How To Stay Productive While Traveling For Work

Staying Productive While Traveling for Work: Managing Your WorkloaD

Staying productive while on business trips can often be difficult to manage, especially when the traveling is frequent and the work load is steady. Now to be clear, I am not talking about working on the presentations for the meetings that you have scheduled which take the bulk of your time - the reason for your travels - no I’m talking about the everyday tasks that also require your time for other clients, or depending on your role in your organization, the management of your team or running your own business.

Depending on where you are going in your travels and what needs to be done. Here are a few things that I have picked up along the way to help you stay focused on the tasks at hand, productive in the workload needed back at home, and maintain your sanity and health.

PLAN AHEAD AND STAY VERSATILE IN YOUR WORK - USE THE CLOUD

Over the years of traveling for work I have become more aware of the need to make sure that all of the potential work that is needed and the work I could set aside some time to do is at my finger tips. With cloud computing becoming the norm, this makes things easy, but make sure that before you leave you have allowed all of your devices to properly sync - especially devices that you may only use for traveling like pads and smaller laptops - so that you can have easy access to your work. That being said, make sure that you either can use your device as a hotspot, or pay the bit extra on the plane to get wifi.

CREATE CONTENT WHENEVER YOU CAN

Traveling often leaves a lot of down time, at the airport, on the plane, in the cab, etc. If you have a solid 40+ mins to write the next article, the next blog, why not seize the opportunity. Planes tend to be the best, because if you don’t want to pay for wifi you can still write content. For example, I am currently writing this article on my cab ride from NYC to Staten Island between meetings. In addition to writing, long trips allow you to read new articles on your industry, or your client’s industry, which can help generate ideas for future content. Both of these are particularly helpful to reduce the workload during the week if you happen to be traveling on the weekends.

SET SOME TIME FOR YOURSELF

While the first two suggestions are regarding work product the of the biggest things I have learn is to set aside some time during my trips to make sure I am staying healthy and not burning out. Some of the best ways I have found, particularly for when traveling overseas or to Asia, is to get in a workout to stimulate blood flow and recharges the creativity.

In the end, the goal is to balance what you are doing so that you can stay sharp, but not over do it. If you have an opportunity to catch a game, get a nice meal, and some extra sleep - do it.