Ever since I was 17, I’ve traveled to and lived in many different countries.

Seeing places and meeting different people inspires me and gives me better ideas, so I‘m planning to travel often for the rest of my life.

But traveling does affect my productivity and my work.

It’s just harder to get stuff done on the go. You don’t have your comfortable home workspace. The wifi might be bad. Your routines are all out of whack.

So what can you do to stay productive while traveling? Here are some things I’ve learned.

1. Travel more slowly. After I arrive in a new location, it usually takes me at least a few days to find a comfortable place to work. So I try to visit fewer places per trip and to stay put longer when I know I’ll need to get work done.
2. Get a local e-sim. I like to use a service like Airalo (no affiliation) to get a local, virtual sim. This gives me plenty of data at the best mobile speeds, so I can use my phone’s cellular data as a hotspot when I’m working on my laptop or iPad. That’s often more reliable than some random café’s wifi.
3. Invest in quality travel gear. I usually bring my Peak Design backpack, which is big but very smartly designed. I use various items to organize things inside the bag and in my suitcase, such as Peak Design’s Tech Pouch, Wash Pouch, and packing cubes. These allow me to get to my electronics, toiletries, and clothing quickly wherever I am—and make it super easy to pack up when I’m off to my next destination.
4. Schedule work that can get interrupted. This past week, I was visiting San Francisco. I used to live there, so I hit up one of my favorite cafés to catch up on some work. I was there for 2 hours, but ended up chatting intermittently with the person sat across the table from me. When you’re traveling, it’s so valuable to remain open to making new connections, but that does mean it’s tougher to focus on work that requires uninterrupted focus. So often, as I’m preparing for a trip, I deliberately gather a bunch of admin, email, and related tasks that I can do even in short blocks of work time.
5. Sometimes, give up on productivity. Some of my favorite travel happens when I don’t try to be productive. I can’t always afford to do this and you probably can’t either. But I can and I give myself permission to be away from work for a bit, I come back re-energized. In fact, I end up getting more done than I would have if I’d tried to work every single day. Plus, I get to be 100% present at my destination and with the people there.

There more to say about productivity on the go, but for now I’ll get back to being in the moment; it’s time to (re-)explore Philadelphia once I land there in an hour or so.

Greetings from the sky!