Staying productive away from the office

We’re great at tuning out distractions when working at home, but a hotel room or internet café is often not conducive to conducting business. If you tote your laptop along and can’t get a free wireless connection in your hotel, stay organized to make the most of your time as a café-squatter.

While working on the plane or in the hotel, keep a running list of web sites you need to review, emails you want to send once you’re online, and reply quickly to all the new mail you get, so people will know you’re in touch while out of the office.

Use your Outlook or Act calendar to create one giant “to-do” item of all these things so you don’t waste time wandering through files looking for names, numbers and bits of information.

Because you have greater security risks on any public connection, especially wireless, limit your time online to the essentials, and don’t use it checking bank account balances or for buying airline tickets or any credit card transactions.

While traveling on business this week, I’m witnessing the frustration and lost productivity by business people trying to use a Marriott hotel business center. Because Marriott doesn’t offer free wi-fi, dozens of people every hour are wasting time waiting for one of two computers, or plugging their laptops into a potentially unsafe network to read mail, then switching to web mail to send replies. And I’m telling you from experience you can waste 20 minutes and a cappuccino just trying to get onto an available connection, even at a café with free wi-fi.