How to Fashion a Digital Office for Travel

Retiring early and traveling extensively is a real and definite possibility — but in the meantime, why not take the opportunity to taste a portion of the adventurous traveler’s life? Whatever your occupation is, you can in all probability perform it while traveling — as long as you can stay connected to the world around you, and as long as you can stay organized. Thankfully, in today’s digitally interconnected world, this is easy to do: you need little more than a laptop, an Internet browser, an email platform, and a 3G device.

Where to Stay

When you travel, you have to find reliable places to stay — but you have to find places that you can afford and where you will have access to the basic facilities you require. Since your travel route changes, you have to find good hotels, guesthouses, and short-term apartment rentals. You can accomplish most of this on-line. Bookmark some reliable websites for finding travel lodging — and ensure that you always have access to the Internet, so that you can make these kinds of reservations on the go.

Be Culturally Informed

You should learn as much as you can about every place that you travel to. The best source of knowledge now is the Internet: use a search engine or Wikipedia and get to know the history of your destination — know about its kings and queens, its prime ministers, its dictators, its ethnic makeup; know about its culture and the related cultural paradigms. Understand the local etiquette. You may be a traveling professional — but you are also a tourist. Learn to be a respectful one.

Stay in the Loop

While you are travelling, you have to continue running your enterprise. This means that you have to conduct business. You will want to stay privy to what is happening politically and economically in your home country as well as in the international community. You’ll also need to stay connected to your employees and to your employers. Again, you’re going to be doing this via the Internet — consider purchasing a device with 3G capabilities. With such a device, you will have unmitigated access to email and on-line news.

Stay Organized

Finally, you will need to be organized. Notes can be kept in word documents and spreadsheets, or you can consider using software like Macintosh’s stickies or the equivalent for Windows or Linux. You should consider purchasing a small and easily portable laptop with which you can organize your affairs — the 3G device allows you constant access to news and email, while the laptop gives you a more permanent (relatively speaking) office from which to work.

Allen Denzer loves to learn about new technology and its applications, and he also enjoys writing about criminal background checks.