Welcome to episode two of a special Live Different Podcast series by Under30Experiences Co-founder Matt Wilson on what he’s learned over the past five years traveling the world…

“Velkomin á Íslandi”
I heard as I pried my eyes open getting off the red eye flight.

Beautiful blonde Icelandic women with farm working physiques gracefully bullied their way to the overhead compartment.

My mountain guide met me at the terminal. “Hello I am Siggurdur Bjarni Svienson.” insert long pause “But you can call me Siggi” he said with a slight sense of dry Icelandic humor.

The sun was barely up. A thick mist of dense clouds rolled in from the North Atlantic. The ground was black, covered with sharp lava rock. Not a tree in sight.

Where the fuck am I? I wondered.

I started to feel bad that humans even attempted to live here.

We wound our way down the Icelandic coastline to the capital city of Reykjavik where 230,000 of the 330,000 inhabitants of this bleak terrain decided to call home.

Siggi dropped me at my hostel and said he’d return that evening.

I was on my own.

Becoming a Digital Nomad
What was the first thing I did on my trip to Iceland that Sunday morning at 8 am?

Answered emails.

I shit you not.

I was addicted.

This is incredibly embarrassing thinking back at it. Do you know how many people in that inbox truly did not matter?

At the time my Co-founder Jared O’Toole and I were running a successful media site for young entrepreneurs called Under30CEO.com. It was near the peak of our traffic numbers, at over 500,000 unique visitors per month…we had boatloads of fans from India, Nigeria, Bangladesh, and of course all over the United States, Canada, Australia, and the UK.

God, we thought we were important.

Note: if you want to see hilarious pictures of Jared and I on jumbotrons in Time Square, ringing the closing bell at NASDAQ, or being invited to yap about the importance of small business on Fox Business, take a look at the article announcing that Under30CEO was acquired.

How to travel the world and never really have a chance to enjoy it
Okay, I’m joking. But not really.

Everyone wants to be a digital nomad these days… but not so long ago, co-working spaces like WeWork were not a thing, hostels didn’t have conference rooms, and you could’ve actually found a seat at a coffee shop in Austin, Texas.

The reality is, being a digital nomad is fucking awesome. It’s why it seems that all the cool kids are doing it.

And therein, lies the problem: the cool kids.

Yup, I am sad to say I was one of them.

Addicted to email. Caffeine. And worst of all, stress.

The rest of this post is going to be devoted to strategies on…

How to break free from your desk, travel the world, and not stress yourself out
under30experiences-group-travel-blog-for-millennials-digital-nomad
I’ll be honest, when I hear someone describe themselves a “digital nomad” I usually cringe. Call me a seasoned gringo, but the “cool kids club” is exactly why I packed up and left New York. I’m not trying to hang out with a bunch of stressed out people talking about marketing, complaining about the wifi here in Costa Rica.

If you really want to enjoy the “pura vida” as we say, you’ll first have to get a handle on your travel schedule. The first rule of thumb is don’t overdo it.

In upcoming posts, you’ll hear me talk about how stressed out I was my first time to Bali, traveling around the island until I found a Starbucks because I had to hit a deadline. Backpacking and hitting deadlines really doesn’t work. You shouldn’t try to travel South America while taking on new web design projects. You need to find somewhere you like and develop a routine so you can be in a higher state of flow, complete your work, and then go have fun.

Get more tips and read the entire article at Under30Experiences Blog.

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