Kuala Lumpur and 6 essential tips for staying organised while travelling

Photo by evelynishere

This article comes to you from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I now have nine Malaysian stamps in my passport, due to my parents living here for a few years now. Despite this, I don’t feel that I’ve fully explored the country. Kuala Lumpur, on the other hand, is one of my regular stomping grounds.

Every time I come to Malaysia, I find myself with little inspiration to actually go and see things outside of KL. For example, just a few hours down the road there is an apparently beautiful historic city of Malacca. Being the avid traveller that I am, why is it that I’ve never been there?

Kuala Lumpur for me represents a rare opportunity to push on with some proper work. I have few distractions here and my parent’s have a wonderful apartment with a comfortable study to keep me focused. This website was created from scratch in one day working here. To me, this opportunity is much more valuable than the regional tourist attractions.

When I’m travelling, I’m often in what I would term “high distraction environments”. For example, when I spent a month on Koh Tao, I would often find myself being invited out for dinner. Inevitably a few drinks would be had and sooner or later I would find myself in the middle of a full blown night out partying with little time for work.

Staying focused and keeping to some kind of work schedule can be tasking at the best of times. A few months ago, I began using a program called Microsoft OneNote. It is basically a sort of notebook/sketchbook/word processor. In fact, I’m typing this article in OneNote right now. It helps to keep me organised and on track.

I’m a big fan of the paperless office and use as little paper as possible. I do believe that it is good to have a small paper notebook to carry around. However, the majority of my blogging work is done on my computer so it makes sense to keep track of everything on my laptop.

One particularly great feature of OneNote is its web-clipping ability. Copy and paste any text from a website and OneNote automatically remembers the URL it came from. Furthermore, it integrates a great screenshot capture facility into windows allowing quick clipping on screenshots.

Though not specifically designed for it, I have created a weekly planner template that allows me to write down my goals for the week, areas I want to focus on as well as a daily to/do list for each day. If something unexpected, such as a party, come up and I miss something then I can move things around very easily with cut + paste. This cannot be done with a notepad.

I find that keeping track of personal tasks, such as booking travel, shopping trips, haircuts and my gym routine at the same time allows me to view a holistic picture of my whole life. It becomes obvious to me if I am neglecting something as I use checkboxes when I complete a task. Too many X (failed) tasks and I need to renew my focus in this area.

6 essential tips for staying organised while travelling

• Realise that you cannot always plan how much free time you will have. Expect the unexpected. Be prepared to move your schedule around. If you have strict deadline, build in some contingency to your work plan.
• Have a high level plan for every aspect of your life. Work, travel, health & fitness, socialising. All these aspects of your life require planning. Living as a nomad, things tend to change quickly but this should never excuse you from having a plan in the first place.
• Break everything down into smaller goals. The brain releases a chemical called dopamine when you accomplish a goal. This makes you feel great, kind of like the last few minutes of a long run that culminates when you cross the finish line. Smaller goals give you more of this and make it feel like you are accomplishing more. This, in turn, compels you to continue and finish the next goal.
• Set aside small pieces of work for those in-between moments. While travelling, you want to set aside small pieces of work that can pick up and complete when you have 20-30 minutes. If you have a busy social life, instead of watching TV, do this small piece of work. You would be amazed how much more you can accomplish when you have bite-sized chunks of work to do.
• Sacrifices must be made to your travel plans. Accept that you can’t go everywhere and meet everyone. Your work is a valuable part of your life therefore should take up a valuable amount of your time. Plan some alone time to get one with things and when you have the opportunity to put in a serious amount of work, take it.
• Accept that putting things off just won’t fly. Travel can be a like a full time job in itself. If you put off tasks at home then you are even less likely to accomplish them while travelling. Put in place a “stick” system whereby anything that hasn’t gone to plan or that you have put off is highlighted to you. Stay positive and work out a new way to fit this in to your schedule.

I find that working hard and playing hard actually complement each other quite nicely. There are times in KL where I find myself spending hours of the day watching TV episodes or movies on my laptop. This is effectively wasted time. When I have a busy period in my social life, not only do I tend to cull the TV, but my work actually increases – perhaps due to a feeling of guilt, I’m not sure on that though.

Hopefully this will help those of you to keep yourself on track wherever you find yourself working.