Have you ever landed in an airport after a long flight, only to be consumed by the dreaded idea that you have some work backlog you need to take care of? If you’re a frequent traveler, you most probably have.
As DMCs, we have to constantly tread the precarious balance of work and travel. Going completely off the grid while traveling isn’t an option because traveling constitutes a significant portion of our time.
So how do we manage to be more efficient while traveling?
However, there are some quick tips that you can follow that might make it easier for you to maintain a healthy balance. Some of these tips helped me strike the perfect work/travel balance, and hopefully they’ll work for you too.
- Work While Waiting at the Airport
People often dread long flights because that means they’d have to be off the grid for a considerably long period of time. Sometimes, your journeys might be elongated because of connecting flights. That’s worse, because that means you’d have to spend several hours in a sort of limbo. Well, you can actually use this time to catch up on some of your work.
Check into an airport lounge, get the WiFi password, and make the most of your inTransit period. If you want some privacy, and if you want to take a shower, you can also check into a room at an airport lounge, even though they may come with an expensive price tag.
If you set your mind to it, you can get a lot of work done while waiting at the airport. This will leave you plenty of time to explore the scene of your travel destination once you land.
- Set Up International Use on your Smart Phone
A lot of cell phone carriers now provide international plans that are actually quite reasonable. You can get one of those plans if you don’t want to change your number by purchasing new sims every time you go to new countries.
This is helpful as it keeps you connected even when you’re in locations without WiFi.
However, when you do have WiFi, it would be ideal to turn your data off so you don’t burn through it. Besides, once you have WiFi you don’t really need anything else, do you?
- Load up your Smart Phone with Apps
Smart phones can do pretty much all that computers can now. The only difference is that you can carry a cell phone everywhere you go, and you can whip it out even as you walk. You can’t do that with a laptop.
As such, you should make sure that all your essentials are in your phone. Load it up with useful apps to get organized, all your social media apps, and apps to connect with such as WhatsApp, Skype, etc. Think about every facet of your work, all its requirements, and download all the necessary apps.
- Work While You’re Eating Out and in Other Stolen Moments
Cafes and Restaurants generally offer free WiFi as well. As such, whenever you’re eating out on your own, you can make use of the time to also catch up on your work.
If you follow the tips mentioned above, your phone should be fully functional to help you catch up on work.
There are of course certain types of work that can’t be handled over a cell phone.
As such, you can prioritize and decide beforehand what you need to do in your hotel room in a laptop, and the type of work you can do in stolen moments while traveling.
If your cafe or restaurant of choice doesn’t have WiFi connection, you can still use your cell phone data as a WiFi hotspot through “tethering”.
Well, these are some really simply but incredibly effective 
methods by which I can always keep up with my work while traveling. If you have some of your own tips on how to maintain the perfect work/travel balance, let me know down in the comments!
Take Care,
Savas Kazantzides