Preparing for a trip. Part II

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