Learn How Locals Design Their Lifestyle with our Unique, Community-Authored Guidebooks
Learn How Locals Design Their Lifestyle with our Unique, Community-Authored Guidebooks
Remote work and porous borders and wealth disparity and Mai Thais on Zoom calls and awkward questions about who wins and who loses in our increasingly globalised world are not going away.
As we look towards the future of global mobility, how can we, as working travellers, ensure that our presence in local communities becomes a force for good? And what does it mean to “live like a local?” How can digital nomads – who by definition move around – create genuine connections with a local place and its residents?
We don’t claim to have all the answers, but we think we’ve found one way to approach it: introducing ‘Insider’s Atlas’ – totally unique, community-authored guidebooks for nomads and working travellers.
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🧐 What are these guidebooks exactly?
The Insider’s Atlas guidebooks feature local people from around the world who share their personal recommendations about their favourite places and activities, allowing readers to explore destinations through the eyes of someone who actually lives there.
We choose collaborators whose professions are rooted in the culture and who have something to say about lifestyle design and the future of work.
The books explore how local people design their lives and live creatively through projects, hobbies and businesses.
They also include photos we take, maps we draw and facts we discover, and our own list of to-dos after living there as nomads ourselves.
The books will be available from September 2023 in paperback and Kindle formats. The first 3 destinations are Oaxaca, NYC, and Chiang Mai. Lots more books will follow!
Subscribe here and you’ll be the first to know when new books go live:
🤷♀️ Why are we making guidebooks?
5 big reasons:
Combatting loneliness: We became nomads in August 2022 and started to feel lonely on the road pretty quickly. We realised it was because we weren’t making friends with local people.
Finding purpose: When we suddenly lost a big chunk of our pay through redundancy, we started travel-writing, and it brought us new friends, taught us lots about the places we were living, and gave our travels more purpose and structure.
Giving back: We heard about the extractive side of digital nomadism and wanted a project that gave something back to the community, so we share 50% of net proceeds with our local collaborators.
Designing our lifestyle: Living amidst the rise of remote work culture, we’re naturally interested in lifestyle design, and we want to learn as much as we can about how other people around the world design theirs. These books are a great way to learn from people we wouldn’t otherwise meet.
Travelling sustainably: We’d be lying if we said we don’t have any financial incentive at all; we’re aware it could make us some cash that could help us continue living this incredible lifestyle. But money’s honestly not the main drive. We know better than to rely on our creativity for our livelihood. As the writer Elizabeth Gilbert warns, “To yell at your creativity, saying, ‘You must earn money for me!’ is sort of like yelling at a cat; it has no idea what you’re talking about, and all you’re doing is scaring it away, because you’re making really loud noises and your face looks weird when you do that.”
🫵 Why should you read these guidebooks?
If you're a digital nomad or any kind of working traveller (or perhaps someone who's merely flirted with the idea) anywhere in the world, who's been on the road for any length of time, and is interested in anything – absolutely anything at all – then you are perfect for these guidebooks. These books were practically written for you!
🛍️ How to get the guidebooks
Subscribe to The New Workday now and you’ll be the first to know when new books are published.
By subscribing, you’ll also get our insightful essays on travel, work, and self-development, delivered straight to your inbox. If you’re interested in the guidebooks but not the essays, send us an email and we’ll let you know when we publish them.
🙋♂️🙋♀️ Who are we?
We’re Harrison and Corina, art school alumni from Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art in London who swapped the studio space for the bustling cafés of the world. Harrison writes and Corina designs, so we make an ideal duo for bookmaking.
The decision to become full-time working travellers was a no-brainer. Both passionate about exploration, we saw the opportunity to take our work remote after the pandemic and seized it. We’re even planning our upcoming wedding on the move and are exploring ways to sustain our nomadic lifestyle while trying to start a family.
You’ll find us walking, reading, writing essays and poems, restlessly seeking great café work spots, cooking ratatouille, de-stressing by doing laundry, drinking wine or mezcal, laying on the floor listening to music on our amazing if tad expensive Bang & Olufsen puck (because there are three things you should never skimp on: tomatoes, shoes, and audio equipment), and generally pulling our hair out over where to go next.
Do you know someone who’d make a good guidebook collaborator? Tell us by email.
Happy travels,
– Harrison & Corina
Oh…and if this guidebook project resonates with you, you can help it along by sharing it with others who’d like it. Thanks in advance!