Digital minimalism

nomads entrepreneurs productivity balance

If you’re a digital nomad, entrepreneur, or remote-working couple exploring the world, managing money on the go is not just important—it’s essential. Without structure, your finances can quickly become chaos: unexpected ATM fees, unplanned splurges on local vegan treats, or losing track of currency exchanges. We’ve been there.

Dread tracking expenses while travelling? ⛔️
We all do. Read our blog post on the "why" of tracking travel expenses. Turns out, if you know how much you actually spend on vacation, you travel more often.

Why you should track expenses

As a couple building businesses while traveling full-time, we needed a solution that was practical, customizable, and mobile-friendly. That led us to create a Notion template for travel expense tracking—plus a phone widget that makes logging daily expenses as easy as grabbing a smoothie in Bali.

Here’s how we do it, why it works, and how you can set it up too.

We are Ella & Ryan, digital nomads, exploring the world mindfully. Between getting married, becoming nomads, and starting our own businesses, we’re sharing everything we learn along the way. Here is a picture of us in Evora, Portugal.

We're Ella & Ryan!

We're digital nomads, exploring the world mindfully. Between getting married, becoming nomads, and starting our own businesses, we’re sharing everything we learn along the way.

What is digital minimalism? ⛔️
Digital minimalism is the lifestyle choice for those who have realized that phones and computers have become less like productivity tools and more like a persistent telemarketer who always calls during dinner. If decluttering your digital life sounds interesting and/or necessary, stick around.

Phubbing 📱
If you don’t know what phubbing is, you’ve likely done it yourself (and you may have done it to read this super fascinating blog post).

Phubbing (phone + snubbing) is the habit of ignoring something in favour of your mobile phone. It’s when someone is distracted by their phone when socializing with others. Bottom line, it's not great.

6 sections of this guide.

Remove apps from your phone, hide them off your home screen, or password protect them to achieve parts of digital minimalism

1 Struggling to track expenses on the road?

When you're constantly changing cities, countries, and currencies, your financial habits need to be just as flexible.

Some common pain points we’ve hit:

From most to least severe, here are some quick options:

Delete apps

Remove apps you don’t need or use regularly from your phone entirely. Chances are you will forget you even had them in a few minutes.

Hide apps

Remove apps from your home screen and save them in your App Library (iPhone users) where they are not top of mind.

Restrict apps

Consider putting them in hard to reach places like a password protected folder. This helps create a digital barrier inhibiting quick access. Check out other cool tools like Brick too.

Delete social media from your phone, set screen time limits, or delete your account all together to achieve parts of digital minimalism

2 Tame social media

Next, tackle social media. Remember, you don't need to know what everyone is up to every waking second. That’s what small talk is for (and finding out about the weather). Missing a few posts won’t bring about the end of the world (but ironically, you might not be the first to hear when the world is ending).

From most to least severe, here are some quick options:

Delete account

Delete your social media account entirely (or at least one of them).

Delete from phone

Remove social media apps from your phone entirely. You can always use your computer to catch up less often. If you’re not sure how to do this on your desktop computer, just ask your Grandma.

Set limits

Set time limits on your phone to reduce the time you spend scrolling.

3 Take back your inbox

Take control of your inbox by unsubscribing from newsletters you no longer need or want. Even if that means you need to unsubscribe from us, we support your decisions. On an unrelated note, have we told you how good you look today?

From most to least severe, here are some quick options:

Email sorting

For emails you want to keep but don't need to see right away, set up mailbox rules to automatically sort them into specific folders.

Unsubscribe!

Unsubscribe from newsletters and companies who send you endless promotions. Your attention span and your wallet will thank you.

4 Limit notifications

Is it just me or do you also get notifications for your notifications? It’s getting out of hand!

Notifications are f*cking everywhere. Do youself a favour and take care of it.

From most to least severe, here are some quick options:

Turn notifications off

Turn off non-essential notifications. Period.

Leverage "focus" modes

Use "Do Not Disturb" and “Focus” modes to filter what notifications you receive during set periods of time.

Customize notifications

Take the time to customize notification settings for each app. You will thank yourself later. Trust me, you’ll have the time...

Dumb watch > smart watch

If your watch is constantly buzzing with notifications, simplify it ASAP. You have no idea how distracted and inefficient you are with these constant nudges.

Actively avoid receiving all pieces of information and notifications and enjoy missing out. JOMO can be achieved with do no disturb and other focus modes on your phone

5 Embrace the JOMO

Joy of missing out (JOMO), is the feeling of not knowing or caring about every single event happening in the world. If it’s important, chances are you will find out eventually. Use the time you gain from missing out to stop and think! Embrace the silence and boredom to let your mind wonder. This is rumoured to be where original thoughts originate but it isn't confirmed.

Do the bold thing and go completely offline. Turn your phone off, set boundaries and get deep work and deep focus in by implementing elements of digital minimalism.

6 Go offline

Not full-time. That's ridiculous. We still need you to read our blog posts! But occasionally, try going offline. Someone once told me that going outside wasn’t a terrible use of time. Might try it out, not sure yet.

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