What Is Location Freedom and Why Does It Matter?

A few years ago I was sat on a sun lounger in Lanzarote, phone in hand, jotting down ideas for blog posts and replying to a couple of LinkedIn messages. Nobody made me do it. I wasn't chasing a deadline or dodging a boss. I just fancied it, and I could, because nothing about where I was sitting had any bearing on whether the work got done.

I remember thinking, quite plainly, that I could be doing this from my kitchen table just as easily. The pool, the sunshine, the fact I was on holiday: none of it changed what was actually required of me. A few ideas jotted down on my phone, a couple of replies sent, done. That's the moment location freedom clicked for me. Not as some far-off dream reserved for the wealthy or the self-employed, but as something ordinary people, in ordinary jobs, can actually build for themselves.

What Location Freedom Actually Means

Location freedom is simply the ability to choose where you work from, rather than having that decision made for you by a commute, an office, or a fixed desk. It doesn't mean quitting your job. It doesn't mean becoming a full-time digital nomad with a backpack and a one-way flight, chasing wifi in a different country every month. For most people, it looks far more modest than that: working from home instead of sitting in traffic, taking a call from the garden instead of a meeting room, or picking up a side project in the evenings that isn't tied to any office at all.

The biggest myth I come across, again and again, is that you have to be self-employed to have any of this. You don't. You can be employed full-time and work from home two or three days a week. You can look for remote-friendly roles when you're job hunting, rather than assuming every good opportunity comes with a five-day commute attached. And you can build a part-time side hustle around your existing job, working when and where suits you, on your own terms, without ever having to hand in your notice.

I think that myth does more damage than people realise. If you believe location freedom is only for the self-employed or the already-wealthy, you never even ask the question. You just accept the commute, the fixed desk, and the assumption that this is simply how work has to be.

Why This Matters More Than People Realise

Before Covid, the idea of asking your employer if you could work from home simply wasn't part of most people's vocabulary. It felt like something reserved for senior executives or people who'd already made it. For everyone else, you turned up, you sat at your desk, and that was that. Flexibility was something you read about in articles written by and for people who already had plenty of it.

That's changed, and the numbers back it up. As of June 2026, around 2 in 5 Brits, roughly 22.1 million people, work from home at least some of the time. What used to feel like a privilege for the lucky few is now a normal part of working life for a huge slice of the country. This isn't a niche trend confined to tech workers or freelancers. It's commuters, teachers, parents, and full-time employees across all sorts of industries who've simply started asking a question that wasn't really on anyone's lips before 2020.

Location freedom isn't about having more money. It's about having more choice over how your day actually unfolds.

That distinction matters. A shorter commute, a lunch break that isn't rushed, an afternoon where you can pop to the school gates without asking permission three days in advance: none of that shows up on a payslip, but it changes how life feels day to day. Think about what a single reclaimed hour actually buys you. Not a fortune, but a slower morning, a proper breakfast, or ten minutes with your own thoughts before the working day takes over. Multiply that across a working week and it starts to look less like a small perk and more like a genuine shift in quality of life.

For parents juggling the school run, or teachers whose term-time structure leaves little room to manoeuvre, that flexibility can matter even more. It's not always about escaping work altogether. Sometimes it's simply about work fitting around life, rather than the other way round.

A Fair Word for the Roles That Can't Go Remote

It's worth being honest here too: location freedom doesn't apply evenly to everyone, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. If you work in hospitality, retail, care, the NHS, or as a council street cleaner or highways worker, no amount of asking is going to turn your job into something you can do from home, let alone a sun lounger. Those roles exist because someone needs to physically be there, and that matters every bit as much as any desk-based job. If that's you, this isn't about feeling like you're missing out or doing something wrong.

Where location freedom still applies is in the choices you make around that job, rather than within it. When you're looking at your next career move, or considering a change altogether, you can weigh up remote or hybrid options as one of the things you're looking for, the same way you'd weigh up salary or hours, even if your current role doesn't allow it. And a side hustle, run in the evenings or at weekends from your own laptop or phone, can sit entirely separately from a job that has to be done in person. It doesn't replace the fixed role. It simply sits alongside it, on your own terms.

Why So Many People Still Feel Stuck

If location freedom is more available than ever, why do so many people still feel trapped by their job or their commute? Partly it's habit. We assume the way we've always worked is the only way things can be, simply because it's the only way we've ever known. Partly it's confidence: asking for flexibility can feel like asking for a favour, even when it's a completely reasonable request that plenty of employers now expect.

There's also a quieter reason. For a long time, the whole idea of working from home, or working from anywhere, felt like it belonged to a different kind of person entirely: someone senior, someone self-employed, someone who'd already "made it." That belief kept a lot of ordinary people from ever raising the subject with their manager, or even considering it as an option when job hunting. It simply never occurred to them that it might be on the table.

If any of this sounds familiar, it's worth reading why feeling stuck at work is more common than you think, which digs into why so many of us end up there and what actually helps.

What I've Learned About Location Freedom

The lesson I keep coming back to is that location freedom rarely arrives all at once. It builds up in small moments: a morning where you're not stuck in traffic like everyone else, a holiday where you could answer one email from a sun lounger if you wanted to, rather than because you had to. Nobody hands you total flexibility overnight. You ask for a bit, you prove it works, and you build from there.

For me, that's meant working when I want rather than when a fixed schedule demands it, and not having to think twice about where I am when a piece of work needs doing. It's also meant being able to work while away, purely because I chose to, not because anyone expected it of me. That distinction, choosing versus being made to, is really the whole point.

It's also not just for people who work for themselves. Nearly half of Brits, 46% according to recent research, now have some kind of side hustle running alongside their main job. That's not a fringe activity anymore. It's a normal way for ordinary people, in ordinary employed roles, to create a bit more choice for themselves without walking away from the security of a regular wage. A second income, run on your own terms and often from wherever suits you, is one of the most practical routes into location freedom that most people have never seriously considered.

Three Ways to Start Building More Location Freedom

You don't need a dramatic career change to start moving in this direction. A few practical starting points, whether you're commuting daily, juggling the school run, or working to term-time hours:

• Ask your employer about working from home. Even one or two days a week can change how your whole week feels, and more workplaces are open to it than you might expect, particularly since it's become such a normal part of working life since 2020.
• Look at remote-friendly roles when you're job hunting or thinking about your next move. Treat "can this be done remotely, at least some of the time?" as a genuine filter when you're weighing up a new role, not an afterthought you consider once you've already accepted the job.
• Consider a side hustle that fits around your life rather than taking it over. If you're not sure where to start, 10 side hustles you can start while working full-time is a good place to look, and if time feels like the real barrier, how to find time for a side hustle when you're already busy tackles that head-on.

None of these require you to quit anything, uproot your life, or take a leap of faith. They're small, reasonable requests and choices that, added together, quietly hand you back more control over your own week.

A Thought to Leave You With

Location freedom isn't about becoming super wealthy, or proving you don't need a "proper job." It's about noticing that you have more choice than you think, and using a bit of it. Somewhere between the office desk and the sun lounger, there's a version of your working week that fits your life a little better. It's worth asking your employer, your job search, or your evenings, whether they could make a bit more room for it.

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Got a question about this post, or want to share your own story? Get in touch any time at paul@freedomblogger.co.uk.