1. Use Digital Connections
You’ll find a lot of different ways to stay connected digitally. You can use apps like FaceTime, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and more. All of these make it easy for you to video chat with friends and family. If you don’t know how to use them, you could always kindly ask a co-worker, friend, or family member to help you.
2. Unplug On Weekends
While not everyone has the choice of when they travel for work, it could be a good idea if you do to avoid doing so on weekends. Ideally, you want to stick to using the weekdays for your work-related travels. By avoiding weekends, you can spend more of that precious time with your friends and family. You also want to try to detach yourself from your work on weekends as often as possible. This means avoiding checking your phone or email while at soccer games and more. Try to spend more of your free time on the weekends with the people that matter to you.
3. Support Your Health
Besides not being able to spend quality time with family, a lot of employees end up getting concerned about their health while traveling and suffering from jet lag. Traveling can keep you from implementing good habits. You could find yourself skipping workouts and even eating poorly. Also, it could negatively impact your sleep. All of these things can add up and result in long-term health complications. Luckily, all of these things are easily solvable. Here are some of the top tips that you can use to ensure you are prioritizing your health while traveling for work.
4. Pay Attention When booking
Unfortunately, not every employee will have the luxury of booking their flights. However, for those that do, you’ll want to choose a later flight. Try to avoid taking a “red-eye” flight. These are the flights that are bright and early in the morning. By avoiding this, you can sleep in and get quality sleep the night before. If you do need to be at the destination bright and early, you could always plan to fly in the night before. Of course, if your’e going somewhere a little more off the beaten track you may need to drive a little. Say, the central belt of Scotland. Of course, there are plenty of great places to stay if you know where to look – even hotels in Pitlochry are only a click away nowadays. That way, you can get settled and wake up for your meeting on time.
If you do have to leave on an earlier flight, you’ll want to figure out how to sleep on planes. There are certain things you can do to improve your sleep on planes. One of the biggest things you’ll want to do is to control various environmental factors like noise, light, and temperature. You can use a blanket to control the temperature, invest in noise-cancellation headphones to control the noise, and get yourself an eye mask to block excess light.
5. Pack Snacks
A lot of flights will offer you various snacks throughout the time in the air. You want to try to avoid these. A lot of the snacks offer little to no nutritional value. Instead, you’ll want to try to pack your snacks. Get some healthy and nutritious snacks into your carry-on bag. Try to focus on nutrient-dense snacks. Protein bars can be a good way to pack a lot of nutrition into a small snack.
6. Track Your Expenses
Whenever you are traveling, you’ll want to start tracking your expenses. This is a good thing to do because it can save you a lot of money throughout a trip. It’s not the easiest thing in the world. However, you do want to start doing it. As many as 1 out of 10 self-employed workers isn’t tracking their expenses. You can keep all of your receipts throughout the trip. This will allow you to plug all of your expenses in once you get to your desk. This can save you a lot of stress and headache down the road.
7. Leverage Hotel Amenities
A lot of hotels do a lot of good things when it comes to catering to traveling employees. They know how important these employees are to their reoccurring business. A lot of them will provide free continental breakfast. Likewise, a lot of them have a free gym. Try to figure out what amenities the hotel offers and take advantage of them. This can help you stay healthy while traveling for work.
