You can fit your computer, telephone, fax machine, and filing cabinets into a single carry on bag now – it’s called your laptop – so what is keeping you in a single, fixed location? Get out and enjoy life. Here are eight tips for traveling with your home office.
Explore Local Coffee Shops
As you travel, you’ll find that different cities follow different trends in the style that their local coffee shops source and roast coffee beans. Many roasters in San Diego, for example, favor a darker roast, while roasters in San Antonio tend to follow more of a medium-to-light roast. If coffee is part of the fuel for you to get your work done, getting to know the local coffee shops is an added bonus.
Follow the Climate You Love Best
If you hate being cold in the winter, there’s a lifestyle for that. In the summer, explore the northern states as much as you want. As winter approaches, head south. States like San Diego and Hawaii feel like paradise much of the year, although they can be expensive. Try Arizona, Nevada, and Florida if you want to spend less. Or, if you really love the snow, you can follow it around for the best snowboarding all winter long.
Look for Long-Term Rentals
Traveling with your home office ideally doesn’t mean camping out in a motel along the highway for $70 a night. Look for long-term furnished apartment rentals on Craigslist or on Zeus. These rentals are often equipped with high-speed internet, so you won’t be hung up in Santa Fe with the slowest internet speed of your life since you switched from dialup in the late nineties.
Take Up A Hobby
If you don’t have a hobby, look into getting one. However, you may already have a hobby and you just don’t know it. Maybe you practice yoga, jujitsu, or another form of fitness. Golf is popular among one demographic, and disc golf among another. Going to a church falls in this category, also. Basically, you’re looking for any reason to get out and mingle with the locals. This will free you up to travel to cities where you don’t know anyone.
Set a Goal
Goal-oriented traveling will help keep you from falling into a rut. For example, if you’re moving to a beach town, decide to learn to surf or kayak. If you’re moving to a mountain town and have never skied before, plan to learn that. If you’re moving to a big city, set a goal of visiting every museum or going to see a symphony once a week.
Get Organized
Depending on how long you stay in a given place, you may need to update your address and forward your mail. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, though, if you decide you love traveling with your home office. Develop a system to help you with the details, such as setting up a spreadsheet. This way, less important stuff is likely to slip through the cracks, and you’ll be able to enjoy your travels more.
Don’t Forget the Vacation
Just because you’re traveling with your home office doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t spend some of your focus on self-care. This used to be called “R & R”, which was short for Rest and Relaxation. Don’t confuse travel with vacation. If you’re working, it’s work. Try to budget time to unwind, if possible.
Study Minimalism
Traveling with your home office gives you enormous freedom. What if you were able to translate this freedom into other aspects of your life? While there’s no need to immediately close your laptop and start donating everything you own to charity, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to investigate the subject of minimalism more.
Take advantage of the opportunities that the advances in technology have provided, and maybe you, too, can travel with your home office at least part of the year – in the United States or abroad!
