend instead of saving money
Preserving your morning routine as a digital nomad

Books and Products Mentioned:

Follow Justin:

JustinGary.com – Justin’s main website
Think Like A Game Designer – Justin’s book, course, and podcast on Game Design
@Justin_Gary on Twitter

Listen and Subscribe on:

Transcript

Justin Gary

Think about your own bucket list, right? Think about your own things that you’re like really excited about, you’ve been really excited about. And you can build your travels kind of around that. So I always wanted to learn to sail. When I went up to Portland, my friend up there, I’d also wanted to learn to sail. So we booked sailing lessons. And I learned to sail when I was in Portland, I always wanted to learn to surf, despite living in San Diego, the waters too damn cold here, over there, I wasn’t interested. And so we went to Costa Rica and committed with another friend to go there. And we learned to surf. And that was fantastic. And we were going to Thailand, want to learn to scuba dive, you know. And so these are like all things that have been on my list for forever. And now I can go to the optimal place to do that very thing. And then just do it. And so there’s, whether that’s a music concert or salsa lessons or whatever it is that you’re you know, is on your personal list. I think it’s a really great opportunity to use those things as an exciting motivator to get you to different locations and at the very least, you know, have some great stories.

Neville Mehra

My guest for this episode is Justin Gary, an award winning game designer and a great friend. If you listened to the first episode of Never Normal, you might remember that he narrowly escaped a career in law to pursue his dream of becoming a game designer. He since founded his own game publishing company. He’s made games for global brands like Marvel, DC and World of Warcraft, and taught creativity principles at the Wharton School of Business and to companies like Twitter and Google. Now as a digital nomad, Justin runs his businesses while traveling and living around the world.

Justin Gary, welcome back to Never Normal. It’s been, I think about a year since we recorded last time, and I gotta say, I wasn’t necessarily planning on doing a third episode together. But then you went and became a digital nomad. So I couldn’t resist.

Justin Gary

Well, I kind of blame you for that. I mean, we’ve been friends now for more than two years. And you’ve been the digital nomad poster child for for a long time. And so it’s been something I kind of have always wanted to do, and really just never felt like I, I could do or it was always something I might do someday, maybe. And a variety of factors conspired to make it really come to life. And I’m really glad to

Neville Mehra

Excellent. Well, I would love to dive into that and kind of like, tease out some of those factors and how it’s all gone. So far. Let’s rewind back, let’s say, two years ago, November 2019, before COVID hit you were living and working in San Diego, right?

Justin Gary

Yep, that’s correct. So I was running my company there. And yet, we would have, we’d have a setup where basically, we would do three days in office and two days remotes, I’ve always recognized the value of remote work, but we really needed to, or I felt that we needed to be in office to connect with the team. And as people who listened to the earlier podcast will know I make physical games as the bulk of my business. So getting together and testing physical games in real life felt like it had to be a thing. So I always had to be in the office. And originally, my idea of what remote you know, becoming a digital nomad would be is that I would set it up. So my team would still go into the office and still do the things like normal, and I would set it up. So somehow I didn’t need to be there for that. And I can work remote, but other people would still be going to the office. Funny health things ended up working out obviously a little bit differently.

Neville Mehra

Yeah, so So you were already partly remote, I guess they call that hybrid these days. And it was basically just in what COVID hitting that forced everybody to work from home.

Justin Gary

Exactly. So we went from testing and building things in office to all of a sudden, everything getting shut down. Game. Design is not really an essential business. I couldn’t really justify making people come into the office. And I were the beta ball. Yeah. You know, I think that what was interesting for us, so this was right before we were going to ramp up to run our ascension tactics Kickstarter that summer. So it was August 2020 was when we were launching that campaign. And that was our biggest Kickstarter was our return to Kickstarter, after many, many years off is one of our biggest projects for my biggest brand, being a really cool miniatures game. And we weren’t done right. We were in the middle of working on it, if we had five months to go a little less. And so I was freaking out. I mean, the first week or so I didn’t know what we were going to do. And so we started just having to learn and to adapt. So we got a program called Tabletop Simulator that let us do exactly what it sounds like and simulate a tabletop but in virtual space. And we started working on building our prototypes in that had communicating through discord and working with everybody documenting things a little bit more cleanly and not necessarily being in the same room but being in the same virtual room and using these tools. And within two weeks less than two weeks, we had become infinitely more efficient than we were before. It was a shock to us of how much like why weren’t we doing this before? It was crazy. So we had two members of the team, actually three members of the team at the time, that would commute from Orange County to come down to San Diego, which is an hour drive in the boom, Orange County to come down to San Diego, which is an hour drive in the punch traffic. So you lost two to four hours a day of commuting time from those people and people get into the office, then there’s all these inefficiencies of work, physical work in a physical space, let alone the time and effort required to physically prototype things compared to how fast we can do it digitally. And how much more efficient our documentation processes got, like, everything just got better. You know, there’s definitely losses, I don’t want to undersell the importance of being in the same room and hydrating and there’s definitely value to that. But so much of that was just in my head. And so we became fully remote by the end of March and 2020. And we were rocking and rolling. And then we ended up using those same tools to now solve the other problems we had like marketing, right marketing, we typically when we market a game, we go to conventions, we do physical presence at stores and do a kind of roadshow. And none of that was possible either. And so we ended up having to leverage the same tools of discord and Tabletop Simulator and other items to be able to, you know, stream and show people the game and get people excited and build communities in a whole new way. So we just had to really revamp everything in ways that were ended up being very powerful for us.

Neville Mehra

There’s a lot of interesting stuff there. I’d even thought about that from a marketing standpoint. So you actually sort of like invite the kind of I guess it would be buyers within these stores and within the industry in to sort of see the games that you’re that you’re building. And now they’re making purchasing decisions, kind of like playing virtually with you. Is that the idea?

