For the past month I’ve been working from Europe, roughly 15,000km and 8 hours time zone difference from my home.
My partner and I have wanted to do a trip but finding a month to take off didn’t seem easy for us right now and who knows when it would be easier – so we decided lets try both making it work.
Organising the trip
We only decided to go about 2-3 weeks before we left. We figured out where we wanted to travel – Barcelona, Berlin and Amsterdam – and decided to stay roughly 9-10 days in each place. We chose a longer amount of time than we normally might as we figured if we were working through the mornings and only having afternoons to explore we’d want some more time in the city. We overshot by perhaps a day or two in each city but it really means you get time to explore the hidden gems which don’t hit the Top 5 Things lists so perhaps a blessing in disguise.
Planning up-front the cities and accomodation was also important, we didn’t want to be doing it while travelling. Accomodation is critical for working well – you don’t want a cramped little hotel room. If you can afford it, going for a 1 bedroom apartment with a kitchen table will give you somewhere stable to work from. This was especially true for me as both my partner and I were working.
Finally, its also critical your work is supportive. Fortunately my manager was happy that wasn’t an issue.
On the trip
As part of working I knew I wouldn’t get a full day crossover given the time zone difference but I wanted a partial intersection. To achieve this I told my work I’d be available from 2PM (home time) onwards which gave a solid 3 hours for standard business crossover. This was 6AM Europe time, some mornings a struggle but I’m an early riser so really not so bad. Fairly often I’d wake up around 5AM and just start working then. This worked well for me – getting all my meetings done in a few hours and then having from 9AM to ~2PM to work solidly without interruptions.
I felt, and my manager agreed, that productivity was perhaps even higher than normal because of this – definitely better than we had expected. I could work while colleagues were asleep so when they woke up the next day things would be ready for them to go – a real international operation! It started to feel much more like the asynchronous work environment that I’ve read about from companies like Automattic.
That being said there were some negatives. I genuinely started to miss the office and face-to-face connection towards the end and missing some on-site all team meetings made me feel out of the loop.
However, getting away from the normal has been amazing for my mental health and taking a bigger picture perspective of my habits and intentions. It has been an amazing trip where I’ve not felt I missed out on experiencing anything as a tourist and managed to get the best of both worlds. I feel rejuvenated as if I’d taken a pure holiday and both my partner and I have a new set of priorities upon coming home that I don’t think we’d have thought about in the normal day-to-day of being home.
If you can work from home, you can work from anywhere – it’s a privileged position to be in but if you are fortunate enough to have it, why not make the most of it.
