How To Work While Traveling: 13 Tips for Staying Productive

One of the biggest challenges when working remotely and traveling is staying productive at your job. Having a remote job while you travel offers an wondrous value of self-rule and flexibility, but it moreover requires dedication and discipline.

After all, one of the weightier things well-nigh the remote lifestyle is stuff worldly-wise to go wherever you finger like at any given moment. But an important thing to remember surpassing you hit the road is that if you decide to fund your travels by working on the road, this may midpoint that your route and schedule aren’t completely flexible. So how do you stay productive while still finding balance?

I’ve been a full-time blogger for scrutinizingly a decade and have lived part-time in my converted Sprinter van for a good permafrost of those traveling throughout the US and Canada. I’ve moreover spent months traveling virtually New Zealand, exploring Patagonia, and trekking in Nepal.

It’s not unchangingly easy to stay focused, expressly when there’s so much to do and explore, but I can reassure you that the rewards are worth it. Working remotely requires independence and self-discipline. Stuff productive ensures that the income keeps flowing in, providing you with financial stability, which ultimately gives you the self-rule to stay on the road longer.

At the same time, it’s moreover important to be worldly-wise to create a healthy work-life wastefulness while traveling. You didn’t start traveling just to sit overdue a computer in trappy places, right? So here I share tips for how to work while traveling and plan your time therefrom so you can find just the right wastefulness of work and play.

1. Set Whispered Well-spoken Working Hours

I recommend setting whispered defended times to work with no distractions so that you have well-spoken blocks of time when you’re working vs not working. This is important expressly to set well-spoken expectations if you are traveling with a significant other who may not have the same work responsibilities as you. Otherwise, you may find that work spills over into every spare minute of your life, driving your partner crazy, and you won’t get to fully enjoy the self-rule of van life.

For example, if you’re an early riser, you can set whispered three hours in the early morning to get some work washed-up surpassing you throne out on a hike or throne out to explore a new town.

Personally, I like to work first thing in the morning and in the evenings. My partner Ryan often cooks dinner, so he takes on dinner duties while I edit photos, write, or respond to emails.

I moreover like to get big chunks of work washed-up on the weekend when the trails and popular spots are busier, that way we can recreate midweek when no one is out there and stave the weekend crowds.

By sticking to this routine, I’m worldly-wise to get work washed-up and still have plenty of time for adventure.

Working on the waterfront in North Carolina

2. Get Organized with Some Helpful Tools

It’s moreover essential to be as organized as possible so that your work gets washed-up faster and you meet important deadlines. Everyone has variegated organizational tactics depending on your workflow, but a few tools I use to stay organized with my merchantry are:

• Slack – this is a tool I use to communicate with my team. It helps keeps conversations organized and streamlined so they don’t get lost in a sea of emails
• Voice Memos – I moreover send voice memos to my team instead of writing things out. This is a huge time saver!
• Google Drive (or Dropbox) – this is a unconfined way to alimony photos and documents organized and wieldy from anywhere. I prefer this over a tuft of nonflexible drives that could get lost or damaged in the van, and it moreover allows me to share resources with my team
• Lightroom for editing photos
• Later – this is a social media tool I use that allows me to schedule social media posts in whop (including uncontrived publishing for Instagram and IG Stories). I love stuff worldly-wise to create and schedule multiple posts at once in advance
• Task Manager – popular ones are Asana, the Notes App on your phone, Trello, or a good old-fashioned notebook
• Google Docs (within Drive) – you can save your Google Docs for offline editing. Just make sure to do this when you’re still in service

3. Plan Superiority & Research WiFi or Lamina Reception

Whether you’re a digital nomad traveling from place to place or taking an extended road trip, it’s important to know what the internet situation is like at your destination so you can plan your work schedule. Here’s a few tips based on your travel style:

Digital Nomad

It’s important to segregate travel destinations based on reliable internet – do your research superiority of time to get an idea based on where you want to go. Search online for cafes, coworking spaces, and hotels in the zone that offer fast WiFi.

You can moreover use websites such as Workfrom and NomadList to find recommendations from other digital nomads well-nigh the weightier places to work from in a particular location. In addition, if you plan to stay in an Airbnb, message the host to trammels the internet speeds and connectivity surpassing booking.

Van Life or Road Trips

The weightier option for internet wangle on the road is a good lamina phone plan with unlimited high-speed data, unlimited mobile hotspot capabilities, and coverage in most of the areas you’ll be spending time in. In most areas, you’ll be worldly-wise to use your phone’s data plan and create a hotspot for your laptop. I recommend not skimping on the data considering when your data runs out, it ways your connection gets way slower, killing your productivity. See this blog post for my favorite van life internet options and tips.

One thing to be enlightened of when working on the road is that many national parks, recreation areas, and sparse campsites tend to be in areas with little to no lamina reception. If you plan on spending time exploring off-grid areas (and I suggest that you do!) you’ll need to plan your work virtually the times you’ll have reliable service so that you can relax when you’re off-grid.

