Trying Location Independence: Making Work & Travel Work

I’ve been doing the traveling freelancer thing a lot lately.

I have yet to spend a weekend at home in April, which means I’ve had a lot of 3 or 4 day work weeks with no weekend time to play catch-up.

Don’t get me wrong, I love being able to do this. Part of the reason I went freelance was to have the ability to prioritize time with my family and friends, especially the ones who live far away. Today, I’m already in Yuma, Arizona to visit my brother and his wife who just had their first child! He’s also my first nephew, so I am super excited to spend time with the little guy.

This time, though, it’s not just a weekend trip. I’ll be there for seven days, plus a day of travel on either end. And while I’ll be spending a lot of my time playing with my nephew and being as helpful as I can be to the new parents, I’ll also need to get plenty of work done.

Productive Freelancing: Working While Traveling

How I Prepared to Work While Traveling

I haven’t fully tried this “location independent” thing yet, aside from quick emails, a few phone calls, and writing on the bus or train. But this coming week, I need to be incredibly productive with the (limited) work time I have.

I did a lot of prep work over the past week – everything that needs to be published while I’m away from home is already written and scheduled. This includes social media (I use Hootsuite for that), though I’ll also check in on both my and my clients’ accounts once a day.

I also made sure to tell clients that I’ll be “out of the office” this week and may be a little harder to get a hold of than usual.

What I’m Using to Work While Traveling

I love my new Surface Pro 2 (and one of these days I’ll get around to writing a review of it). It’s a perfect tablet/laptop hybrid: lightweight and portable, but also very powerful and with everything on it I need to get my work done.

I keep all my files in DropBox, so if I do need to get on another computer for a little while I can still access them.

I like to divide up my work by day, but I want to be able to see everything that needs doing over the course of the week. I tried out several to-do list apps, but they were all more complicated than I need. I always find myself going back to basics: sticky notes. I use one for each day and fill it in with two or three major tasks that I want to get done. Since I’m using Windows 8 now, I do this with Sticky Tiles. I can pin them to my Start Screen and see my to-do list for the whole week.

Since I’ll need to be very focused while I work, that means no wandering off to read blogs or browse random sites. But so much of my work does require me to be online that I don’t want to use an internet-blocking app like Freedom. Instead, I’ve self-monitor with Toolbox, which allows you to have several tools open at once. I set my Toolbox screen up with a web browser, a task list, and a timer that will notify me when my time online is up.

I’ve fallen head over heels for OneNote, the Windows 8 application that is similar to Evernote. I keep notes for all my projects and client information there. I also have notebooks for each trip I take with pages for my packing list, flight information, rental car reservations, and itinerary. I particularly love that I can write directly on the screen, and then convert my notes to text.

In the past, this has been enough to keep me on track when I need to get a lot done in a short amount of time. We’ll see how well it works when I’m sharing a house with a six week old and two tired parents!

What do you use to keep yourself on track when you travel and work at the same time?