Crime Rate
The only thing worse than living in a foreign country without money is to live there without an instrument to earn ‘em. The crime rate in a country / city / village / whatever you are going to should be a point to worry about. Hiding your laptop in a house you are renting can be useful tip. There is no good reason to rely on insurance ’cause even if you get your money back, your trip will be spoiled unless you have more equipment in your backpack. If you are passionate about African continent you might need a bodyguard (in some countries), especially if you are a photographer. Sometimes you do have to think about personal security. In some countries life does not coast a thing. For some people dying is OK but mostly people are afraid of death. So take care.

Unforeseen dangers
Shit happens. And you can never know when exactly will it happen and what kind of specifications will it have. Going to any unusual place means you know very little about this place. Even if you have read lots of articles, blogs, books, etc. there are always tones of things you can not even imagine until you see ‘em. Health insurance is a 100% must before you’re going out traveling. You can not know everything, but you can be ready to face difficulties and dangers (sure there are pleasant surprising things too) – it’s a part of any trip, no matter you’re going to the cinema or to the other continent.

Preparing for a trip. Part II
Preparing for a trip. Part I
The photo above was taken by Marina Nozyer

If you’ve ever asked yourself: How to improve coffee’s waking effect without drinking more of it? – the answer is: Add 3-4 frozen cherries.

Living a life of a freelancer requires very little physical effort – you don’t need to go almost anywhere except business meetings and places to find food (supermarkets, cafe, restaurants, etc.). It’s obvious everyone needs regular exercise to be healthy enough to live pleasant life, but when you’re working 10-12 hours a day you just don’t want to think about when to do sport. Today I’ve tried a very nice device – XSJADO rollerblades.

The great thing about ‘em is that you can use your regular shoes while skating – you just place your footwear inside a the wireframe, fix it and roll. So you don’t need to have one more pair of shoes if you want to mix this kind of transport with public transport. Since these skates are aggressive, they’ve got small wheels, so it’s easier to control your movements and they are not too fast, so the risk of hitting someone or something is reduced a bit.

It can be a little but useful daily exercise that will keep you inline.
You can check out Aggressive mall to see all XSJADO products.

Prepare yourself to work less
When planning your workflow during a trip it’s very important to understand that working outside familiar workspace will reduce your productivity unless you don’t care where to work (then why would you like to go on a journey?). So what you need to do is to create a schedule with using only 0-6 hours a day for work depending on situation. For example, after a long flight for 11 hours you’d definitely have to have rest for few days – let your customers and colleagues know that you won’t be able to work during this time. If you’re moving to a country you have never been to, it might take extra time to find a good place to live and work, so you can be knocked out of your regular timetable for about a week or even more. There are numerous situations like these ones and you can never know what problem you’d face. The only way to manage ‘em is to stay cool and and work less while solving those problems. Your future productivity depends on how you settle down – so take your time.

Get some cash
If you are going to a 3rd world country remember not everyone accepts credit cards – you’d need cash to pay for food, house rental, car, bike, whatever. If you’re going to use local bank machines you should know that they’d charge you for every withdrawal. For example, in Thailand they charge you 5$ per transaction. You might say: Not a big deal! Sure, but when you’re paying 2$ for lunch such charges are pretty annoying. So if you’re going to spend few weeks in some exotic place, it’s a good idea to take enough cash (USD or Euro) to fit your needs.

Plan your spendings
Your future spendings will include:

• House rent
• Food
• Internet
• Transport
• Medicine
• Unpredictable spendings
• Optional spendings

Weather
Humans can survive in lots of places, but were you thinking of survival while dreaming of a tropical island or a Tibetan mountains? Learn about the climate of the place you’re going to. Well, “learn” is not the right word… You’d better have a great imagination – sometimes acclimatization can be very hard. If you have any health problems you should definitely consult you doctor before going on a long trip. The other thing you have to find out – are there any disasters or any seasonal thing like 3-days-long-rain or whatever. It might be very disappointing to spend 2000$ on airplane tickets to come to a place where you physically can not live.

Check out:
Preparing for a trip. Part I and
Preparing for a trip. Part III

The photo above was taken by Marina Nozyer

Being a freelancer means that technically you can work from anywhere you can find Internet. But a trip to a new country (or even a new neighborhood) could be a challenge! Here is the first part of a list of things you’d better do before you go on a journey.

