Stay Productive When you Travel for Business
Organization and Time Management
Use and sync your calendars across all your devices. Keep every event detail in your smartphone or tablet’s calendar.
Include flight numbers, gates, phone numbers, confirmation numbers, addresses and schedules right at your fingertips.
Set up keyboard shortcut macros to save time. This takes some up-front prep time, but when you consider the time-savings you’ll have on every trip, it’s worth it.
Use Evernote to keep all your ideas together. One of the best things to come out of business travel is the plethora of ideas, contacts, pictures, and sounds that come about from various meetings, conferences and events that take place during travel.
Make a list of to-dos while in transit. Business travelers can follow two routes: be totally connected, or totally unconnected. Both offer advantages for productivity. If you choose to be totally connected, make a to-do list and use flight time to catch up on emails, read articles you’ve been meaning to get to, or take an online class. If you decide to disconnect totally, you can be productive without being distracted by online noise, tasks, and entertainment. Use a good old-fashioned pen and paper to brainstorm, write, sketch ideas or plan a project.
Get some noise-canceling headphones. You can avoid the agony with a good set of comfortable noise-canceling headphones. Plug them into your smartphone (or into the plane’s on-board entertainment system) and tune out the noise. They really work, and they can turn a brutal flight into a tolerable one.
Bring your workout clothes. If your hotel has fitness equipment or a gym, make a point to use it. Exercise is the best way to blow off the stress of traveling for business. Even if you aren’t a regular gym attendee, a few minutes on a treadmill will give you a change of pace from your working day.
Watch how you eat. A giant productivity killer is a major change in diet. If you make the effort to eat the way you’re accustomed to eating at home, you’ll be able to stay alert and you’ll feel good enough to push through the work later. Speaking of portions some restaurants you’ll undoubtedly encounter during business travel are famous huge portion sizes. Don’t feel obligated to finish everything on your plate.
Talk to friends and family. Keeping in touch with family and friends daily is probably the single most important thing you can do to stay productive while you travel. It sounds counter-intuitive, but it isn’t. When you’re traveling for business, you’re with new people, in a new city, with unfamiliar surroundings, a strange bed, new food, and a new daily routine maybe even in a different time zone. All of those things are distractions that can take away your focus. The more familiarity you can bring with you, the more productive you’re likely to be.
Source: Ipass
Patty Block, President and Founder of The Block Group, established her company to advocate for women-owned businesses, helping them position their companies for strategic growth. Charting the course for impactful, sustainable, profitable businesses, the beacon is control: of your strategic direction, your money, your time, your staffing, and your ability to bring in business. The Block Group brings together the people, resources and ideas that build results.
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