As there hasn’t been any new blog posts here for a while, I thought I should write a quick blog post, about my recent experience of working whilst travelling. I’ve recently returned from a short trip. Even though I wasn’t away too long, it was important that I worked whilst away.
I always take my backpack away with me, and the work items that I carried were:
- Dell D620 laptop with charged battery, and power supply.
- Old mobile phone that can be used as a mobile broadband dongle.
- Plastic container with a camera cable, mobile phone cable and usb stick.
- Digital camera for taking photos and recording short video clips.
- Lap-it a ‘lapdesk’.
I knew I had a table to use at the location I was going to be staying at, but was unsure of internet access, so before I left I made sure there were available megabytes, I could use on a mobile broadband package. Whilst using the mobile phone for internet access, I made sure I left my web browser cache ‘on’, to save on bandwidth and disabled Dropbox.
On the second day of my stay I was given a network cable, to enable me to use the internet access at the house I was staying at. Luckily I had brought my lapdesk along with me, as the cable was short, and meant I had to work from the bed.
Unfortunately due to the nature of the visit, I couldn’t work as much as I would have liked, but I was glad I still had old school rj45 network port on my laptop, as well as mobile broadband via my mobile phone.
All in all it was mixed results, and not having a set time each day to work, did limit my productivity. I knew this would impact my output, but it couldn’t be helped on this occasion.
I can see myself moving to a ‘lighter’ mobile working setup in the future, as the laptop is quite heavy. It was good though I had more than one way to access the internet, as well as the light lapdesk, which meant I could be flexible where I worked.