Justin Gary

Yeah, well, we’re just talking about players, right? When we’re talking about a Kickstarter campaigns. It’s just the end consumer and players and fans and enthusiasts that you’re trying to reach not necessarily any kind of buyer or store level type thing, right? And so it was just how do we get to those people. And fortunately, I have a reasonable personal audience and can reach through my email list or my own podcast. And so there was some reach there. But also, we worked with other influencers. And we reached out to other partners that could potentially get this in front of their audience. But yeah, we could just say, hey, come play with me. And we could do a video stream like this, and play in the virtual tabletop, and work through everything. And then people could play on their own and share it with friends. And so created a way that normally you would only if you were at a convention that I was at, maybe you could you could play it, or maybe you could watch somebody else, play it in the stream. But now you could play it yourself. And you could give feedback. And so the development process was very much more out in the open too. Because we almost in some sense, we had no choice. But also we were we were inviting people to come in and play the game before we would normally show it off. Normally, it would only be maybe a month or two before the campaign and we’re much more dialed in. But we did it three, four months out. And then we had people working with us and giving us feedback and really developing in a way that was really powerful and ended up building a much stronger community than than we’d ever done before. And we’ve continued that process forward even as we’re now able to go back to conventions and do physical, you know, physical testing every now and then

Neville Mehra

right head is kind of spinning thinking through this. So that’s really cool. I mean, like I really wanted to dive into the whole nomadic side of things. But actually on the business side, there’s there’s a lot there. That’s interesting, because first of all, I know this was already happening in some ways, but it seems like they’re almost like the line between a physical tabletop game and a digital game sort of blurred a little bit due to the pandemic, in the sense that you’re it’s the mechanics of a tabletop game. But now you’re inviting people to sort of see them online and play them online. And ultimately, it sounds like it’s still a physical product that’s like the end result. But there’s like just with being able to simulate online and people can play at a distance now. Or at least you can prototype at a distance, something changed there. But more interesting from the design perspective, especially for you as someone who’s like quite literally written a book about iteration and that core design loop. Like you’re now able to bring end users or customers into that process much earlier on. It sounds like hadn’t even thought about that as a change due to the pandemic.

Justin Gary

Yeah. And so when it came to ascension tactics and the campaign we ran last summer, that was very much a process and we were able to not only test and iterate faster, but we have to bring in customers faster and have a what was functionally a, you know, prototype available as marketing tool and as a testing tool with the campaign we just finished like two months ago. So Ford Fusion we We not only we took that a step further, because we did all of those things. And then we also now make it so that you are physical decks that you print. So the premise of software fusion is every deck is digitally printed and algorithmically generated. So they’re all one of a kind, unique decks, you can combine any two decks to play. It’s a game I co designed with Richard Garfield, the guy that created Magic, the Gathering the entire concept of trading card games. And now you can also scan your personal unique deck in to our online collection, and then play it also on Tabletop Simulator. So you now literally have a game that that crosses this physical digital boundary in multiple really interesting ways. And all that stuff is stuff that I probably would not have done or even thought to do in the way we did it, if not for this path, and the pandemic triggering these changes and realizing what was possible and seeing the power of of engagement and being able to get, have people be able to play wherever they are, right whether you if you’ve got a great local community, and you can play in a physical store, fantastic. If not near in some remote area or you’re on lockdown, you can just play the same game online, but still have your unique collection be the driving force for it. So something that’s been really exciting. From a business standpoint and a design standpoint, in the community building standpoint,

Neville Mehra

I love hearing how all that kind of came together. It’s funny, there’s like, a recurring theme that’s jumping out at me in this conversation and thinking back to others in completely different industries, which is like, I mean, you mentioned, you know, one of the one of the advantages you had sort of going into all this was that you already had an audience. So when everything went digital, like you at least had, you know, an email list that you could reach out to say, to invite people to be able to see new games or to, you know, go back to Kickstarter, or something like that. And it seems like across every industry that’s becoming, I mean already is but we’re becoming more aware of just how important that is. But also this idea of like building in public and sort of bring people into the process as you go not just like the old, make something and then try to sell it, it’s like as you’re making it, you’re inviting people in, and that’s helping you make it better. And that’s also helping you sell it. And so by the time it’s like a finished product, you already have people sort of clamoring to get it.

Justin Gary

Yeah, and there’s this interesting balance to strike. And that we’re still wrestling with internally, and I know many other companies are as well. So we have some projects where we’re taking this to the very extreme. So we have one game, which we call mech builder, which is a pressure luck deck building game where you’re battling mechs. And it’s just flipping cards off the top of the deck to play and try to push your luck without overheating, like try to get as many cards as you can before you overheat. And that one we have been playing and building and streaming on our stone blade Twitch channel. From very early from the very first prototypes, it was just kind of a concept we had cool. So we’re building out in the open way like years ahead of when I would normally put a game into the public and that’s been they get to see it evolve and participate. And so that’s been something that’s been this fun, interesting experiment to run so people can see it and be very, very involved from the very beginning. And that one we chose because it’s very extreme very well because every card is just flipped face up and you’re like making that go no go pressure luck decision in the moment everybody has the same information so it’s a very fun one to watch. So we decided that would be a really good one for streaming. However, when it comes to sort of new more speculative projects you know, there’s figuring out what’s the right time to move to the public sphere and which ones not is something we’re still interested in like we’re working right now on set to have Sol Ford Fusion which is this you know the game we just did the Kickstarter for and we internally have started working on salt onset to buy it’s not something I’m really ready to put out into the public because the public hasn’t even seen set one really right they have that they’ve seen the early prototype version of that it’s not even at market yet. And I think it’s distracting people with the set to before set one even exists has some downsides. That’s my theory I could totally be wrong on a two it could be the right answer just always be out front. But I think there’s still value to that surprise right to them not knowing everything that’s going to come out of a box and it’s going to come out of your product having some things that you keep back to give them that surprise wow moment and not just have everything always in the open I think there’s still some value to that as they as a designer and as an industry imagines it’s true from other industries too but this this is a real important question wrestling I think we all for a long time aired way too far on the side of the black box. And you don’t get to see this until it’s done. That’s definitely not correct. Whether it’s correct to go all the way to everything’s in public all the time. I don’t think that’s right, but where are we should fit on that spectrum. I do not know yet. And it’s interesting to play

