To many people, the idea of making money through an unconventional job seems like a dream. Either because it looks desirable or perhaps also very difficult to achieve. However, every day, the internet opens the possibility for everyone to start a company. To eventually change from the usual 9 to 5 job to one where everyone sets their schedule and place wherever they can take their laptop.
But learning how to live a laptop lifestyle means not only leaving the office or the usual agenda but also many other transformations in all personal, family, and professional spheres.
Have you ever thought about the possibility of making such a change?
A laptop lifestyle could mean almost everything. Since working at your home, the park, a coffee shop, a bus or train station, an airport, or any other place around the world wherever there is an internet connection.
At first, this seems like something that everybody is doing right now. We can see people working on the grass of a university campus or concentrated in front of their computers while taking a macchiato in Starbucks. They are working with their laptop all the time and anywhere, are they living a laptop lifestyle? In any case, what is a laptop lifestyle?
Laptop lifestyle? Are you kidding me?
What is the originality or the difference concerning the examples we mentioned before?
Many of the people we currently see working hard on their computer are doing it for a job to which a contract binds them. They may have the freedom to go out and do their homework anywhere in the city (a luxury that most do not enjoy). But eventually, they have to report the results of that work to someone in a specific place. At some point, there will be a work meeting, training session, audit, presentation of results, fieldwork, etc. And of course, you can not miss work for pleasure and much less travel to one place you want at the time you want.
A laptop lifestyle does not mean just that all your work is done through the laptop. Or that you sometimes change the office for a more comfortable place with a different environment or view. It is not an aesthetic change, a fashion, or some snob posture.
What a lifestyle means is that you establish an online business (regardless of whether you can have a physical counterpart or not). And you can generate enough income to live just with online resources (free or paid) and nothing more.
VIDEO
Below is a video produced by Entrepreneur magazine about a really successful example of someone living the laptop lifestyle: Natalie Sisson, The Suitcase Entrepreneur.
Computer slave or owner of your time and space?
The computer promised to be a pleasant change in the way we worked. Many complicated and cumbersome processes that consumed too much time would be eliminated by software that would better manage and organize things to free us to be creative. At least that was the idea years ago.
However, for many people, it seems to be the opposite. Every day more work, more complicated processes, and an endless list of tasks to do. So what was intended to help us has become a trap from which we cannot out? The work is overwhelming for too many out there. But the salaries are more or less the same as before.
In other times when leaving the office at 5 pm, at least you also left work for the next day. Or maybe you could take one or two minor tasks to check in the afternoon at home. But now you carry all the office files on the computer! So you can work endlessly throughout the night. And again for the same payment.
So, it doesn’t matter that you are working in your living room or your studio, you are still working for someone else in space and time for which that boss won’t pay you anything.
That boss virtually owns that space in your home for your business and your time too. Wouldn’t it be better than at least that space and that time you occupy them for your affairs?
Work on vacation or vacation while I work?
Unfortunately, that extension of work is not limited to your home or your favorite places. Many people take the laptop on vacation with the family and also take them to the office with them. Then these vacations become a part-time coexistence, facing the sea.
The ease to communicate from anywhere on the planet, to solve problems, talk about business, exchange documentation, fill out formats, make graphs, calculate, present projects, etc., is ground gold for many companies because they pay for vacations, but they keep the employee working!. And the family has to understand the situation because it is the job!
A very different situation would be that you go on vacation when you decide. That you pay for it, out of your pocket thanks to work, you do through the laptop.
And that you decide moments during those vacations in which you could dedicate some time to your business without affecting the coexistence with your loved ones. Not when your boss decides because now you would be the boss.
Why 9 to 5 and not 10 to 3 or whatever?
Who decided that our life had to revolve around a schedule of 9 to 5? We lose a large part of our life enclosed within four walls. Either in office, house, or car to get our livelihood at the end of the month. But that support serves to continue working the following month for the same reason!
