5 Lifehacks to Make Your Business Trip Relaxing
Whether this is your first time to travel or you’ve traveled for more times than you can count, relax. Business trips can be fun. Of course, you have meetings to attend, business to take care of and employees to follow up with. Work does not mean you cannot see new places and meet new people. If you’re visiting a new city, you should take time to walk around and have fun. Here are the things you need to do to make your trip relaxing.
#1 Plan Your Trip
The words sound like a no brainer but seriously plan your trip. If you want to have fun, check events, restaurants, and places you are interested to see online and how close they are to where you intend to stay. You don’t want to spend your trip worrying about missing a meeting and definitely not exploring the city’s transportation system. Take some time before you actually travel and plan exactly where you want go. For directions, you can download Tripomatic: Trip Planner. This application comes with maps needed, so download it to your phone and you’re good to good to go. Tripomatic works offline.
#2 Follow Up With Your Employees
You can’t fully relax when you think of the disasters you might encounter when you go back to your company. All the issues you should’ve taken care of when you were traveling suddenly pops up. A good work-fun balance is definitely needed but once you start running your own business, you know that you have to work 24/7 to keep everything running smoothly and there are tools to help you. Sign up for an online time tracking system and you can easily follow up with your employees and check who showed up for work and who did not. And also they can write shift reports daily so you can exactly see what they are working on. ClockIn Portal is a good online time tracking tool that your company can use.
#3 Read Your Postal Mail Online
One of the things that makes a lot of company owners or managers worried when they travel is postal mail. A simple lifehack is to get yourself a virtual mailbox. That way you can read your postal mail online. Virtual mail companies receive your mail and you can view what you received online. You can also decide what you need to do with your mail through an online applications. So if your business trip lasts for only a few days, you can ask mail facility to scan contents of your mail and read it like you would read an email. All through an easy-to-use online application. PostScan Mail offers this service for a very reasonable price. I forgot to mention they also do electronic check deposit.
#4 Make Sure You Are Connected to Internet
When it comes to internet connection, most hotels, if not all hotels, provide WiFi connection. It depends on when and how frequently you need internet access. In worst case scenarios, you can use data roaming. Make sure your hotel has an internet connection and also ask about data roaming expenses. Plus, it mainly depends on where you are going. Some countries have free WiFi almost anywhere. Just check before you go.
#5 Minimize Time You Spend Online
It sounds like a strange advice after listing all the applications you should use and online services you should download. If you want to relax and focus on what you traveled to get done at first place, you should not be distracted by Facebook or Twitter. You can focus on how your employees are doing and which mail items you received but that should not take more than an hour or two of your day. Decide on a time to take care of business at home and forget about it the rest of day. Being a businessman is an all-day-long career but schedule a time to take care of business, and remember to have fun. Look around and enjoy the city you are at.