Neville Mehra

Yeah, I think that’s that’s probably a very entertainment industry look kind of relevant trade off right was I think most people as you said, err way too far on the side of black box or like you know, keep things behind the curtain until they’re ready. And it’s not just building up demand, but it says as we’ve been talking about, like actually inviting the customer or prospective customer in to help make the thing better again, feedback early on, but I don’t think I want to see like how my favorite new Netflix show is going to end by watching the behind the scenes of how they filmed it before I’ve seen like, you know, the first episode of the second episode or whatever, so, yeah, definitely with entertainment, there’s some, you got to leave some room for surprise. Switching gears a bit. I’d love to kind of talk more about your personal experience in all of this, right? So, March 2020, famously, you know, the whole world kind of goes crazy goes on lockdown. COVID hits, you guys go remote. It sounds like you made the transition very smoothly and saw a lot of benefits. But what about in your personal life? Did you just say okay, like end of March, I’m outta here. I’m just gonna start traveling, like did you realize immediately that this would be the thing that would let you go nomadic? Or how did that play out?

Justin Gary

No. Well, in fact, it was it was in many ways the opposite. So I was previous to the March 2020, we’re done. I had been talking with you about testing the waters and like trying to become more remote. In the way I described before where it’s, you know, more me being remote, my team still just functioning without me being a central piece. And so I had planned a three week trip to Europe in March and another trip to Thailand later that year for two months. And so those things were my 2020 goals, which was like by slowly working my way to a nomad life. And of course, all that stuff got cancelled, because everything went to hell. But then it took me so I just changed my frame around travel entirely just we’re not gonna travel. It’s just, I normally travel a lot. That was the least I’ve ever traveled in my life. Since I was 17 years old. And I just stayed in my room. And I worked, I worked a lot. And I found ways to entertain myself. Fortunately, as a gamer, there’s plenty of ways to entertain yourself, if even if you’re locked in a room. That part was not a challenge. But I did I worked, I just worked. I stayed in my room and I worked and you know, spend time with my fiance and my cats. And that was pretty much life for a year. And it was towards the end. It was actually really at the be kind of early in 2021 when a couple of factors came into play, where it started really kicking me out the door to go to become a nomad. And so I can talk through those since I’m sure that’s the next follow up question here. One is I you know, as we mentioned, I live in San Diego and the housing market started to go completely crazy. And I was renting an apartment at the time. And they gave me a 60 day notice to vacate to because they wanted to sell it. So that made sense to me, I guess. But I was like, Okay, well, maybe I’ll buy it. And maybe I’ll buy another property. And so I started researching, maybe I’ll buy property. And we’ll put a pair of that. And then my fiance was lit working at a dog rescue that she loved that was kind of her dream job, she was running a kennel. But there were problems at her work. And she didn’t like the people that she was working with. And she was kind of ready to leave there. Pretty soon thereafter, also. And when I started looking into actually buying property, the market was completely insane. It was kind of thing where I’d have to spend a million dollars on a home. And then I had to bid $100,000 over the asking price. And then I would get outbid by another $100,000 All within days of something going on the market, like you would just rush around, it was completely crazy. The second time that happened. I’m like, This is not a game I want to play. This is not a game I want to play what what why am I doing this? And that’s when I started really taking into account the lessons you’ve taught me and a lot of other things like wait, why? Why am I here, I’ve been working from the exact same room for one year without ever seeing anybody else on my team. And in fact, the previous mental hook in my mind was like, hey, look, my team is here in San Diego, I should be here. But over the course of that year, that no longer became true. I had one of my guys moved up to Portland, I started hiring people from other places because while we’re working on remote, why not have a guy in Michigan or somebody in North Carolina or working with a team even in Australia and so I had the majority of the the the geographic distribution the team was not even where I was. So what was I doing? And so this was the kind of thing where I had the conversation with my fiance about what we could do and how we’re gonna whether we’d be down to give this a try and we said you know what, let’s just let’s do it. Right let’s go What’s the worst thing that happens right this is one of the key filter lessons. It’s a Tim Ferriss derivative one but it’s doing really powerful for me is right you know, sit fear setting, right what’s the worst thing that happens if you do the thing you’re afraid of? And then what’s the worst that happens if you don’t and when I realized the worst that happens if I just sold all my stuff and start traveling for a while as I come back I just get another place I do it you know I just back where I started. And the you know, the best parts of living this dream that I’ve had forever and getting to see the world and spend time with friends in different places. So we finally said okay, let’s do this. And so was that was around March, late March of 2020. This year 2021 So almost a year after the pandemic started, and by May 1 We were out of the apartment had sold all of our stuff had about a five by five by 10 storage unit was it and I kept my car. So we started in the US we started we did the driver There’s the first leg of the trip was to do a drive up the coast of the California coast, taking our time up there, which is amazing and awesome and a convertible. So it’s really the iconic idyllic thing, and then started staying in each place in the US for a little while. We stayed in Portland for a month, Seattle for a month, I spent a month in Nevada, before then, moving on to some more international travels. But I’ll pause there because I covered a lot of ground a few things

