Getting motivated to work while travelling

As discussed in the last post, it can sometimes be a major challenge to find space and time to work if you are living in an environment where most other people are on holiday.

Lea Woodward from Location Independent Living wrote a great post on how to maintain focus on your business whilst travelling the world, which I found extremely useful.

If you’re struggling to get motivated, wherever you are in the world, and whatever it is you are trying to get motivated to do – I found the following exercising in conjunction with Lea’s article, really effective.

If you are struggling to sum up the motivation on an on-going basis, make an appointment with yourself for the following day. The mission of the day – is to do nothing, apart from mull over and perhaps write about the following things:

1. What was your original vision?
2. Why did you come up with that particular vision?
3. Does it still fit with your aspirations? Is it still something you want to do?
4. How can you create the space and time?

If you reach the conclusion that you still want the same things you will likely feel immediate motivation to get on with it all. However, you may also reach the conclusion that you need to change the ingredients slightly in order to align with any new insights you have. You may want to drop some projects to make room for new ideas, or a new line of work.

Once you’ve reassessed what you want to do, it’s then a case of finding the time and space – which is the other major challenge of working while travelling.

1. Try to find a hotspot outside of your immediate community, where you are unlikely to be joined by friends throughout your working time. Then set yourself a time to start work, and take yourself to your “productive/quiet” place, first thing in the morning, BEFORE anyone sows any seeds of potential distractions for the day!

2. Consider whether you need a computer or even internet to get on with something... You may find that you can get on with just a pen and paper, in which case the number of productive/quiet places increases tenfold..

3. If you struggle to find a place where you are unlikely to bump into people you know, then try wearing huge headphones, and when you see someone you know approaching out of the corner of your eye – DON’T look up!