The digital nomad home with Chris Cerra

An interview with Chris Cerra about his home everywhere and nowhere as a digital nomad and entrepreneur.

Watch or listen to the full Homelife for Extraordinary Impact interview on all major podcast platforms and YouTube. You can also read some written responses below.

Connect with Chris Cerra on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and his website.

What are some of the places that have most felt like home for you?

Porto, Portugal, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Split, Croatia!

Paint a picture of a home walkthrough for us. You arrive home and what…

At the moment, we're in Split, Croatia. It's on the 3rd floor of a building just outside the Old Palace Walls.

There's also a big window that faces down the hill, so yo can see some of the prominent features of the old palace popping up over the top of the other buildings, and beyond that, you can see Split Harbour, a small stretch of the Adriatic Sea, and one of Dalmatia's many islands - Brač to be precise.

This is all South-West facing, so from late morning the sun is shining down on you. Bliss!

What do you see as the link between your professional expertise and home?

As a digital nomad, I have to be a kind of chameleon with my 'home.' I have to be able to adapt to my surroundings to some extent, but I also get to choose my surroundings freely. Which I think is an enormous privilege.

As a digital nomad accommodation expert, I tend to think of the idea of home, and being able to choose a home, as privilege.

When home is going really great, what does it look like and feel like? How do you feel?

I've 'lived' and worked from 6 continents, I'm not sure there's a particular 'look' for a good home, or home life that's going well.

But there's certainly a feel to it.

There's certain places where I just feel 'at home', it's a feeling of contentment that I don't have in other places.

When I try to quantify that feeling, so I can go someway to defining what it 'looks' like. It's things like walkability in the city or town, water (lake or ocean/sea), nature (forest/mountains). Narrowing it down to the actual home 'space,' I need lots of natural light, and lots of fresh air, essentially just like windows.

If I have these things, it doesn't much matter about anything else, I can probably thrive.

What are important daily, weekly, or otherwise regular rhythms important for you to keep a great homelife?

Weekly, getting one day where I'm just entirely 'off-screen'. Usually my best nights sleep follows.

Monthly, I track my daily spending, but sometimes I fall behind on the tracking. Which is fine as long as I 'catch up', so I never get more than 3 weeks behind.

This helps me stay really balanced, and with my girlfriend, we have very open conversations about finances.

What's one thing you do or unique hack that helps you in homelife?

Typically I'm spending between 6 and 12 weeks in a single location, and that means I have the opportunity to reset every 6-12 weeks.

I can identify any bad habits and try to shake them on arrival in a new place. But I also get to keep, and build further on any good habits that are established.

One thing I like to do is give myself little challenges.

Small things, that over time can have a huge impact. This is how my morning walk routine got started.

Others have included doing 100 squats and 100 push ups every day for 100 days. and more recently, I completed a year of being alcohol free!

I've found that 'goals' is the wrong language for me. so I set 'challenges' instead, If I can tap into my competitive side, it helps me achieve things!

The recorded interview also included some hilarious riffing on how few possessions Chris has! Thanks for the interview, Chris!

Until next time,

– Matt Barrios

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