The rise of remote working has given birth to a new breed of professional — the digital nomad — (0) WHOSE office may be a café in Lisbon one week and a co-working space in Bali the next. 1 appealing the lifestyle may sound, it is not without its challenges. Those who have adopted it full-time often cite loneliness and the difficulty of maintaining a routine 2 significant drawbacks. For all the freedom that comes with location independence, relatively little attention has been paid to the toll it can take 3 one’s mental health. Were employers 4 insist on regular face-to-face contact, many of the problems associated with isolation could be mitigated. 5 the same time, it would be naive to assume that the trend will simply reverse itself; if anything, the pandemic accelerated it to 6 an extent that there is no going back. Sceptics may question 7 the lifestyle is sustainable in the long term, but its appeal shows no sign of diminishing. Only when the full psychological impact of prolonged remote work has been properly assessed will we 8 in a position to judge whether this way of life truly represents the future of work.