The Road Frequently Traveled

Martí Guixé may be the ultimate nomadic worker. The 36-year-old design consultant has no office, and he has either two homes or no home, depending on how you look at it: Sometimes he lives in Barcelona; other times he's in Berlin, staying at his girlfriend's flat. Ideas, Guixé's stock-in-trade, are completely intangible -- and therefore perfectly portable. He never carries a computer when he travels, yet he does all of his work on the road. "My Internet home page is my office," Guixé says. "My business card has only one piece of contact information: my Web address. It's the best and most reliable way to reach me."

Call him a wanderer. Guixé has collaborated with Camper, the funky, cutting-edge Spanish footwear company, to design stores in London (where shoes are Velcroed to the wall), Milan (where visitors write graffiti on the walls), and Barcelona. He was recently commissioned by the furniture company Vitra to hold a workshop where participants design not a chair or a table, but a snack.

Now he's developed a set of principles -- a nomadic worker's manifesto -- intended to help people travel smarter and work better on the road. It's part of an installation he created for Workspheres, an exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art, which is on display through April 22. Conceived by Paola Antonelli, MoMA's architecture-and-design curator, Workspheres examines the changing nature of the workplace and features imaginative tools and environments commissioned from six international design teams. For his part, Guixé fashioned a set of pill-sized capsules that embody concepts from his nomadic manifesto. Here are 6 of the main tenets (there are 21 in all), as described by Guixé in an interview with Fast Company. His guiding principle? Reinvent your perspective, and you'll reinvent the way you work -- and travel.

Carry Nothing

I think if you want to travel better, you have to understand that nomadic work is ultimately personal in nature. The most valuable thing you carry when you travel is yourself. Conversely, your most valuable take-away is that you've been there personally.

Because people don't focus on the real purpose of travel -- to interact in person, face-to-face -- they invariably carry too much with them. Think about it. You know you're going to a hotel where there will be plenty of tissue and soap, so you don't need to carry those things. Similarly, information is accessible virtually anywhere, anytime -- from hotel computers to Internet cafés. Knowledge workers' tools have evolved to the point where we can uncouple ourselves from the information itself.

Now that all the data you need can be placed on the Internet, you don't need to weigh yourself down with a computer. The only work tool you really need is your concentration, and then you can work from anywhere -- with tools that you find there. You can always scratch an idea on a napkin. Remember, you're traveling for the immediate experience of meeting someone -- not to exchange data.

Give Memory Gifts

I don't give souvenir gifts. I collect good stories, and when I return, I give the people I care about stories instead of objects. By doing so, I help them discover another way to see the world, and I transmit not only ideas but feelings as well.

In the end, objects are material, so they're difficult to carry. Objects weigh you down. They fix you in a place. Nomadic culture is an oral one; it's about speaking, communicating, exchanging cultural information -- not accumulating objects. Above all, nomadic work is about ideas. Ideas are by far the most valuable commodity on the market. I'm in the business of creating something that has value -- but that is completely intangible. So I've found that I offer the most value by giving immaterial gifts, both in work and in life.

Isolate Everywhere

When you're traveling, don't think of yourself as "away from home." Don't think, "I have a fixed place in space and society, and now I'm away from it." You aren't traveling, you're just moving. It doesn't matter where you are, because everywhere can be home if you consider it so.

Our notions about home are completely outdated. For example, if you call someone "homeless," you're using that person's lack of an address as a shorthand to say that person doesn't belong to proper society. But with mobile communications, it's possible to be "homeless" -- to be entirely mobile -- while participating fully in society. Home, as we conceive it today, is not a necessary construct. Ten years ago, people needed a home -- an address, a phone line, a mailbox -- in order to receive information. That is not the case today.

In fact, the idea of home could be erased entirely, except, of course, that families with children need a physical base. Maybe the next generation will grow up knowing that they can be entirely mobile, because home isn't so much a fixed location as it is an emotional state. When you banish the idea of home, you suddenly realize that you can work or live anywhere you go.