Freelancing gives many people the wonderful opportunity to work while traveling. You may need to meet with clients in a particular location from time to time but for the rest of the week or the month, you can be anywhere. This affords you the ability to explore new places, far and wide, especially if most of your work is internet-based.
The liberation of working for yourself and being location-independent does have its drawbacks however. One of these is the potential lack of productivity. Moving from place to place, whether merely visiting for the day or traveling for months at a time, can waylay schedules and endanger deadlines.
This is why it’s essential to find techniques which allow you to stay productive even during the most exciting of traveling adventures.
How to stay productive while traveling
Here are some tips and tricks successful freelancers employ so as to remain on top of their workflow as well as their cash flow.
Plan ahead
Planning ahead before any type of traveling is a sensible idea but it’s essential if you need to work at the same time. It’s very easy to misjudge just how complicated, tiring, and time-killing travel can be, not to mention how distracting the fun of meeting new people, staying in new surroundings, and seeing new sights can be.
Use project management tools to accurately plan your schedule during your travels. Consider the most pressing deadlines. Think realistically, based on previous experiences, when you’re likely to be able to work on different tasks.
Factor in worse-case scenarios, like illness, laptop loss, and flight delays, and create windows of emergency time in which you can take care of things without missing a deadline or leaving a client hanging.
Delegate tasks
Successful business owners often delegate repetitive tasks and time-sapping processes. If you love to travel and are often on the move, then delegation should be an essential component of your business.
There many types of delegation partner for freelance professionals. They include virtual assistants, bookkeepers, web designers, editors, and social media experts. Delegation can help you to boost your productivity and free up more time to enjoy the sights and sounds of the places you visit.
Automate processes
Like with delegation, automation also speeds up your workflow. By automating different processes, you can keep various parts of your business ticking over for weeks and months at a time, without the need to do anything.
You can automate many of your invoicing processes. For example, Invoice Ninja will automatically send out pre-written late payment reminders when an invoice has passed its due date. Other automation processes include automatic syncing between different apps and devices, which ensures all your data is up-to-date right across the board.
Integrate apps and tools
And this is why integrating apps and tools is so important. The more you integrate and sync different apps, the faster your workflow becomes. Your information will also be more accurate. As one app or platform is updated, so will all the rest be updated, and this ensures you have accurate real-time data right at your fingertips.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re at home, sitting at the airport, or reclining on a gondola in Venice, you’ll be merely a button or two away from every facet of your business.
At Invoice Ninja we have joined forces with a number of integration partners including Zapier, PieSync, and Integromat. These partnerships allow you to automatically send data to and from your Invoice Ninja account to multiple different apps.
Track your time
If you travel frequently, or you’re a digital nomad, then you’ll have a decent idea of how long things usually take. Whether it’s getting from place to place, or completing certain tasks and processes, it’s vital to be able to accurately predict project timelines and travel schedules.
This is where time tracking tools can be really effective. Use a time tracker throughout your travels and working hours to measure and record time spent on certain actions. The resulting data will allow you to better plan your time, your client project deadlines, and future travels, with increased accuracy.
You’ll also see where you’re wasting a lot of time, which could be used more efficiently.
Focus the mind
Travel is distracting, usually for the best of reasons. There are so many exciting new things to see and wonderful people to meet. It can be incredibly difficult to power down the excitement and focus on work. But to be a successful freelancer and enjoy the wonders of travel, it’s imperative you do find ways to focus the mind.
A good way to focus is to plan when you will work and where. When you anticipate an upcoming work period, you naturally begin to focus on the subject at hand. This goes back to the importance of planning ahead of time, as mentioned in the first point. Whenever possible, prearrange places and quiet times where you’ll be doing nothing else but focusing on client work.
Staying productive while traveling
Staying productive as a freelancer while traveling needn’t be difficult. It’s simply a matter of careful planning, preparation, and project management, together with maintaining a professional mindset. Travel is meant to be fun and fulfilling but you’re also a business owner answerable to your paying clients. Procedures need to be implemented so you can enjoy your freelancing and your free time, without any unnecessary stress.
Implement the above tips before your next travels and you’ll quickly notice a vast improvement in your productivity, workflow, and above all, your peace of mind.
