How to Make Your Flight the Most Productive Part of Your Day

People often ask me how I manage to travel as much as I do and still pay the bills. My article How to Go Freelance and Not Starve will help you with the logistics of freelancing and give you some insight on how I actually make my money. This article will show you one of the many ways I counteract the whole no-paid vacation thing by working while traveling.

If there is one thing I miss about working an office job, it’s the paid vacation. Being a freelancer does provide me with the freedom to book trips on a whim without messing with requesting off or contacting HR, but it also means I will inevitably miss out on some work and thus end up with a smaller monthly income than usual. This is why I have turned Flight Time into Billable Hours time.

Look at these suckers just lazing about. Make that money!

The not-so-exhilarating truth about traveling

Traveling can be very exciting, but when it comes down to the reality of how mundane the actual process of arriving can be, the whole thing can be a bit disenchanting. The time spent locked up in a giant metal tube in the sky can feel like a truly inconvenient time-suck that cuts into your trip time as well as your daily life.

Start making that time work for you

Take a second to think about all the things you want to get done this week. Now consider a few other things on your long-term to-do list that you never, ever seem to get to. Sure, some of things involve going to a store or being at home, but I am willing to bet that several things on your list don’t require much more than a book, notebook, pen, laptop, and/or an internet connection. Your problem isn’t location or materials; it’s time. It’s easy to think of time spent in the air as time lost, but I think of it in a totally different way.

Flight time is my super-exclusive “do not disturb” office time.

Let’s be honest, half of the reason you never make it to those long-forgotten tasks is that something else always pops up and takes precedence. You have to go grocery shopping, clean the kitchen, do laundry, or whatever other completely necessary but inconvenient task might come up. You don’t have to worry about any of that on a plane! You don’t even have to worry about your own procrastination getting in the way because you are basically pinned in a seat for a couple of hours with no where to go and nothing to do other than sip on a complimentary beverage.

Make a plan and make it happen

Before you embark on your trip, think about what you can get done on the plane. You can catch up on writing articles or emails, make some progress on that novel you have been meaning to finish, or edit those photos that you took on your last trip but still have not had a chance to work on. Most flights are now equipped with WiFi, so you can’t even use the excuse that you desperately need the internet to get anything done. If you are not lucky enough to have WiFi available on the plane, do a bit of preliminary internet searching and save the research to your computer so you can access it offline.

I often take several trips back to back, so my total flight time and total number of articles that need to be written really add up. I keep a document on my laptop that contains a list of articles I need to write and emails I need to answer. That way, anytime I’m on a plane I can just open up the document, take my pick of what I want to work on, and get down to business. In fact, this very article you are currently reading was written on a plane, along with about 5 others.

Want to get paid to travel? Start working while traveling.

Ok, so I’m not getting paid to simply sit on a plane, but I am billing clients for work I am doing on that plane. When I have an upcoming flight, I stockpile any work I can do on the plane, preferably without the internet so I can avoid paying for access. I would estimate that 85% of my time spent on a plane is time I am working and billing clients.

So next time you get your itinerary and see you have a 5 hour flight, don’t whine about wasting half a day in a plane, make your list and prepare yourself for an incredibly productive day.