Internet connection
Going to a remote isolated place on this planet might be a challenge. One of the first difficulties you’re going to face is slow internet connection. 1mb/s might be maximum download speed if you’re living in a bungalow on a tropical island. Sometimes 50 kb/s will be a nice speed. The upload speed is usually much lower.
So if you’re going to make photos for stock agencies you’d better upload ‘em later, cause waiting up to half an hour for a file to upload can drive you insane.

Make sure your clients, employers, colleagues, etc can get in touch with you
Before you have left your office, set up voice mail, email auto-response, wright something in your Facebook to let everyone who’d like to contact you know you’re away and you won’t be available to reach for few days. Next thing you need to do is to get information about local mobile companies and internet providers situated in the place you’re going to. Gathering information about ‘em after you have landed will consume more time and this can be critical in some cases.

Ways to retreat
Sometimes you can come to a place you’ve been thinking of as a wonderful one, but it turns out to be horrible and unsuitable. This is why you should think of ways to retreat – check out the flights and trains timetable, get some extra gas if you’re going on a safari – think for anything you might need to get you out of this hell quickly.

Get some background information about the place you’re going to
Going on a trip means that you’re changing your location to the one you’re not very familiar with. So it’s a good idea to google out that place’s history, traditions, people habits and so on. You’d better read about some shamanic rituals before you see them Besides, lots of people like it when they feel you’re interested in their culture and probably they’d be friendlier and this would be a great help for you.

Get camouflage
Sure you’ll look like a stranger when your home is 1000 miles away. And there are always people who are afraid of or aggressive to foreigners. So you’d better mask yourself somehow: buy some casual clothes, remember not to stare at everything, pay attention to how people move and talk and try to copy that manner.

Check out:
Preparing for a trip. Part II and
Preparing for a trip. Part III

The photo above was taken by Marina Nozyer.

All of us face dull work time to time. Here are some options how to avoid negative feelings about it.

• Delegate it to someone
  It might look simple, but you are still responsible for the result and you have to pay the person for this work. If you’re a good manager and you have reliable workers this might be an option for you.
• Make yourself believe this work is not dull
  This option requires a bit of imagination, but if you can explain yourself why the actions you have to do are exciting or important it can work. Just remember to remind yourself from time to time. An easy and comfortable explanation of almost any action – you gain more experience and you become more skilled in it.
• Find new ways to solve the problem
  “Dull” usually means that you have done this action a lot of times before. Look for new solutions – these could be some software features you have not tried before. Check out tutorials related to your task.
• Add some distraction
  In my previous post I’ve written “Pay maximum attention to whatever you are doing“. This can be kind of hard while doing dull work. If you really hate what you’re doing – turn the speakers on, listen the music you love. If can perform desired actions and think of something else – do it! If you have some future plans it’s a good time to think about ‘em. But of course this adds the risk of doing that dull work not so good.
• Stimulate your body
  Anything containing caffeine might work – most popular substances are coffee, tea and coke. Sugar is an important component to keep your brain active. Yerba maté is also a great legal stimulant that might help. Don’t take too much whatever stimulant you choose – otherwise you’ll stop doing the dull work and go to the park

It’s no secret that being a freelance designer/developer/photographer/copywriter/etc is kind of hard cause there are so many distracting things around and there’s no one to tell you that you have to focus on work except yourself. After almost three years of freelancing I’ve found out a nice and easy way to prevent unimportant actions and improve needed ones.

1. Ask yourself: What am I doing this for?
You should be very honest answering this question.
For example: I’m writing this post to help others, to promote myself, to improve my writing skill.
This is obvious but you might forget about some of these reasons and this action will not reach all the goals.

2. Stay focused on your action
Pay maximum attention to whatever you are doing.
For example: If you’re walking in a park look at the trees, birds, squirrels, feel your legs moving and lungs breathing. Don’t think about your work or a friend you are going to meet in this park. There’s no sense of going walking if you are dreaming of something else. The same applies to any other action. Even if you find a task boring try to concentrate on it. As a result you’ll finish it faster and more efficient rather than if you were trying to ignore it while doing.

I hope this short tip will be useful. You can also download a my “Focus on work” wallpaper from Smashing Magazine.