'Remote work is for everybody': Full-time digital nomad explains why coworking is the future

Ben Marks is an impact entrepreneur, campaigner and writer, currently serving as the Founder & Executive Director of the #WorkAnywhere campaign.

Life on the road can be lonely - and loneliness is a silent killer. It’s linked to heightened risk of heart disease, stroke, dementia and high blood pressure.

According to the Campaign to End Loneliness website, it is worse for you than obesity or smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

For digital nomads like me, loneliness comes with the many territories we visit. Always on the move, we can miss out on the fixed social ties that are so important to a person's wellbeing.

But digital nomad influencers have helped me a lot. I once saw NFT advisor Olumide Gbenro open up about having suicidal thoughts when he first went travelling, brought on by a profound sense of being alone.

Inspired by Olumide, I wanted to facilitate solutions that deepen the human bonds everyone needs - as a nomad myself. I’ve found that the movement is at its best when you integrate community living into your working life.

Now, as our broader society experiences a loneliness epidemic, I believe we should all turn to communities to feel a sense of belonging away from home.

Coworking spaces may have started as something purely practical, but they’re evolving fast.

The coworking concepts which are developed by and for digital nomads are the ones you want to look for. These optimise for social fulfillment at every layer of their design and operation.

My preferred term here is ‘community-workspace’.

One of the best examples of the community-workspace model is seen in the ‘Digital Nomad Village’ phenomenon that has grown exponentially in recent years, all over the world.

Gonçalo Hall, the creator of the nomad village in Madeira’s Ponta