A Day in the Life of an Estonian e-Resident

Learn more about Estonia's remote-friendly business environment and e-residency program; plus, full Midlife Nomads subscribers get 'Estonian e-Residency: Build Your Borderless Business From Anywhere.'

✈️ Welcome to Midlife Nomads, your weekly hit of real talk, smart ideas, and helpful tools for building a location-independent life through remote work, travel, and business.

It’s the one question I get more than any other from people in social and in real-world coworking situations: What’s this Estonian e-Residency all about?

Five years into my e-residency journey, I’m excited to share what I’ve learned with you. First, we’ll take a look at a day in the life of an Estonian e-Resident (this girl, right here).

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes peek at what this location-independent business program looks like in practice, why I chose to relocate my company there in 2020, and what makes Estonia’s digital-first business environment so enticing.

Recommended reading:

Sustainable Nomadism: Balancing Business and a Life in Motion

Then, full subscribers to Midlife Nomads — my greatest supporters and loyal readers; the people who make this platform possible! — I’m happy to gift you each a copy of my book: Estonian e-Residency: Build Your Borderless Business From Anywhere.

You’ll find your link to download your free copy or request one in print at the bottom of this post. First, let’s talk e-residency.

A Day in the Life: How an Estonian e-Residency Business Really Works

The first thing I typically do each morning is check and make sure anything that was scheduled to publish before I woke up promptly at 5:55 a.m. finally gave in to the dog boops or alarm (depending on where I am) actually did, in fact, publish.

It’s good to start the day off with a little win like that, and I’ve only lost that one to a technical glitch once in the last two years now.

Next up… hit the coffee machine. Spend a few minutes journaling. Streeeeetch. Listen to a Calm episode. I do these things no matter where I am in the world, to have some semblance of a morning routine.

Now, it’s important to note that I’m not actually doing any of these things from Estonia, unless I’m visiting there intentionally (as I have four or five times now) because I just happen to like the place.

Kadriorg Palace; Barnushka the Grumpy Cat; Tallinn Harbour. Photos: Miranda Miller

e-Residency is not a visitor’s visa and doesn’t give you any more right than anyone else to be in the country.

What it does is gives you access to Estonia’s digital-first, super streamlined business environment, enabling you to set up your own corporation within the European Union. Why would you do that? Read on and we’ll get into it.

Creative Writing for my Books or Publications

So, back to our day, which is just getting started. I don’t like to give all of my creative energy away to others first thing, so my own publications often come first. If I’ve been mulling over an idea, working on a book chapter or an article has been taking shape in my head, I’ll crank that out before getting to client work.

It helps to do this before checking emails, hitting up social, or reading the news so a lot of random input doesn’t get in the way of the creative output.