An own business that does not require us to be physically in a specific place, and that moves with the different schedules of the world is entirely possible. Because virtually anyone in the world is a potential customer and because many of the processes can be leveraged, multiplied, and become passive income even without being awake!
A laptop lifestyle does not necessarily mean working less, although, in the end, the income/work relationship is clearly in our favor. What it means, in principle, is to work differently, at your own pace, with your goals and rules.
Everything is fine?
It must be said here that it is not a battle against everyday work of 9 to 5 that has its purpose and usefulness. Many people have made progress throughout the world with this work scheme, which satisfies many needs, desires, and expectations.
If you are successful with your current job and it makes you and your family happy then, of course, there is no reason to change unless the option of having the time and space that the laptop lifestyle offers is more attractive than the work you now have perhaps for your free time.
And if only …?
Now whatever your case, ask yourself a question. “If working for six months or a year in my free time I achieve at least equal the same income as in my current job it took me several years to get the additional benefits of being my boss and having my time and space, would it be worth trying?”
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Living the laptop lifestyle would be such a blessing to me and my family. I would love to be able to spend more time with my wife and kids rather than going through the daily grind. I have it a bit different than most, being in the education system, but it is still not what I would prefer to be going. I’d love to be able to have my own successful business that allowed us to do more as a family. I think Wealthy Affiliate is an absolutely wonderful resource in getting your on your way to professional independence, so I’m glad that you highlighted it at the end.
Thanks for the great read!
I love what you wrote and this has been a passion of mine for some time. I spent the last 7 years working from home and now I back at an office. I have learned a lot about myself in those years. I have realized that not everyone is cut out for a flexible work environment, no matter where that is. I have also realized that I can really perform on my own but there are times I take advantage of the freedom. I also realized that I usually work way more than 40 hours each week (more like 60 or more) when my laptop is sitting there and my family is watching a movie I care nothing about.
I still want the flexible lifestyle and honestly, my goal is to build that through my own on-line business where I can stop my day job and do what I love doing.
You’re right that there are many people who are living a laptop lifestyle who are still beholden to working for someone else’s company and still must attend meetings, work while on vacation, take work home ect. It’s funny how sometimes the inventions that we think will free up our time (like the computer) just add more work to our schedules. I agree that the best way is to go into business for yourself then you aren’t just beholden to someone else’s vision and can create your own.
Well said Tommy,
Long ago it might be just a dream but today, there are so many people living the internet lifestyle that it’s an adamant fact that we can live that lifestyle too. I met these wonderful travel bloggers who told me that affiliate marketing is the way to go and they’re not the only ones too, I’ve also met a few streamers who earn solely online and it’s very motivating to know that it’s in your grasp.
Thanks for the quick motivator friend! I feel pumped to get working and build my online business too after reading through, here’s to your online success, let’s do this!
Online business is much better than the 9-5 job however, initially it takes a lot of patience and persistence in doing online business such as online marketing. It will eat more than 9-5 of your time if you are really enjoying your work or at least you are determined to create your online business asap. There is a process we still have to undergo that is creating traffic and large audience to effect sales and sales that come, you can do it if you do a regular supply of content-rich blogs that target certain niche for particular audiences. It takes the learning of all the requirements to get across as many audiences as possible. From SEO, Social Media, Mailing List and so on and so forth. It will not eat your time forever, in fact, it will free you from working like you are in jail every day in a single room you call the office. An online business can be done anywhere even if you work on it. The thing is there is more freedom to move and to go anywhere you want if you have an online business. And it has more income, way more than you would be receiving if you are just an ordinary employee.
I’ll say living a laptop lifestyle is a dream come true for me, although I am at the starting stage of my onlne business. In some communities, like where I live, people still find this lifestyle, where you don’t have to go for a conventional job, strange.
It’s great, the way you clarified that not every laptop lifestyle brings freedom, if you are still working for a boss. It’s a dream come true to have your own business online, where you can earn even when you grow old and won’t be able to do the conventional 9 to 5 jobs.
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