MBA881 The Working While Traveling Experiment P2: Making Time to Work & Play

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Previously on our last episode In Part one we learned how to prepare for working while traveling. Before you start your journey, I shared how I packed my B and prepare mentally for the shift of working and traveling at the same time. In today's episode, the journey begins and our first stop is Italy. You're going to be coming along the journey with us. So as we travel to new cities and explore and learn how to work while traveling, I'll be sharing my experiences, my strategies, as well as what I'm learning about business in a global economy. I'm in Milan for the next couple days and then we move on to Florence for another five days. We then move to Rome in our next episode. The focus of today's lesson will be how to make sure you make time to get your work done so your business doesn't suffer, but also how to enjoy your travels and make use of the time you have and make time for play. This episode is so important because it's the thing you have to get right for your whole trip to not be a big waste of time. You see, you'll either feel you're working too much and you're not taking advantage of all the great opportunities for. For adventure as you go on your travels. Or you'll feel guilty you're not working enough because you're out exploring and having fun and neglecting your business. So in this episode, I'm gonna give you my plan, my strategy to make sure neither of these two happen to me or to you. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Nicole and I run two businesses, the $100 MBA and Webinar Ninja. With a team of 21 people. We've traveled up to three weeks before. But in this experiment, we're going all in with eight weeks of travel, 15 cities in total. We want to find out if you can really work while traveling the world. And I'm here in Milan as we start our trip. And one of the first things I like to establish is making sure that I have a lot of time for work and for play, for travel. Now remember, in part one, if you haven't listened to part one yet, go back and listen to part one. But in part one, we discussed that we have to come to terms with the fact that I'm not going to get as much work done while I'm traveling. Because there's a lot of things that, that we take for granted when we're in our comfortable space, in our comfort zone where we normally work, whether it's in our office or at home, when you're traveling, you need to figure out certain things that you don't have to think about at home, like where to eat, where to get groceries, where to do laundry. All these things take time out of your schedule. But I wanna make sure that my business gets its right due and that it's taken care of. So I gotta make sure I allot this amount of time. Now, before we actually allot a certain amount of time at a certain amount of day, we need to talk about how do we do this? Are we going to optimize for travel or let's say for play? Are we going to optimize for business? This is very important. Now, if you're in a busy time in your business, you're going to want to optimize for business. And I'll explain what that means. But if things are kind of cool and kind of calm and there's nothing urgent happening in your business all the time, then you want to optimize for play. Let me talk about what it means to optimize for both. Now, if I'm optimizing for work or for business, I got to take a look at hey, when is the best time for me to work for my business? Whether it's meeting with my teammates and my teammates are a different time zone. Whether it's for my own productivity level so I can make sure that I'm productive and I can get things done as quickly as possible. Whether it's I'm doing something that's live like a webinar and that has a certain time slot for a certain time zone, I need to make sure that I'm working during that time. This is optimizing for work. That means I'm going to choose the time slot in my day that is best for my work. If there's none of these time sensitive issues with your business, then you really don't need to optimize for work. You, you can optimize for play. Meaning when is the best time for me to do the things I want to do in my travels? Whether it's visiting museums, going to see sites. If I'm working during the best time to go for a bike ride in Siena, then I'm not going to really be taking advantage of those days. Do I really need to work during that time? So optimizing for play is saying, hey, when's the best time for me to take advantage of the things I want to do in my travels? Whether it's outdoorsy stuff, adventure stuff, getting some culture. For example, here in Italy, it's a bit of a night culture, so you can really go out late and have dinners late. So there's things to do at night. So I may want to optimize for that. I also know that some sites are going to be closed either on Sunday or Monday, so I know that those are good days to work as well. That's optimizing for play or for your traveling. Now, once you've chosen one of these two, you want to allot a certain amount of time to work on your business. Now, this doesn't have to be every day. You can take weekends off, you can take a few days off. It could be every other day, or