I suggest using the coverage maps on your lamina service provider’s website which can help predict whether or not you’ll have service at a campsite or destination.

Research superiority of time to know the internet situation at your campsite

4. Be productive plane when you don’t have internet

You may have tasks for your job that don’t require internet. Maybe it’s organizing and editing photos or reading some sort of long paper for research. I personally find that these tasks are easier to get washed-up when I don’t have the lark of the internet.

So surpassing we throne off the grid, I make sure to download anything I need to well-constructed whatever tasks I can do offline. Then when I’m out of service, I do the work to get those tasks done.

5. Create a defended workspace

Having a designated workspace helps to separate your work life from your personal life and creates a routine that enhances productivity. It moreover helps you to focus and minimize distractions, leading to largest quality work and improved time management.

To create a defended workspace no matter where you’re traveling, you can bring withal essential tools such as a laptop, charger, headphones, and a notebook, and set them up on a table or sedentary in a quiet location.

If you’re traveling in a van, it’s somewhat easier to whittle out a defended (never changing) work station. In my first van, my bed doubled as the couch, and I had to pop the dining table into the floor to set it up whenever we stopped. This was a time suck and a windbreak to getting work done. I moreover couldn’t work in the mornings or evenings when Ryan wanted to relax in bed. That’s why in my second and third vans, I wanted a increasingly permanent work area.

Now our dinette serves as my office. I can work when Ryan is still asleep, or if I need to hop in the when and send a few emails from a rest area, it’s no problem at all. I love not having to set up or convert any of my furniture in order to get to work, and I’ve found that this has improved my productivity drastically. If you are starting a build from scratch, I highly recommend considering your workspace as you plan your van layout.

Working from my second van

6. Alimony all of your work stuff in one area

It’s way increasingly efficient to have your computer, charging cords, notebooks, and any other tools you use for your job all kept in one drawer that is right next to your workspace. That way you aren’t wasting time gathering all of your stuff every time you need to get some work done.

If you’re traveling out of luggage, invest in a nice palmtop specimen and use a string organizer.

7. Write your emails in batches and use a scheduler to send them

I personally think my emails are increasingly likely to be read if I send them during the workday, as opposed to nights and weekends. However, as I mentioned, I like to work early mornings and evenings, so sometimes I’m not on my computer during peak office times. Plus, you may be traveling in a time zone that’s opposite to your client’s normal working hours.

When I have emails to write, I typhoon them in batches whenever I have service, and then I schedule them to unquestionably send at my preferred time. If you use Gmail, there is a “schedule send” tool built right into Gmail so it doesn’t require any special add-on. Boomerang is flipside handy tool that allows you to schedule emails to be sent at a future time.

By batching and scheduling emails superiority of time, I don’t have to plan my day virtually email or worry well-nigh having service when I want my emails to go out.

8. Plan your meetings when to back

I like to plan all of my Zoom meetings when to when either in the early morning or late afternoon. That way I don’t have commitments scattered throughout the day, and I can still get outside and enjoy the fresh air.

9. Use noise-canceling earphones

If you are living with flipside person in your van or working out of coffee shops, consider investing in a pair of noise-canceling headphones. With such a small space, it’s easy to get distracted by whatever the people virtually you are doing. Noise-canceling headphones help tune out conversations, music, or other preliminaries noises that might otherwise slow you down.

10. Work while in transit

This won’t work for you solo folks, but for you couples this is a unconfined tip for stuff productive while you’re on the move. I love to work while Ryan drives, so by the time we get to our destination, I’m washed-up for the day. If you’re traveling by bus, train, or airplane, take wholesomeness of the WiFi and work while you’re in transit.

11. Hire a Virtual Assistant

Hiring an teammate was one of the smartest things I’ve washed-up to grow my business. At first, it’s scary to part with the money, expressly if you aren’t making a ton.

However, if you are self-employed, drowning in work, and there are tasks you can outsource, consider hiring a virtual teammate to take some things off your plate. In the long run, you’ll likely end up increasing your revenue, you’ll have increasingly bandwidth to focus on the tasks that matter, and you will find a healthier work-life wastefulness which is hair-trigger for boosting creativity.

Check out this post for a list of freelance sites where you can search for a virtual assistant.

12. Don’t waste time on social media and news sites

You want to get your work washed-up so you can go play right? Then tropical Instagram, put your phone away, and get to work. The increasingly you procrastinate on social media and slosh unnecessary information, the longer you’re going to have to sit at your computer and the less time you’ll have for fun.

I mentioned whilom in the section well-nigh getting organized that I use a social media scheduler. This moreover helps minimize the time I spend scrolling on the app. If you need motivation to cut when here, trammels out the lessons I learned taking a 4- month unravel from social media.

13. Enjoy the adventure

Sometimes the weightier thing we can do for our productivity is to unplug and get outside. Hiking is not only good for your physical health, it’s moreover good for your brain. If you’re feeling like you’re not getting anywhere with your work, take a break, get your thoroughbred pumping out in the fresh air, and come when with a renewed focus.