The exact tools I use to run my digital nomad life + content business

Most people don’t realize that the digital nomad life unravels fast without structure. Everyone is constantly being fed the images of the laptop on the terrace, the golden hour content, the seamless transition between time zones and client calls and creative work.

What it doesn’t show you is the system holding it all together behind the scenes.

As a multi-passionate, “I want to live 1,000 different lives” content creator and freelancer who also happens to travel full-time, I’ve been building and refining mine for years now. What I’ve landed on at this point is a lean, intentional stack of tools that handles everything from planning and editing to email and time tracking (without requiring me to be tethered to one desk to make it work).

The Stack at a Glance (Table of Contents)

Notion – content calendar, daily planning, idea organization
Google Calendar – visual scheduling, time blocking, white space management
Toggl Track – time tracking, energy awareness, client billing
CapCut – short-form video editing
Canva – graphics, carousels
Phone Reminders & Notes – spontaneous idea capture, B-roll reminders
Flodesk – email newsletters and audience nurturing
Showit – website and blog platform

Notion – My Content + Life Command Center

If there is one tool I would keep if I had to choose only one, it’s Notion. I practically live and BREATHE by it. Honestly, I’ve kind of come to think of it as my brain externalized since it’s the place where every idea, plan, draft, and deadline lives so that my actual brain doesn’t have to hold all of it at once.

For a nomadic lifestyle specifically, this matters more than it might seem. When your physical environment is constantly changing, your digital environment needs to be rock solid. Notion is where consistency lives for me even when everything else is in flux.

The main two ways I use it are through my daily agenda and my content calendar.

Daily Agenda (grab my FREE agenda template here!)

Each morning I open Notion before anything else. It tells me what’s on the plate for the day, what content needs attention, and what I can let go of until tomorrow.

Content Calendar

Every piece of content I’m creating lives here. Everything from the ideation, to the scripting, to the publish date and status, all of it visible at a glance so nothing slips through the cracks.

However, I also house a handful of other fun dashboards here, like my monthly reflection journal, an ongoing media list for books I want to read or movies I’d like to watch, or my partnerships system with all kinds of resources to look back on when managing sponsorships.

If you’re a freelancer, creator, or anyone trying to build something while living a life that doesn’t follow a conventional schedule, Notion is the closest thing to a superpower I’ve found.

Google Calendar – My Visual Planning System

So, now we know that Notion handles the what. Google Calendar, on the other hand, handles the when.

And I do this through color coding everything. My personal category split is:

Personal
Fitness
Client work (different colors for each client!)
Content creation
Life Admin
Travel
Events/Activities

At a glance I can see exactly what kind of day I’m walking into and, just as importantly, where the white space is. And trust me, that white space is not wasted time.

I find it’s so important to protect your white space because it truly is the breathing room that keeps a packed schedule from becoming an unsustainable one and leading to burnout (speaking from experience ahhh)

A few practices worth adopting:

Batch similar work together – That could look like creative work in the morning when your energy is highest, and admin and communication in the afternoon.
Create a cadence that feels good – I write captions and scripts for myself and my clients on Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesdays and Thursdays are typically for editing. Though, of course, we allow flexibility in this due to our ever changing travel schedules.
Block travel days completely – they always take more out of you than you plan for.
Schedule rest or time to yourself like it’s a meeting – because it is. This time is sacred, and it deserves to be treated like one!

Toggl Track – Time Tracking for Balance

Do you ever feel like you are constantly working, working, working. And yet, when you look back, it feels like nothing has really gotten done?

I found myself in quite the cycle of feeling like I was completely shackled to my computer, and still hadn’t made the progress that felt reasonable for the amount of work I was doing. Because of that, I started using Toggl Track to create an honest picture of where my time and energy actually go. A time audit, if you will.

When you work for yourself, especially while traveling, the lines between work time and life time blur in ways that subtly start to become a problem. Toggl makes those lines visible again. You start a timer when you sit down to work, stop it when you’re done, and at the end of the week you have actual data instead of a vague feeling about whether you’ve been productive.

