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Remote Work

Working Remotely While Traveling? Tips and Must-Haves

11.08.2022

Working remotely has long appealed to those who want more freedom in life. It does away with long hours of commuting to work each day, allowing for more time to focus on yourself, your hobbies, and your relationships.

Working remotely also allows for the opportunity to travel and discover the world. It’s been proven to be sustainable and it is also a lifestyle that many digital nomads have built a thriving career on.

If you want to be a successful digital nomad, you need to do your due diligence and make the necessary preparations. Along with your travel gear, you’ll need to find the hardware and software that will enable you to work remotely and travel with ease.

To help you out, here’s a list of work essentials you’ll need with you on your adventures.

Hardware Must-Haves

Should your equipment break down at, say, a remote, tropical beach, you likely won’t find the right tech support or repair center for miles around. It’s ideal to invest in the best hardware you can afford to save you money and time in the long run.

Laptop

Your laptop should feature the specs you need for the type of work you do. At the same time, it has to be a make and model that won’t weigh you down.

Look for a slim, lightweight laptop that doesn’t compromise on performance. This laptop should provide extra-long battery life and have ample storage for all the software you’ll need for work.
For a combination of portability and consistent performance, consider an Ultrabook such as the Macbook Pro, Lenovo Flex 5, or Dell XPS.Whatever laptop you choose, make sure that it’s extremely durable. Check its user reviews to be extra sure. Buy a padded, water-resistant laptop sleeve to go with it too.

Travel internet dongles

It helps to check for Internet availability before travelling to a new destination. Take note that some areas may be out of coverage. Some locations may require you to purchase an Internet SIM card to connect to local Internet providers.

Battery back-up

When traveling, you won’t always have access to a power source. Make sure you have a fully charged, high-capacity power bank handy. A power bank with over 20,000 mAh provides enough juice for more than one device. Choose one that has multiple types of ports to accommodate different devices.

Indispensable Accessories

Needless to say, you shouldn’t forget to take your laptop and phone chargers on your adventures. But you’d do well to get a power adapter kit too, one with international outlet adapters, so you can plug in and charge anywhere you go.

You should also invest in compact noise-cancelling headsets. A good headset can significantly minimize background noise when you have to take calls in crowded places.
Other things that can come in handy are a small wireless mouse, a lightweight folding laptop stand, and a super-slim wireless keyboard.

Just make sure that you can fit all of your devices and accessories in a secure laptop bag so you can work remotely and travel anywhere with ease.

Software Essentials

No matter how sleek and powerful your hardware is, they won’t do you any good without high-performance software. Since you won’t always have access to tech support when you’re traveling, it’s important to have the best remote work tools you can get.

Remote work software

Your basic software package has to include apps for communication and tools for collaboration. For communication, Viber and Telegram are most useful for calls and messaging. Purchasing credit for your Skype account enables you to call landline or mobile phones from your laptop. Zoom is popular for virtual meetings and can be used for free.

To keep up with your clients and your team, you can use Slack, Google Hangouts, and similar apps. There are also several tools for collaboration you can use to manage team projects. There’s Google Drive for file management, Trello for project management, InVision for design collaboration, and GitHub for software development. With modern advances in technology, there are now dozens of similar software for whatever work purposes you need.

The ideal remote work software is cloud-based and accessible from any location and on any device. This software should enable you to store and access your files and documents securely anytime you need to. More importantly, it should have robust features that make it easy for distributed teams to communicate, collaborate, and complete projects successfully.

Digital workplace

Instead of having to navigate multiple disparate apps that make working cumbersome, you can opt to merge all your remote work tools into a single, comprehensive digital workplace.

A digital workplace is a set of tools, platforms, and environments that removes barriers of location, time, and communication. It incorporates all the technologies you need to run a business, allowing you to access applications and high-performance software for messaging, designing, marketing, and myriad business processes in one convenient platform.

A digital workplace can be integrated into your existing IT infrastructure, so you and your team can maintain all the data and work tools you already have. From there, it can streamline and improve upon your workflow. You can use your digital workplace, for instance, to automate repetitive tasks and manual processes, saving you time and effort and allowing you to focus on more important matters.

With a robust digital workplace, you can manage your team better and accomplish more work in less time. It will enhance communication and collaboration among employees as well as improve performance and work productivity. It makes your organization more agile. More importantly, it allows you to do all of these while you travel the world.

How to work remotely and travel

1. Stick to a routine

It’s often easy to lose track of time when you’re working remotely. Remote work is often flexible with login times and schedules. However, well laid plans can unravel pretty quickly when you lose track of time doing something else. Remote work should always be treated as a huge responsibility. There are real people depending on you to keep your end of the bargain. Set a routine and stick to it. Calendars and reminders are a huge help when it comes to maintaining routines and schedules. They also help you keep track of your work and inculcate much needed discipline in remote work.

2. Communicate often

When it comes to remote work, people often take it easy and lose themselves in work or their own worlds. When you’re working remotely, you have to remember that it’s as important to communicate with your team members as it is to deliver on your work. In fact, the former could be a little bit more important than the latter. Communication is often taken for granted at the office when you can hear all your colleagues and sometimes get the information you need without taking any effort. But with remote work, the search for information can quickly turn into a quest if you’re not in regular touch with your colleagues.

3. Co-working spaces

Co-working spaces are a godsend for people working remotely on a long-term basis. While the idea of moving to an office setup when you can just relax in your pajamas at home is a little intimidating, this will actually help you deliver work more efficiently and effectively. Also, the best part of working at co-working spaces is that you get all the benefits of the social interactions at the workplace without any of the pitfalls of office interactions. While you can make great friends with people working on different things, and maybe even find opportunities, you wouldn’t have to worry about your manager breathing down your neck. It’s a win-win.

4. Set rigid time limits

Working remotely can sometimes result in a slide into anarchy. In the absence of office time limits, work tends to stretch beyond office hours and you find yourself making excuses as to how this thing you forgot about can be done over the weekend. When this happens, you feel overwhelmed and get stuck in a vicious cycle of work that you wouldn’t normally have been in if you were working at an office. It’s essential to break this cycle and set rigid time limits. It’s also more important that you stick to these time limits religiously.

5. Maintain relationships

When you’re working remotely, it’s easy to lose track of friends and family. While not directly related to your work productivity or efficiency, personal and professional relationships that sour because of long term neglect are detrimental to remote work success. It’s important that you maintain contact with close friends and family when you’re working remotely. There are many studies that suggest maintaining happiness in your personal life is key to success in your work life. Your immediate surroundings, your family, relationships, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances are as important to your remote career success as anything else.

6. Seek new communities

Remote work has become the new normal. What used to be a small number of freelancers and professionals has now grown into a worldwide community of regular office workers who have been thrust into remote work over the past year. Everybody’s new to this and all of them are working through their issues on their own. However, what sets the expert remote worker apart from the average is their participation in new remote work communities that share resources, advice and opportunities with members. Joining any of these millions of communities online will give you a sense of belonging and the assurance that you’re not alone.

Equip Yourself for Remote Work

Indeed, modern technology has allowed us to work remotely and travel at the same time. With the right device and software, you can work efficiently and remain productive anywhere you are in the world.
To ensure quality and top performance, adding a Digital Workplace Platform like Kissflow to your list of work essentials can take your productivity up by many levels. It can empower you to continue delivering optimal work performance as you manage your team, regardless of where you or your team may be.