it can be every day if it's up to you, depending on your workload. But it's best for you to have a set time and you let everybody who's involved in the business know, this is what I'm working. This is when you can get in touch with me. This is when I can reply to you because you don't want to be scrambling to be answering questions and answering, you know, slack notifications and emails when you're trying to enjoy yourself. Now, in my Trip. I'm optimizing for work. I know that after 3pm my local time here in Milan, my team is getting to work. They're working on certain things in webinar Ninja, whether it's the development or the improvement of the software. And I need to be in touch with them during those hours. They have questions to ask, I have to review their work, things like that. So I'm gonna make sure I'm working during those hours. Now I don't have to be working for five, six hours. I can work for two hours, three hours. So I can allot from 3pm to 6pm is when I'm going to work. Now this also happens to be a good time slot in Italy because I can get things done in the morning, I can go to see museums, I can see some sites and three to six, there's nothing going on really. It's after lunch, it's before dinner. They have a late dinner here in Italy. So this is a great time slot for me to be working. So I've allotted my time and I'm gonna do this every day except for Saturday and Sunday because my team is off and I don't need to be on that time. I might just play it by ear on Saturdays and Sundays and maybe do one hour, two hours of work on my own without my team, just to get ahead. But you'll be surprised when you allot a certain amount of hours to just get down to business and to work how much you can get done. Especially if you have things planned around it, like say for example, a 7pm or 8pm dinner planned. I gotta stop at 6pm on time so I can, you know, get showered, get ready, you know, head on out, find the restaurant and enjoy myself. Now if you're working with your partner like I am, Nicole's my wife and my business partner. It's best that we have the same work time, work schedule for a couple reasons. It's just more effective, it's more efficient. Plus the fact that, you know, we obviously want to enjoy our trip together. And at the same time, if she's working and I'm not, I'm going out and doing things, going to feel kind of guilty and vice versa. So if you work with your partner and you're traveling together, make sure you keep your schedule aligned. Now let's talk about that time slot that you're working. So I'm working from 3 to 6pm I prefer to have a distraction free zone. I mean completely distraction free. I do not like to work in cafes or in even co working spaces when I'm traveling. As much as that sounds like fun, I feel like I'm not going to be as efficient as productive. That's just me, I'm just speaking, I know myself, I'm self aware. So you need to know yourself and make sure that it's completely distraction free so you can get as much done in that three hour slot. So what I do is I like to set up a space to work wherever I am. So I'm in an Airbnb here in Milan. I'm going to be in another apartment in Florence. And most of our trip we're in apartments and Airbnbs. I know we have a decent Internet connection. I know that as soon as I get into that Airbnb, the first question I have to the host is, hey, what? What's the WI fi password? I check the WI fi speed using speedtest.net and I make sure everything is working properly so I can set up my space for work. So I don't waste any time when it's time to work. I eliminate any issues before I actually get to work, whether it's Internet connection issues or power issues or any of that kind of stuff. Now I like to stick to the time, the three hours when I'm working. Now I have my space in the Airbnb. I have a little desk or you know, a dining table or something like that. But I like to stick to three hours even if I finish my work early. Let's say, for example, I've spoken to my team, I've answered all their questions and you know, I still have 45 minutes left in my time slots still like 5:15, not 6pm I like to continue to work like on tomorrow's tasks, the tasks I have set up in my to do list and we'll talk about that in a moment and I work on those items. Why? Because it's good to get a little bit ahead because there might be some roadblocks along the way. There might be some things that come up that take more time than expected. Your team might have some challenges and ask you a lot of questions you weren't expecting either. That takes a lot of time back and forth on slack things like that or video calls. So even if I finish early, I move on to the tasks that I have lined up for the next day to get a little bit ahead just in case there's something that kind of takes longer than expected later down the line. Now, I mentioned a to do list. I cannot tell you how effective a to do List is. And I like to write a to do list the day before I have to do those to dos. So for example, at the end of my time slot, let's say, for example, at 5, 45, 15 minutes left, I write to do's for the next day or the next day I'm going to work. Now you might be asking, so how do I come up with these to do's? How do I know what to do? Well, what I like to do is