Two years of working from wherever the flights were cheap taught me less about travel than it did about how little I actually need at a desk. The romantic version of “working from anywhere” involves a beach. The real version involves a reliable chair.
The unglamorous checklist
Every place that worked well had the same three things, and every place that didn’t was missing at least one: fast, stable internet that I tested before committing to a stay; a desk at the right height, not a coffee table; and a door that closed for calls.
- Test the wifi speed before you book anything longer than a week
- A second monitor is worth checking a bag for — a laptop screen alone slows real work down
- Keep one time zone as your anchor for meetings, and don’t apologise for it
The part nobody warns you about
New scenery every few weeks sounds restorative. In practice, novelty is expensive to your attention, and deep work gets harder, not easier, the more often your surroundings change. The most productive stretches came from staying somewhere boring for six weeks, not somewhere beautiful for four days.
Anywhere works, eventually. Everywhere, constantly, doesn’t.
