More and more of our contemporaries are joining the digital nomad trail. Chucking their laptop in a backpack, traveling the world for months or years at a time funded by piecemeal work, these jetsetters can complete anywhere with a WiFi signal. It seems an enviable lifestyle: their twenties as gap decade, collecting up experiences and making unpredictable connections in exotic places.

Yet while elements of that are undoubtedly true, the true cost is greater than AirBnB tariffs and shoulder-ache. Picking up bits of work on the go doesn’t suit everyone’s professional metabolism, and the insecurity that goes with such a ‘career’ path is more than matched by the small-scale bureaucracy that goes with getting set up anew every few weeks or months when the nomad reaches a new destination. Keeping up with visa stuff, wasting money in cafés with dodgy internet connections, and trying to make more meaningful connections with locals who have their own lives to attend to can often feel like an unproductive waste of time.

The Beauty of a Traveling In Your Own Backyard

In contrast, those who make the decision to stay back home and concentrate on getting their business up and running can benefit from the stability and unbroken concentration that is so essential when trying to catch a break as a young entrepreneur. You have local networks you can trust, reliable infrastructure – and you don’t have to think twice about how to get the laundry done! But what you may find you’re lacking, if you don’t have time to get away, is the sense of adventure and of fresh perspectives that are necessary to keep an entrepreneur’s imagination ticking over at full pace.

If that’s the case, fester no longer: a new infographic gathers a number of exciting, affordable, imaginative ways to get a taste of adventure without leaving the confines of your local environment. From exoticizing your Saturday night to overlaying your surroundings with digital realities, there are plenty of ways to look at your surroundings anew – and to get to know your habitat with far more depth and meaning than your wandering peers!

Millennial Magazine - infographic