Neville Mehra

I want to come back to there. But so so basically took a year from the time you were effectively working remotely and had like figured out all the work workflows and all that stuff to actually doing it obviously, in your case. I mean, all of this was confounded by the pandemic, right in the sense that, you know, it wasn’t obvious in March 2020 Anyway, that things were gonna shake out the way that they did you guys figured out remote work early, but the idea that like, it wouldn’t be possible to go back to the office or that all the pandemics gonna last as long as it did. Or it wasn’t just two weeks to crush the curve, or whatever the slogan was, like, it took time, I think for all of that to become apparent, but even then, and of course, for like, you know, the world to reopen, and for it to be possible to travel and lockdowns to end and things like that vaccines to come out all the stuff that’s happened since then. But even then it sounds like it was really just the your landlord saying, Hey, buddy, you gotta go, I’m selling the place that was like this kick in the ass of a deadline. And as you and I both know, deadlines are magical. And even then you were sort of like a dramatic. You were on the fence between, like two with sound on the surface anyway to be like completely opposite decisions. It’s like, okay, well, if he wants to sell the place, I guess I could buy it and just sort of double down on living here forever, making a sort of more permanent move, or I’ll just become fully nomadic, I’ll buy a place or have no place at all.

Justin Gary

Yes, yes, those are the those do come across as opposite extremes. And in many ways they are it was funny, because I it wasn’t like, my life was bad before. It wasn’t like, I live in San Diego. It’s a beautiful place. And I loved it there. And I was living there for 17 years. And it was fine. I just did a recent stop back by for three weeks. The last almost just recently. And it really did remind me I still love it. Just because I’ve been to other places, and I love all the places I’ve traveled to doesn’t mean I don’t love San Diego or might not still end up there. But what came it came down to is the opportunity was never going to be better for me to do what I’m doing. Now. I don’t have any kids, that company is remote, we’re doing reasonably well. And now as the world’s opening up, there’s more opportunities to go place to place and, and so it was just it was one of the things where if I if I let this go, and I went into, you know, mortgage lockdown, if you will, then there would be a lot of reasons for me never to do this. And it might not might never happen. And so it was really just realizing that and taking advantage of the what the universe was providing me in a lot of ways that pushed me to to make this decision.

Neville Mehra

So much of that resonates. Yeah, I mean, I, one of the things I’m sort of curious to explore is how how it was different, you know, what, nine or so years later. And I think from my side, like so much of what you’re describing, where it’s basically just like, the psychology and just realizing that there’s never going to be a better time, right, like a deadline helps setting a date helps. And just this realization that, yeah, there’s never going to be a better time. Like, it’s never going to be the perfect time, there’s always going to be some friction around like, whether it’s selling your place or selling all your stuff or renting your place out and moving out telling your friends and family locally, like see you sometime. But in your case, it sounds like the stars really just sort of aligned there with like, everything going remote, your team doing really well remote. And then on top of all that your landlord saying like you got to find a new place anyway.

Justin Gary

Yeah, yeah. And it requires you to be willing to shift your mindset. So yes, in many ways things did shift. But I could very easily just said, Okay, well, I have to leave this place, I’ll just go to another place, or, Hey, we have to work remote for a certain period of time. So we’ll just muddle through it. And then we’ll get back to the office like we’re supposed to, or there’s a lot of people still stick with the default mindset, even when the situation circumstances change. And I try very hard to not be that person to really try to be conscious of when the assumptions that I had about my life, no longer hold. And spoiler alert, this is true for everybody all the time, right? I think it’s it’s every minimum five to 10 years, just radical things have changed in your life that you should be really adapting and, and not just externally but even internally what’s important what’s right for you. I don’t see myself as a long term digital nomad. I don’t think that this life is something at least the way I’m living it right now is something I would keep doing for more than two years, three years maybe. I think there’s importance to having roots in places and I think there’s a value to the stability as well. And we could unpack some of that stuff. But I think as as the phase of what this this phase of life is calling for. For me. This was the right decision and I’m getting a lot The value out of it. And so then what the next phase is going to be and when exactly it’s going to be there and what I’m going to be pulled to I don’t know yet, but I’m being very open to it. That’s actually one of the main values that I have right now. And then I’m optimizing for in life is that flexibility and being open to what presents itself? Alright. So for example, my I know, I’ve been wanting to go to Thailand has been at the top of my list for a long time, I was originally supposed to go to Thailand in two weeks. But instead, a bunch of our mutual friends are putting a house together in Colombia. And there’s this opportunity for people to go and have like a great little kind of working retreat with a fantastic team of people. And I said, Okay, let’s do that instead. And so change gears, we’re gonna go down to Colombia for a month before heading to Thailand. And it’s things like that, that seem like crazy, you know, outlandish things. Oh, yeah, sure. I’m just gonna go to Colombia next month, why not? And that was only put into place like two or three weeks ago, is really fun and exciting.

Neville Mehra

Yeah, you, you hit on something really profound there. On the difference between just sort of like muddling through and, and like choosing to thrive, right, we don’t get to pick the circumstances. I mean, your circumstances are fantastic. But we don’t always get to choose them. And yeah, like, in hindsight, sure, you know, the whole, the whole pandemic thing actually worked out pretty well for you. I love how you underscored that that was sort of a choice in the sense that, yeah, it could have just been, ah, well, we can’t go to the office. So I guess, you know, work is just gonna suck. Now, instead of like, let’s figure out a way to make this great. Like, how was this an advantage? What can we do now that we couldn’t do before, like, hire people in different cities and things like that, I continually have to sort of like remind myself of that lesson. Being a digital nomad in a weird way, is a constant reminder of that, because you sort of get all this like upside of flexibility. But you also get the kind of frustration of you have some things sort of pre programmed in your mind of like, I’m going to do X, and it’s just not practical where you are, right? Whether that’s like the quintessential terrible example of like the power of the internet going out when you’re trying to do some important work. I’ll give you an example. For me, like, you know, at some point, I’m like, trying to eat really healthy and like follow a strict diet. And for me, that means generally being like super low carb, I’m not always on this. But when I’m like trying to really eat well, that means being pretty low carb, and like eating a lot of like, healthy fats and protein. And there’s some countries where you travel, and it’s just like, it’s really hard to order food like that. And I just start to like, drive myself crazy. And I’m like, eating like a narrower and narrower set of foods that kind of comply. And at some point, I’m just like, What the hell am I doing? Like, and I have like a shorthand for this, which is just like, get what’s good, where you are, like, appreciate the thing. That’s good, where you are. And I love that your whole journey sort of is like the personification of that just taking advantage of the circumstances that have popped up?