Here’s how I use it (all on the free version!):

Separating client work from personal projects – so I know exactly how much time is going to revenue-generating work versus building my own brand (we get to color code here, too! How exciting!)
Understanding energy patterns – tracking reveals when you’re most productive, which work takes longer than you think, and where your hours seem to be disappearing
Staying aware without obsessing – the goal is not to optimize every minute. It’s to have enough information to make good decisions about your time without burning out in the process

CapCut + Canva – My Go-To Editing Tools

These two tools together handle virtually everything on the content production side. And between them exists a complete content creation workflow that runs entirely from my phone when it needs to. Although I do find it so much easier to work from my laptop, of course.

CapCut for video editing

CapCut is where all of my short-form video content gets made. Reels, travel clips, vlogs, signature series – it handles all of it with an interface that’s fast enough to use on the road without needing a laptop. I have also come to really love the editing opportunities it has with text animations and sound effects, too, to ensure I can create something that maintains audience attention!

Canva for design and visuals

Canva handles everything that isn’t video. Carousels, cover photos, graphics, any visual content that needs to look cohesive and intentional without requiring complex design skills or expensive software. The brand kit feature alone (where you can store your fonts, colors, and logo so everything stays consistent) is worth the time it takes to set it up.

Phone Reminders and the Notes App – My Underrated Productivity Tools

This one gets left off of every productivity list, which I think is a HUGE mistake!!

The most valuable ideas I’ve had, whether for content, my business, or pieces of writing that eventually make their way into a Google Doc.. did not arrive while I was sitting at a desk ready to receive them. Just as for many of us, they often arrive in some of the most inconvenient places to actually do something about them. Like on a walk or in the shower.

And if I don’t capture them immediately, they seem to slip away just as quickly as they arrived.

Phone reminders (and my chaotic, ever-growing list of notes) are my low-friction solutions to this. I use them for:

Spontaneous content ideas – the random phrasing for a video script I know I have coming up, or a moment that inspires a piece of it’s own
B-roll reminders – a note to myself to film a specific moment, location, or detail before I leave a place
Creative nudges – small reminders (literally) I set for myself that would otherwise get lost in the noise of life
- My current ones are: “Everything is a win when the goal is experience.” And “We are creations. So be creative in return.”

The best idea you’ll ever have is probably going to arrive at the worst possible moment for writing it down. Have a system that makes capturing it take less than ten seconds.

Flodesk – My Email System for Staying Connected

Social media is borrowed land. The algorithm changes, the platform shifts, the reach fluctuates in ways that have nothing to do with the quality of what you’re making. Email is the one place where the connection between you and your audience belongs entirely to you.

Flodesk is where that connection lives for me. (Just made the switch from Kit before Flodesk switched away from their flat rate pricing!)

I use it to send newsletters, share personal updates and reflections, and nurture the people in my community into the offers and experiences I’m building. And it honestly has a lot of beautifully designed templates to build off of, which, for a one-person operation trying to maintain a professional presence across a lot of channels, goes a long way.

If you don’t have an email list yet, start one now. Out of all the elements you feel you need to run a successful business of your own, I’d say this is the most important.

Showit – My Website + Blog Platform

I’ve had a personal domain for a while now, specifically so I could have my hello@sierrafernald.com email that all of my newsletters come from (purchased and managed through Google Workspace!). And now I’ve finally taken the time to create a website to act as the home base that everything else in my work points back to.

I chose Showit to host it for me because of the creative freedom it offers. And because I knew this blog was actually starting to manifest itself. Now the reason that matters is because it also integrates with WordPress, which means the SEO infrastructure of WordPress sits underneath the design flexibility of Showit.

I’ll be honest: I’m still evolving my experience with it. The learning curve is real and tedious. But the foundation it provides is exactly what I needed, and I haven’t found anything else that does what it does at this level.

The Bigger Picture

None of these tools are magic on their own. What makes them work is the decision to build a system that supports the life you’re trying to live, rather than scrambling to keep up without one.

A nomadic creative life is genuinely possible. I am living proof of that! But it requires more infrastructure than it might appear to from the outside, and the sooner you build that infrastructure deliberately, the sooner the life starts to feel sustainable rather than like you’re throwing spaghetti at the wall and trying to get it to stick.

Have a tool that’s changed the way you work and travel? I’d love to know what’s in your stack!! Drop it in the comments 🙂

Content Creation, Digital Nomad

May 27, 2026

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