Your website for becoming a location independent engineer

What is a location independent engineer?  How can you do it too?

If you’ve listened to the right podcasts, read the right books, or followed the right blogs, you’ve likely heard the terms location independence or digital nomad.

If you haven’t heard the terms before, well you are in for a pleasant surprise.

This concept implies that you’re not tied to a single location 8, 9, or ten hours per day, 5 days per week, 50 weeks per year, and for a 30 or 40 year career.

Through hacking your current job and starting an internet based business, you will be able to enjoy more freedom as well.  I will show you how!

Location independence has been in the spotlight for 5 years now and growing more popular everyday.  However, it has much easier to implement in traditionally less location dependent careers: webpage design, programming, book writing, marketing, and of course travel bloggers.  Unfortunately, it has been more difficult to apply these principles to more traditional careers in engineering, law, medicine, nursing, etc.

On this blog I bring this lifestyle to engineers, technologists, scientists, and other technical personnel.  As I am writing this post, I am in a job as a mechanical engineering manager.  This blog will reveal the strategies, services, and products that I use to become a location independent engineer.

How I tried to experience freedom

My early attempts at being a location independent engineer were varied.

Before I heard those terms, I called it pre-tirement.  I was free for the short term, but always had to return to a previous script – the script of following a full-time engineering career in an industrial facility.

I had always been interested in travel and freedom, but couldn’t combine that well with an engineering career.  I had a job, scrimped and saved, and then left in order to travel.  I’ve also consulted for $1500 per month, allowing me to be free and not live to work.  I have even taken an ok job in a nice city, just so i could experience living there.

All of the cases above worked in the short term, but always ended the same: they were unsustainable and left me wanting more.

When travelling only on my savings, I ran out of money and returned.

When enjoying the freedom of part-time consulting, I read, relaxed, and worked out a lot, but couldn’t travel or spend much money.

The job in the nice city was the most insidious, since I was paid quite well.  But I had to be in the office for 10 hours per day, 5 days per week, and 50 weeks per year.  Hardly freedom.

There’s more to life than this

My interests and desire to be in a technical field never subsided.  Actually they grew. But I also wanted the lifestyle and freedom that these other people had.  I wanted to be a location independent engineer!

I knew it was possible, and not just by saving up money to travel, only to return to my old way of life.  No, I knew that just like with my technical studies, all I had to do was find the right reference material and search for the equation.

I started following successful bloggers and internet entrepreneurs; I read hundreds of blogs, listened to thousands of podcasts – most at double speed while commuting or even at work, and I read dozens of books on business, travel, entrepreneurship, and even engineering.

I have had opportunities to start up or be well paid in a conventional business.  But I have avoided that so-far since it is very high-touch and would require 75 hours per week instead of 40-50.

I know that long, hard work is required when starting this lifestyle, but that’s ok if I’m working towards my own freedom.  However, I cannot do that for someone else’s business.

One of my favourite quotes comes from Brian Tracy: “If you do not have definite goals and plans for your life, you are destined to work for somebody who does”

Powerful!

Time to Escape

So I started blogging, tweeting, building websites, brain storming topics, trying to write a book, searching for products to sell, and building friendships and relationships online.

I really took on too much and lacked focus.  I will talk about focus more later, but I think it’s a phase everyone goes through once your eyes are opened to the possibilities.  I think I learned a lot with all of that experimentation.  Once you see how easy it is to start a website and become an authority figure, you want to build one about absolutely everything.  I had 10 sites on the go before I really decided to focus.  If I had my way, I would be registering a new web domain every week.  But that doesn’t allow me to get any of my projects to a profitable stage.

If you discipline yourself to focus right away, good for you!

If not, well do your experiments fast, decide on your topic/product/idea, and just hammer away at that.

After you’ve done your research, found a viable area of expertise, and decided on a product or service – it’s time to crush it and put in that same effort that got you through engineering school.  You’re working on becoming a location independent engineer now.

Come back to this blog if you are also interested in this lifestyle.  I will cover how to earn more money and how to travel properly in order save money even faster.  I will engineer your escape.

For your own copy of my Engineering Escape Beginner’s Guide, please join my mailing li

Tags: Freedom, Lifestyle Design, Location Independence, My Journey