Justin Gary

Oh, yeah. And there’s like, I definitely want to make sure we have time for like going through like the, you know, lessons and tips and tricks from this stuff. Because I know, that was what we talked about covering some on this. And what you’re bringing up, me is triggering a lot of that for me, right? There’s the idea of how do you stay healthy on the road? How do you build your routines on the road? What are the things that are really essential to you? And what are the things that you can let go of? Where is it right for you to, you know, appreciate what you have and indulge in the opportunities of the moment? And when is it right for you to be more rigid and hold to what your you know, prescribed schedule and events and structure is? And they’re they’re not easy answers, but definitely they’re better ways to think about the trade offs. And you know, some things as work specifically Well, for me as it sounds like for you that maybe maybe people would be interested in sharing

Neville Mehra

suggestion suggested noted. That’s exactly where I want to go at this. I’ll do it in a in a slightly different way. And ask, like, what has been the hardest part of making the transition for you so far? I mean, everything we’re saying, you know, it sounds amazing. It sounds like you’ve adapted really well. And you’re living this wonderful lifestyle and you visited cool places. But what’s been more difficult than you expect. It

Justin Gary

takes about a week, a time you get to a new place to get your routines and things settled in somewhat tying in to what we talked about. So the transitions have, you know, there was a period when I said I spent like a month in Nevada, it was not stable in one place. It was we were in Lake Tahoe and Reno and then we were in Vegas, and it was like it was moving way too much. And so I was very much less productive, less healthy, less, enjoying where I was. And so the traditional ideas of, you know, travel and vacation where yourself spend three days here and I’ll spend a week here if it is here. That is one of the worst things for the Nomad life or if you want to be able to be productive and settle in and get like a flow going short term travel is very tough. Similarly, we had we had a challenge of when I went to Costa Rica there we stayed in a place that was way too remote. We booked it for a month ahead of time, and it was regular power outages and internet outages and it was just a nightmare from a work and trying to be productive standpoint. So those things were those things were some some semi predictable, but not not as viscerally expected. Downsides, and I think that there’s, you know, there’s little things like little creature comforts right? Comfy comfy bed and pillow and having the things that you want to like stay you know, I’ve in my 40s, you know, you get, you get the little achy creak of the neck, and you’ve got to really work on stretching and those kinds of things. Yeah, there are tools to help but but definitely you finding the comforts of home that you want discomfort is the price of admission here, right, it’s the price of admission for personal growth, it’s somewhat the price of admission for for a nomad life in the the stuff that you’ve set up, right, I set up my home exactly the way I want it with everything exactly the way my lights are all automatic and controlled my beds exactly the way I want it, I’ve got my coffeemaker and all the things all set up and my routine, my morning routine all laid out, right, you just don’t get that when you’re traveling with just a backpack and, or in a you know, carry on with so we’ve been having, and we’re trying to sell down to just a backpack for the next phase of the trip if we can. So you know, it’s, it’s, it’s those things that are, take a little while to get used to and you learn and the longer you can, you can space out. So I’m actually very excited about the trip in Thailand is we’re gonna be there for two months, which will be the longest I’ve been in one location, I’ll probably will just be in one location there. But you know, for, for the most part probably stick to two locations. And I’m happy to get that settled in feeling a little boy you’re describing

Neville Mehra

like the pains of sort of moving around, some of them are inevitable. And going back to your earlier point. Some of them I think are mitigated by just moving around less often, right, like there’s a certain amount of just like hassle and discomfort and figuring out where the grocery store is and getting a local SIM card and all of that stuff, especially as you move to new countries, not just like different cities within a country and timezone differences depending on how far you’re going, that the more often you move, the more often you have to deal with them. But if you spread out and spend, you know more time in a place, you sort of amortize the hassle over a longer trip, and especially when you’re working and not just like, you know, being a tourist and seeing stuff and like trying to be sort of, especially in a job like yours be creative and functional. And all of that. Yeah, like you just need a certain amount of time to like, get things set up, right. But it’s never gonna be like as you I was laughing to myself, as you were describing all that because like, it’s, I used to have, like, automatic soap dispensers in all the bathrooms in my house, you know, and it’s like such a tiny little thing, but I remember someone commenting on it once. And so it stood out to me as like, yeah, it’s like how far optimized you get when you just live in one place. Whereas now I’m like, Oh, alright, there’s Yeah, but there’s a room? That’ll do.

