Productivity can be influenced or affected by so many things especially in the digital age where computers and mobile phones are so close knit to our daily routines.
Here I explain how I personally manage to keep on top of multiple projects and maintain a stress free (mostly) productive life while on the road.
This weekend I took a trip away without a laptop for once which is something I very rarely ever do as I like to stay connected especially for business purposes. I take a blackberry with me everywhere which is my main email / work mobile weapon of choice but to increase my productivity nothing can rival the iPhone (possibly soon to be an android when I get my hands on a nexus one!) this tool allows me to use several tools and applications that I would generally use on my day to day activities during work.
Despite not having a laptop my 3hr train journey allowed me to capture and sort all of the things in my head (GTD) and put them into the necessary collection points I use be that a moleskin notebook or my evernote and remember the milk GTD system I have setup.
With evernote this is your external brain whereby you can capture information in a variety of ways either through writing a text note, scan a document/image, record an audio note or snap a picture with you camera. Later you can tag and store all these items.
Remember the milk I take many of my to-do items and add them here. You can create as many lists as you like I have approximately 20 lists currently that range from the basic weekly-work-todo to shopping list, things to see at the movies or books to read. With all my tasks setup and contextualized I can clearly see what I need to do, where and when.
The great thing of remember the milk and evernote is that the both have web apps as well as evernote having native mac/windows/iPhone and android apps both applications sync their data so you are never out of date wherever you access your data from.
Catching up with audio-books on the journey was great as audio-books allow you to read books your interested in and stay actively working on whatever you could be doing. The weekend went smoothly for the most and creating an emergency only profile on the blackberry allowed me to keep the phone in my pocket without constant worry about incoming emails. With filters setup for only emergency or highly important emails to trigger alerts.
How do you manage productivity while travelling, on vacation or just away from the office?
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