a master list of to dos. So before I even leave on my trip, I have a long list of to DOS on my evernote of the things I want to get done during my trip, during my eight weeks. And this is a long list, it's like 70 items. But what I do is I take from those items that long list, and it's a lot of things and it might seem a little bit overwhelming. That's okay. You're going to take a few of those pieces and move them to your, you guessed it, daily to dos. Even if I take two or three of those to do's every single day, I'll go through those 70 to do's depending on the size of each to do before the end of my eight week trip. The point here is, is that I just remove them from one list, move them to another and get them done. This is so, so effective and it's so easy because there's no thinking involved. I already done all the thinking and it's just easy for you to be like, I know all the things I need to get done and in the next eight weeks and dump them all in one list. And then when I have to plan for the next day, the immediate next day, I can say, okay, what's the next two or three things I need to do? I can list them in priority order. So I know that, hey, I got to get these things done before these things. And that way I know what to work on next. So again, in the last 15 minutes, I make sure I have a to do list for my next session. So I can just hit the ground running as soon as I start at 3pm Now, I'm not a multitasker. Again, I know myself. I do not like any distractions when I'm working. And this is why Nicole and I, when we sit and talk about what we're going to do and how we're going to work, we make it clear to each other how we like to work. And that way no one's offended, no one's upset. And Nicole knows she's been Working with me for over five, six years now. She knows I do not like interruptions. I cannot handle them. Like it bothers my train of thought and it's hard for me to get back on track when I'm interrupted. So even if she wants to ask me a question or we need to discuss something, she lets me know, hey, I need five minutes from you. Let me know when you're free. That's a lot easier for me to digest. And take that five minutes. Say, okay, I'm going to lot those five minutes when I'm done with this task. Once I'm done with it, we'll spend five minutes on that. That's just how my brain works and that's how I work. You need to know how you work, what distracts you, what bothers you, what stops you from getting work done. That includes maybe closing out Facebook or using something like Newsfeed Eradicator, a great Chrome plugin that just basically shuts off your newsfeed on Facebook so you really don't have anything to do on Facebook. You need to know what stops you from working. Get rid of it. Because, hey, time is super precious. You only have a few hours to work every day so you can enjoy your trip. Now, if you are not optimizing for work, meaning that you're optimizing for travel. Some people like to wake up early and get their work done first so it's out of the way and they don't think about it for the rest of the day. So they'll get up maybe at five or six o' clock in the morning, knock out three hours and they start their day at like nine o'. Clock. Nine o' clock on they are ready to go and they enjoy the rest of the day. That works too. You need to find what works best for you and your business.

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All right, we got the work part of this equation down pat. We have a certain amount of time every day or a certain amount of days during our week to work. We have a dedicated space. We know exactly what we have to do. We have our to do lists and we have our daily to do lists. Now what about play? What about the actual reason why you're traveling? It would be an absolute shame if in the next week I didn't get to see Milan and Florence. There's so much to explore. How many times I'm going to be in Italy. I need to take advantage of that and enjoy it. The first thing is your mentality. You need to make sure that when you're done working or when you're not working like before your time slot of work, that you don't worry about work so much. Just know it's going to be there for you when it's time to work, it's not going anywhere. Try to remind yourself to enjoy the moment, enjoy what you're doing now. A little bit of planning of what you want to do in your traveling will really help you save a lot of time and maximize your time. So if you know for sure you want to see the Uffizi Gallery in Florence or want to see the David, then booking tickets for it can save you a whole lot of time. Booking tickets online will allow you to just go straight to the door or a less crowded line. This should be easy for you because hey, you already know when you're working and when you're not. So you can book the right time for these, you know, types of things you want to do. Now if your phone is going to be roaming or you're going to have a local SIM card that's going to allow you to have Internet access, that means you're going to get notifications from work, from Slack, from email, all that kind of stuff, you need to be the judge of your own self control. Are you going to be able to say, hey, I'm not going to look at it, I'm going to just ignore it or shut off my