Justin Gary

Yeah, yeah, I think there’s like, I think I’m feeling I’m still working through this, but I’m feeling like the, you know, longer term optimization for me that there would be two or three home bases that you move between, you know, or maybe two home bases, and then one that travel, you know, like that you pick up remote, and you’re staying in a place for three or four months at a time. And you have some places that are permanent and can be set up where you want them and how you want them and then others that are more temporary. I think that would be a nice mix at this point. But I don’t know, that’s I’m still always away from being able to set something like that

Neville Mehra

up three or four months and moving three or four times a year I think does sound ideal. I mean, when you factor in also visa policies, and then seasons and weather. I mean, some people like you know, always wanted to be warm, they just want to follow the sun around. So like, and then of course, you know, you spend a lot of time and let’s say Asia or something like that and your family’s in Florida, then you want to go back and visit them. And you want to have some time to do that, too. So something like that seems ideal people like other nomads that I know. And me too, like we tend to kind of cluster around in the beginning, traveling super often and moving places every few days or weeks and then getting burned out from that at some point or falling in love with the place and then just sort of settling somewhere for a while until eventually we get bored of that and sort of doing the whole what we call slow mad thing where you end up, you know, like moving once a year or something like that slow mad.

Justin Gary

I like that. That’s good. That’s good. Well, I mean, you’re now you now have a kid. So your situation has got to be much more interesting. Yeah.

Neville Mehra

So are like short term, shouldn’t say short term are kind of like Optima that we’ve settled on has been to me, first of all, do a bunch of travel before having a kid how have a kid the pandemic, you know, kind of threw a wrench in all of this. But the idea was to basically base ourselves somewhere that is a great quality of living somewhere that we love. So Valencia in Spain where we are, but that also allows for like, easy, interesting travel. Right? So like from here, we could be anywhere else in Europe in a relatively short time. And then like North Africa is around the corner. Sadly, we’ve done basically none of that was traveled within Spain, a good amount, but just with the pandemic and everything. Like oh, you know, best laid plans. But yeah, I mean, that was the

Justin Gary

idea. Yeah, yeah, it does that. Yeah, that’s key right now. You just have to be patient. endemic reactive, right? So part of Thailand was keeping an eye on, they were on lockdown for a while. And then they have the sandbox kind of quarantine program. Now they’ve opened up largely completely. Colombia is partially also very, you know, pretty open right now. And so we are, but you know, it can change from month to month. And So flexibility is somewhat somewhat mandatory. And, you know, it’s also nice to just have, for us, it’s been good to just put a few stakes in the ground and have things that can still be very flexible. So for example, we did one recently, which will be put me in your neck of the woods, I bought Metallica tickets in Portugal in July. So I’m a huge Metallica fan, I’ve seen them more than any other band. And it’s, it was like, I’ve never seen them in another country. So I thought that would be really fun. And so that was kind of the last stop on their world tour. So I’m like, Alright, I’m gonna make it over there somehow. And, you know, worst case, I’m out a couple 100 bucks on tickets. But I think it’s nice to have some things that you can look forward to and, and help plan around. So we’re, you know, we’re going to do, we did after Colombia, then we’ll go to Thailand to Thailand for two months, then I’ll be back in the States for two months, because I’ve got some projects and conventions and launches and things like that, and then do Europe for from May until probably August. So that’s my, my current itinerary, if you will, with enough that everything is intentionally able to be fuzzy and flexible. I think

Neville Mehra

those kind of like that’s such a good point, having like a few sort of tentpole type things that are like, you know, in your calendar, whatever the events sort of build an itinerary around, a Metallica concert is an awesome one. I did the exact same thing with patch mode for a while I started Depeche Mode a few times, whatever the last tour was, I think, once in Bratislava, and once in Moscow, and did the same thing with Ramstein. Also concerts, but even just like repositioning flights or whatever, like if you know, you’re going to spend some time in Europe, and then sometime in Asia or something like that, just booking that one long flight, and kind of saying, like, Okay, well, I know, I’m going to be here until this date, it’s so much easier, because like, when you have unlimited options of like, I could be anywhere for any amount of time, it’s sort of impossible to choose. But if you’re like, Okay, well, I have two months in Europe, and like, I really want to get to this place or this country, or like, my friends are going to be there. Like you’ve got people going to Colombia. So yeah, it’s really nice

Justin Gary

like doing, you know, you can, for anybody out there that wants to consider there’s a little bit less like, think about your own bucket list, right? Think about your own things that you’re like really excited about, or you’ve been really excited about. And you can build your travels kind of around that. So I always wanted to learn to sail. When I went up to Portland, my friend up there, I’d also wanted to learn to sail so we booked sailing lessons. And I learned to sail when I was in Portland, I always wanted to learn to surf despite living in San Diego, the waters too damn cold here. Over there, I wasn’t interested. And so we went to Costa Rica and committed with another friend to go there. And we learned to surf. And that was fantastic. And we were going to Thailand, want to learn to scuba dive, you know. And so these are like all things that have been on my list for forever. And now I can go to the optimal place to do that very thing, and then just do it. And so there’s, whether that’s a music concert or salsa lessons, or whatever it is that you’re you know, is on your personal list, I think it’s a really great opportunity to use those things as an exciting motivator to get you to different locations. And at the very least, you know, have some great stories at the end of the day that you can have for this experience, because it’s the kind of thing that everybody I talked to, Everybody I talked to is saying, Oh my God, that’s a dream. That’s what I want to do. I wish I fully I could and, you know, you it helps to realize that in the moment, right that when you’re doing this, whether it’s you know, doing it for a year or two years, or 10 years or three months, here, when you have these opportunities, you really want to be able to make the most out of them. And that’s that, that positive pressure around only being in a place for you know, a few weeks or a couple months, helps you you don’t do a lot of weekends just at home, right you don’t sit and Netflix and chill very much. Sometimes you do sometimes you’re tired and just want to that but you’re very with only in a place for a few weeks. And I know I’m going to be dialing in my routines and working and trying to be like relatively healthy during the week that I really want to take advantage the weekends I really want to take advantage of those times when I really can explore and enjoy the local environment and do things I wouldn’t otherwise be able to do. Those are that creates this really powerful expansion of time. Because every you know you have so many experiences in that short period time we’ve talked about this before but the the difference of you go through months or even years where you just are in the same routine doing the same thing over and over again, and you look back and you they all kind of blur together that time wasn’t really a big significant part of your life even if it could have been years. But when you’re every week you’re doing something new in a different in an exotic location and then every couple months or going to a new exotic location. You I could tell you stories for days about all the things that haven’t been I’ve been doing this for almost seven months now. And it feels like easily twice that long in lived experiences. So it’s really interesting.

