UPDATE: There is a newer pack list! Check out A Digital Nomad Pack List After 5 Years on the Road. It might also be interesting to compare how things have changed since 2013.. Last week I hopped on a 19-hour flight back to Indonesia with little more than a daypack, my laptop bag, and some surfing gear. It may not seem like much, but it’s everything I need to live, work, and travel for an indefinite period of time. I already wish I’d brought less. Whenever I pack, the goal is to take the 20% of gear that will cover 80% of situations. If you ask yourself “but what if I do ____?” or think “this will really come in handy if ____”, then leave it at home. This rule alone eliminates most dead weight, like that camp stove or extra shirt you carried across 18 countries and never even pulled out of the pack. The secret to success for the mobile lifestyle is to bring as little as possible. Besides the obvious perks of traveling light, like being able to pack in 15 minutes, walking on and off flights with nothing but a carry-on, and being able to tour a city for half a day with all your gear, there is an enormous psychological benefit to taking very little with you.

It’s hard to imagine until you’ve experienced it, but a “lightness of being” really emerges when you only have 2 pairs of clothing and 15 lbs to your name. Remember: There are actual stores in other countries! With few exceptions you can always buy what you need later. I briefly considered bringing rock climbing gear with me for Thailand until I realized I could purchase everything I need there for $200, or have it shipped from the US. That’s 3-5lbs of gear I don’t have to lug around aimlessly or let decay in the tropics for the next 2 months. A note on the gear list presented here: The kit below is currently optimized for living and working in a tropical climate, but it would be easy to upgrade to a pair of jeans and a down jacket if needed. A lot of equipment here could be thrown out if I was just traveling and not working on my laptop. But I’m in this one for the long-haul, so I brought the Spartan equivalent of the kitchen sink. Also note: Some of this gear is expensive, but I’m a fan of spending money on one good item, rather than a bunch of mediocre ones.

I almost always buy closeout goods, so I rarely pay full price for anything. , shop the REI sales, or just Google shopping for big discounts on last year’s gear (e.g. the Sonar pack retails for $140 but you can get it for $50 on sale from REI). Here’s a picture I took at the Singapore International airport of my current backpack and laptop bag: Featured: Brand-new 24L Black Diamond Sonar hiking pack, and a small laptop bag made by Rickshaw bags of San Francisco. The backpack, which is my home-away-from home and everything I need to survive in the wild, weighs-in at just under 15 lbs (6.8 kg). I love this pack right now more than words can describe. Moving from a fully top-loading pack to the full access zipper is life-changing. That thing I need is still at the bottom, but now I can get it without dumping everything out. I’ll write more on backpack considerations later, but the Sonar won out of 5 other packs I considered based on weight, comfort, quality, and size (including the digital-nomad favorite the North Face Surge).

Note that the Sonar has replaced the backpack featured at the top of the post, my 30L Black Diamond Speed, which I carried around the world for 1 year. herschel backpack bijenkorfIf you aren’t sold on backpacks: it’s just the best way to carry things. aconcagua backpack recommendationWheeled luggage is a liability once you leave the city. business backpack h5m90aaAnd quality backpacks are lighter and carry weight so much better than daypacks.110v backpack hoover The fully-loaded laptop bag, which contains a full mobile office, everything I need to run an online business, weighs 6 lbs (2.7 kg). aoking backpack prices

Getting a work sprint in on the way to SFO: All told, my mobile life weighs a little over 20 lbs, and there’s significant room for improvement.rusty dizzy backpack black Minimalism notwithstanding, I may have to change the name of this site after revealing this pack list. Among the most notable ‘heavy’ and relatively expensive accessories I opted to bring on this trip include are: A Sonicare toothbrush – The “$100 toothbrush” (makes me slightly ill to think about) but it’s worth way more in the ability to fix your teeth. It turns out that irregular trips to the dentist and a lot of travel are really hard on things. Bose QC-15 headphones – Part of the digital-nomad lab and essential for working in noisy environments. Already proven worth the investment here in Bali. A travel-mobility kit – Featuring a lacrosse ball, Voodoo band, and my plastic imitation foam roller (Nalgene bottle).

Key gear for staying limber. For more read How I broke my body and then fixed it. Surfing gear for Indonesia – all packed into the board-bag, not to be carried during the rest of the trip (likely shipped home). None of this stuff is cheap, light-weight, or necessarily Spartan, but it fits into my general budgetary and weight constraints, so what the hell. If you throw these items out you’d be pushing a world class 10-15 lb total pack weight. Most people are surprised by how little clothing I have, but this kit is even overboard for hanging out in Bali, where most of the time I’ll be wearing nothing but board shorts and a tank-top (the same ones, every day, purified by salt water). The more you stick to one activity the simpler this gets, a la the 2 board-short 2 shirt surf trip. If/when I head to a cooler climate I’ll drop a pair of shorts and add a fleece + a pair of jeans. Some of the excess clothing here is for later in the trip. Here’s what it looks like compressed: