22 Jul 3 (Work) Travel Hacks That Make All the Difference

If you travel for work, then I am sure you can relate to the positive aspects of being on the road.  You get to see new places, meet new people, break out of your normal routine, expand your horizons and have new experiences.  All good things.

But if you are not careful, there can be a downside to travel which includes things like jet lag, fatigue, being out of routine and one that I personally wrestle with a lot – the stress of trying to do it all!

News Flash:  You can’t.  I mean, you can try to keep up with all of your normal work responsibilities, answer all e-mails in a timely fashion, participate in conference calls and in essence, try to be all things to all people, but you will pay a hefty price!

Instead, try these 3 work-travel hacks to be more productive on the road, keep the stress levels down, feel your best and enjoy the ride!

Ready?

1. Manage Your Emails: Dealing with the deluge of emails while your travel and have in person meetings with clients, partners or colleagues can be pure hell.  Instead, turn on an auto responder that lets people know that you are on the road from this date to that date and that you will be checking e-mails, but that you will be slow to respond. Also provide a back up contact (if you can) in the case of an urgent matter.  Trust me.  This one thing is a life saver.
2. Keep Up Your Self Care Routines: It is very easy to run on fumes resulting from too little sleep and exercise and too much indulgence on food and treats.  Trust me on this one too.  Guard your sleep with your life, carve out at least 30 minutes to move your body and while you want to enjoy foods from the region that you are in, go easy on the junky and sweet stuff and limit the alcohol intake.
3. Use an Organizer or Organizing App: When you are on the road, you likely have a calendar full of meetings, events you may be attending and things that require pristine organization, note taking and follow up responses.  And I don’t know about you, but my memory can’t hold it all.  So, I rely on things like:

• The Rocket Notebook, a smart notebook that allows me to take copious notes, send it to my e-mail or cloud storage like Google Docs or Evernote.  The best part is I can wipe the page clean and have a fresh page for the next meeting.
• Google Keep, the best sticky note system ever!  It’s easy to use, free and you can organize, color code, set reminders and even leave yourself voice memos.  Check it out.
• Asana, a fabulous project management platform that allows you to assign tasks to yourself, to your colleagues and multiple members of your team and to check in on and keep projects going while you are on the road

I’d love to hear what works for you when you are on the road.  Please leave a comment and share your tools and strategies!

Until the next time!

Vivienne