Neville Mehra

No, totally I think I shared in a newsletter something recently that quote from Moonwalking with Einstein about how was it monotony compresses time, and novelty expands it. And like, I think when I first started in really traveling a lot in like 2013, for example, I was like, Yeah, constantly in new countries, new places, no restrictions. I feel like yeah, like I lived like a decade in that one year. And again, in 2016, when I had like a year, I was bouncing all over the place and doing the type of things you’re describing and visiting new countries and swimming with dolphins and all this too typical, but super fun stuff. And yeah, it’s like, it’s almost like you’re playing a game to bring it full circle and to give like a safe point every couple of days. Whereas, like, back home in normal life, I’m like, Yeah, I kind of remember had like a birthday party that year. And then one of my friends had a wedding. And it’s like, yeah, like the whole year is just a blur, because it was the same thing every single day.

Justin Gary

Yeah, the other thing I want to make sure to mention, too, which is, it’s been a driving force, probably the main driving force around my travels, and has been the surprising best part, by far of being a nomad is the time that I have gotten to spend with friends and people who I, you know, and family, and people I love who I normally would only get to see maybe once or twice a year, and whether it’s friends for a convention, or, you know, family for family gatherings. And I go, and I live in a place for a month, and I get to really drop in and spend time with them and, you know, connect on a deeper level. And that’s been incredibly powerful for me both personally, of course, and professionally as well. Because when I was up in Seattle, that’s a real Gaming Hub in LA, I didn’t realize until I went there, but I mean, I have more friends in that city than anywhere else in the world. I mean, easily, like 50 Plus really good friends, you know, who again, I only see once or twice a year. And so it was just like, so much fun to be able to connect and really drop in, and then other, you know, business contacts and relationships and ideas have kind of spawned from that and move forward. And, you know, when I was in Costa Rica, we had a bunch of house nomads that were all in to crypto businesses. And so we got to just chit chat about all that stuff, and developed concepts there. And yes, there’s all these like interesting things that come out of the relationships in the time. And so another tip for planning travel, I think is just, you know, going to where the people you care about are, and then that also has the added benefit of they know the place, so they can be a tour guide for you and help you, you know, find places it’s much easier to drop in as a local, if you have a local to help you, you know, learn the ropes.

Neville Mehra

Yeah, yeah, our mutual friend, Alex Solinsky, actually, we we recorded a never normal together, and kind of went deep on that exact topic, right. He’s the, the guy from the median house, we talked about the last version of that, that he did there. And also just the idea of like, I mean, we talked about traveling the world and seeing, you know, like your favorite band in concert. And of course, there were like the dead heads. And people who did this for other bands, where they would like, you know, just follow a band around the world. But you can actually, as you’re saying, like, sort of follow your social network around the world, right, where you make some friends, and then they go to different places, and you travel and go see the people that you know, and just kind of connect cities where you know, people, but if you start doing that, and then attending whether it’s like a conference or like a couchsurfing meetup or any sort of social thing, soon enough, you’ll meet other people who are kind of going the other direction. And then you start getting in these like WhatsApp groups where it’s like, Oh, I’m gonna be in Bangkok next month, you know, like, Oh, cool. I’ve been wanting to go there. And you can just have this crazy international round the world social life.

Justin Gary

Yeah, I got I got really spoiled early on in my life. I think we talked about this in the very first podcast, we did. But you know, I played mesh together and professionally. And so I would travel when I was 17, I started traveling around the world to play in tournaments. And so it would be and then you know, all the other people that were in that Echelon would, so we’d be like, meet up in Paris. And then three months later, we’d be in Prague, and three months later, we’d be in Tokyo, and three weeks later, you know, it’s always like, I had that experience from a very young age, and was very fortunate to do so. And then definitely missed it. Becoming a adult, not not doing that kind of travel. So it’s great to kind of rebuild that with the friends and family that we we choose from around the world.

Neville Mehra

Awesome. I know. We’re just about out of time. One last question, if I can, just to close out. Is there anything? I mean, again, it all sounds like it’s gone amazingly. Well, I think you’ve you’ve already shared a lot of cool lessons from your journey. Is there anything just now with this sort of benefit of seven months of hindsight that you would do differently? If you were starting out again? Or if you are anyone listening? Who’s Who’s thinking about doing this?

Justin Gary

Good question. I think you know, I already sort of mentioned the really stabilize as much as possible, like stay a month or more in a single location. The temptation is to try to go everywhere and do everything. And sort of I recommend resisting that urge. I think that’s probably one of the biggest things as much as possible. Validate the internet, wherever you’re going before you go. There’s I think the Nomad list or a few other sites that kind of give you Some regional things, but most of the time, I find it’s better to even though I want to be in a place for a month, don’t book a month before you go there, like book a few, you know, you can often book a few days or a week, and then find your bearings and find a place and then book their book book more, that may not be always possible in different places. But also, when you’re in places that are cheap enough, you can just book a place for a month, and if it doesn’t work, okay, go book. Again, don’t be afraid to, you know, save money where you need to save money, but don’t be afraid to spend money to solve important problems. That’s something I’m always resistant to. I’m very frugal by nature. And I don’t like to waste money, hey, I already paid for this place, I’m gonna stay there. Even if I’m not happy there. And it’s not it’s hurting my work, which is worth way more dollars wise, my time being efficient is worth way more dollars wise to then then staying in this place. I spent $1,000 for the month, you know, it’s just, it’s fine. I’ll go somewhere else. And hey, that’s that’s the thing. Like I’m spending way less money now that I was just living in San Diego doing all these crazy travels and all these adventures. And so realizing that I can spend some of that money to help to get Creature Comforts in right. So you know, even if it’s whether it’s buying another pillow that you want, or buying an extra place for a night or two that you need to be like comfortable one night or having a you know, getting better internet or whatever it takes. I think it’s just being willing to have a pool for those kinds of things, I think is important. And I was too resistant to that too early because I don’t like to spend money.