notifications. That's a good way to kind of control it while having access to the Internet, but still at the same time, you don't see these notifications until you actually go back to your place or go back during your work hours. The other option is only use wifi when you're at your Airbnb or your hotel. Don't have a SIM card that is roaming or using data. That way you'll know for sure. Sure you're not going to be interrupted when you're trying to enjoy your trip. Now, you might be saying, what if I have an emergency? What if something happens? What if my team needs to get in touch with me as soon as possible? That's true, that could happen. But you also need to remind yourself that, you know, 10, 15 years ago, people did business, they had businesses and they traveled and they couldn't get in touch with them all the time. They probably just got in touch with them with a landline, like the hotel's landline. So we functioned as business owners in the past without these connections. And we can do it as well in a short amount of time in our trip. So just keep that in mind. Now, I highly recommend if you're visiting foreign countries in your travels, while you're traveling the world, make sure that you get involved. You get to know the culture, meet the locals, talk to them. This is why I love Airbnb, because you have a local at hand. You can speak to the host and they can give you great recommendations of restaurants and cafes and things to do. And a lot of times they're super friendly and they'll have a meal with you, they'll have a coffee with you, and you can ask them questions and get to learn from them and, and enjoy your time in that country in an authentic way. In fact, here in Milan, the first thing we did with our host, Alessandro, is have coffee with him at a cute little cafe under our Airbnb. And he gave us a great overview of Milan, the things we need to do, the things we should see, how to get around. And we also got to know him on a personal level. Now, in the next episode, I'm going to be focusing on how to learn from your experiences in travel and how to apply them in your business. This is just kind of a heads up. While you're enjoying, while you're seeing the sights, while you're just loving the culture and the food and all that stuff, get to know the locals a little bit because it's going to help you and I'll show you why and how in the next episode. Now, the last thing I want to touch on in this episode when we talk about balancing work and play is that you have to be a little bit flexible. It's not an exact science. You're going to try to stick to your, you know, allotted time for work as much as possible. You may have to extend a little bit. You may have to, you know, make it up later the next day. You might work for four hours instead of three one day, but then you're going to, you know, shave off an hour in the next session. Don't beat yourself up if it's not an ex science. And hey, when you travel, you learn that, hey, the world is not an exact science. Not everybody works on the same clock. The meaning of five minutes varies from one country to another. I'm not talking technically here. I'm talking about, hey, when I say I'll meet you in five minutes or I'll talk to you in five minutes, that means something different in every culture. So kind of go with the flow. Don't beat yourself up if things don't go perfectly. Enjoy the experience. Enjoy the chaos sometimes that you experience outside of work, even, even in the streets of where you're going. You know, later in this experiment, we're going to be going to Naples. It's a hustle, bustle, chaotic city and you need to be ready to take that on and not really, you know, get stressed out. So enjoy yourself. Make sure you have that balance. Make sure you try to stick to your schedule as much as you can, but at the same time enjoy that experience of travel and seeing new things, learning new things, and we'll talk about how to apply those things in your business so you can have a better business, be a better entrepreneur in the next episode. So make sure you tune into that. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you love the show, let us know in an itunes rating and review. We'd love to hear from you. We read every single review so we know how to improve the show and know what you love about it. It also allows other people who are checking out the show to learn more about the show from your review. Alright, that's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Working while traveling can have its frustrations because not everything is what you're used to. The Internet might be a little slower than you're used to. It might be a little noisy outside because you're hearing street traffic in a major city or even your neighbors are a little bit louder than you expected. That's okay. It's not forever, you know. It's just an experiment. It's just for a certain amount of time. You might move on to the next city in a few days. Roll with it. Enjoy it. Make it part of your memory. All right, guys, that's it for me today. I'll check you in the next episode where we talk about how to learn from your experiences while traveling and apply it to your business. I'll see you then. Take care.

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