Neville Mehra

Yeah, coming. I came I came into this sort of nomad scene from like, you know, the backpacker scene where like, you know, we were minimalism was a badge of honor, right? It’s like, the less stuff you have. I mean, I literally bought like, shorter USB cables, just to have these little tiny and convenient USB cables, because they take up like a millimeter less room in your bag. I made a stupid decision. You know, I kind of had that mentality. And then, you know, once I I’m like, yeah, he’s getting older, being uncomfortable sitting at a desk all this time. Now, I know, like, where all the good office furniture stores in Tbilisi, Georgia are because I get there and I’m just like, This isn’t working. I’m going and buying an office chair. And just making myself comfortable.

Justin Gary

Yeah, you’re totally you’re totally right there. And there are like little things that you should think about that are helpful for what is it that you need for your creature comforts, right. So I pack a my robe, which is totally bulky and totally not minimalist, but it’s a robe that my mom gave me. And it’s everyone in the family has one. And it’s start of my morning routine is like, like, put on my comfy robe, go get a cup of coffee, I read I meditate I journal I exercise and like that trigger routine and having something that’s like familiar, and like meet new, wherever I am, kind of feels like home is worth the packing space for me, whatever your personal thing is going to be like, don’t be afraid to find, you know, like, hold on to those few things that make a place feel like home, you know, we have like little like, nice lights, decorative lights in places so that the ambience is nice. And when we’re hanging out in a new location. Now we’d like little things that can make a huge difference. And then you’ll find the other modifiers are you talking about, you know, working in, you know, strain in the neck and all that stuff, like I have a little riser for my laptop that really makes a difference for your eye level. And having just like those nice little things that you kind of learn over time. So you know, just being willing to spend a little bit of money and add a little bit of packing space for creature comforts and to make your life easier because you’re, you’re already going to be making a huge transition moving from everything is exactly the way I want it. And I’m in my home and I’m stable to I have very little with me and I’m not really sure where I’m going and what’s happening, you know, you anything you can do, whether that be from a physical goods, things you bring with you standpoint, from a routine standpoint, and finding things that you can, you know, I mentioned, like, I tried to be very religious about my morning routine habits. And I have, for lack of a better plug by my level of journal, which I just started selling, which is this kind of habit building journal. And the only reason I started selling is because I use it every day. And it’s like I write down my goals. I write down my habits around the things that are most important to me and I do I check those things off. And I carry this with me to make sure I’m like at least doing the things that are the most important to me every day. And that sort of stuff really does matter when everything else is changing. You have these sort of foundation stones that help you to move forward and really kind of keep your the what you consider whatever you consider to be the essential parts of your life on track even as you’re adapting and living in the moment and being able to shift with what the world is providing you.

Neville Mehra

My main takeaway is buy a giant fluffy bathrobe. No, I mean, I’ll give you a hard time about the bathroom grandpa. But what I what I like is that that advice is actually very contrarian, right? Because if you go out and read any number of the billion blog articles on how to become a digital nomad, they all tell you like pack half of what you think you need, which which I think is directionally correct. Most people are inclined to like pack stuff that they’ll never use. But this idea of like, you know, just one or to kind of focus in on the things that really will make make you comfortable and help you get work done help you keep your morning routine help you with healthy habits feel connected to your family. Loneliness is probably the number one thing that makes people stop being digital nomads. So even though it’s like just sort of a little token, the idea that like you’re that much more connected with everyone back home probably helps. And yeah, I love the plug. I love the level of journal, the size of it also is I think something you just showed it really briefly, but like I was a beta tester. And yeah, one of the things that’s really cool about it is just it’s super portable and tiny, like yes, it’s a, it’s a print physical book, but it literally like fits in like a shirt pocket. And so something that you can easily bring with you, and do on the road or at home everyday. Keep it on your desk in front of you. Very cool. And I’ll make sure we, we linked to the level of journal in the show notes that’s available for sale now. Right?

It is, yeah, so now we just started selling it like a week ago, it’s been a project I’ve been working on for two plus years. Really more than that, if you count that just the times, I was using it internally. And it’s I’m very excited to be able to share, it just takes that the concept of gamification and all the game design stuff I know and applying it to your habits into your daily life. So you can you know, earn points and level up as you complete your normal daily goals. And that’s kind of just the fun part of it for me as a game designer using those motivational tricks. But the things that you hooked on in many ways are the most important like the size and form factor. I am shocked by how many of these daily and productivity journals are giant monstrosities that like are very cumbersome to carry around. They’re cumbersome to have open on your desk they have they ask a lot of you every time you use it. And this is designed to be like no you have if you could accomplish your three most important tasks, if you can have you know three habits that you’re working on that you’re accomplishing. And there’s a little space for a gratitude practice, which I just believe is critical to living a happy life. You’re gonna You can live a great life, it just doesn’t take that much. You’re always gonna have to do lists that are longer than you’re ever gonna be able to finish. You always gonna have things on your bucket list or places you want to travel as a digital nomad that you’re not going to get to. Right those things are always there. But if you can just really focus on the stuff that matters the most. Life is going to be pretty awesome.

Neville Mehra

I can’t think of a better way to end it. Here’s to an awesome life. Thanks, Justin!