We pulled into the Grand Canyon Thursday night. We were going to be camping for three nights, giving us two days to take our time exploring one of Earth’s most famous wonders. I’d worked extra hours earlier in the week so that I could unplug and enjoy four total days of driving and playing tourist.

About five minutes after checking into our campground, I got an email on my iPhone announcing a bit of a work emergency, something that demanded my attention within the next 12 hours.

My cell phone service promptly vanished as soon as I finished reading the email.

We unhooked the travel trailer from the back of our SUV, made sure no dishes had been broken in the transfer, and put the TV back in its place. Then I went hunting for wifi.
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I’m reading about Secret Santa drawings and office holiday parties, and I admit to being a little jealous. Yes, I get to roll out of bed at 9:30 in the morning. No, my lunch isn’t going to mysteriously disappear from the fridge. But working outside of the typical office environments also means I don’t have face to face interactions with co-workers. Ever.

I am by nature an autonomous worker, a trait that makes the mobile lifestyle a good fit for me, but occasionally I miss lunches with colleagues. I don’t miss meetings, necessarily, but I do miss having someone in my field readily available for brainstorming and feedback. My husband and children don’t make the best sounding boards for questions on marketing or target demographics.
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Living and working on the road full time means I have the freedom to work anywhere. It also means that I could find myself working anywhere, a flexibility that can be difficult to adjust to. As humans we crave the familiar, and a constantly changing workspace can easily interfere with productivity. However, I have found a few tricks to help make any space feel like my own.

Use my own computer.

I can’t imagine work on a shared computer. If you have to share your laptop with other members of your family, set up individual profiles so all of your settings can be personalized. Knowing exactly where everything is allows me to work faster and adds a level of consistency to an ever-changing work environment.
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I’ve been working in a virtual environment for a couple of years now, even before I began working from a traveling trailer. I logged into an online client database instead of flipping through a Rolodex or company network. I stored projects and files in “the cloud” instead of in metal filing cabinets. For the last two years, even my office phone has been run on a voice-over-IP network instead of a traditional land line. I’m a digital girl living in a digital world, but there are some aspects of the old school ways that I miss.

Like office supplies.

Now that my “office” is a backpack, I’m not surrounded by paperclips, staplers, and countless memo pads. While the reduced clutter is an improvement and I don’t miss the perpetual “clean desk” on my to-do list, I do miss the tactile convenience of being able to reach out and grab what I need in an instant.

In a paper world, you use a pen and scrap of paper to jot down your ideas and phone numbers. In a digital world, you open an app or find the Excel sheet that’s stored in a folder somewhere on your computer. In the real world, you have the satisfaction of physically crossing off your daily accomplishments from a list, a process that is much more fulfilling then clicking “completed” in a web browser.

And heaven forbid you lose something in a digital world.

There’s no shuffling through piles or scanning the desktop. There’s no digging through trash cans or asking everyone to drop what they’re doing and help. While the absence of these frantic searches might sound like a good thing, the problem is that things can still get misplaced on the hard drive and in the cloud - and then what? Then you’re left with a text based file search and trying to remember what in the heck you were thinking when you saved that file that didn’t exactly make sense in any folder.

All in all, working and storing my work (and personal life, really) digitally is far more efficient than my old paper ways. But man, I sure do miss those little post-it notes stuck all over the place.

Do you prefer digital or paper systems?

I know that there was a time not so long ago when the Internet didn’t exist. And then the Internet did exist, but it was a luxury. And then it came to our homes in dial-up, then cable, then… well, you see where this is going. We’ve come a long way since Al Gore invented the Internet and today we live in a world in which a great majority of our ideas, products and services are exchanged “in the cloud.”

I make my living entirely online. I don’t have an office and every product I make or service I deliver is digital. And yet, I am currently living without reliable Internet for the first time in almost 15 years.

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks. My workload is nearly the same as what it was when I was living in a house with 24/7 wifi service, but I’m getting it done in three days a week instead of five or six.

Ironically, a lack of Internet has made me more productive.

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I spent the first 15 years of my career working in sales, with a big chunk of that time being devoted to advertising sales. I’m not sure if there is a more competitive work environment than one that is populated by people who live on commission. There’s a very distinct sense that the pie is finite and anything you get represents something I’m not getting.

There wasn’t a lot of building co-workers up going on in our morning meetings and the only people you’d expect to see offering a salesperson guidance was a sales manager. Sales people are tight lipped about their leads and their tricks of the trade because their co-workers are their competition.

Since changing career paths recently, I’ve been surprised to find that this unwillingness to share is not confined to sales. I’ve seen the proprietary hold on trade secrets in writers, editors, and designers. I’ve heard about it among project managers and legal experts. Time and again I see professionals keep a white knuckle grip on their knowledge in a desperate attempt to avoid helping anyone else get unfairly ahead.

What the heck is that about?

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One of the most amazing women I know recently returned to work after being at home with her two boys for eight years. The transition happened a little earlier than she and her family had anticipated, but the perfect opportunity came along and she decided to jump on it. I’m excited for her and proud of her.

And I was completely shocked to learn that her confidence isn’t what it used to be.

This is a woman my husband has met exactly once and instantly admired and respected. This is a woman who is smart, compassionate, and articulate. This is a woman that other women want to be like when they grow up.

And it turns out she struggles with some of the same nerves and doubts that may of the rest of us do.

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Has it only been a week since I was whining about the ineffectiveness of business cards?

Ah, yes. And what a difference a week makes.

In that time I have handed out approximately 10 business cards and received exactly 13. As I sit in the airport lounge, not even home from my business trip yet, I have already scanned and saved every card into Evernote. I have also followed up with every single contact in the manner most appropriate for each.

I have never followed up on a business card exchange after a networking event.

Ever.

What made me (and the cards) so much more effective this time around?

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Last night, I began the process of making new business cards. (I would have finished the process, but I ran out of printer ink at 10:30 pm. Naturally.)

It pains me to spend the time and resources making new cards, even though my job description has changed significantly over the last few months. I still have well over a hundred perfectly good business cards (except for the outdated job description and really old picture). I have plenty left because I almost never hand them out.

It’s not that I don’t meet new people. I do, often.

But I also use technology to collect, store, and organize contact information. If you have an iPhone, I’ll use the Bump It app to swap details with you. If you’re on twitter, I’ll quickly start following you right from my phone. I rely on Google and Apple to work seamlessly together to keep my contacts organized.

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Full disclosure: I just stumbled on THE MOST BRILLIANT SOLUTION EVER yesterday afternoon. It may, in fact, end up not being as brilliant as initially believed. But I doubt it. Prepare yourself for awesome, is what I’m saying.

I despise paper clutter.

Actually, I despise piles of paper even when they are perfectly organized. And yet, stacks and files and mounds of paper have always seemed to be an inevitable part of life, both in an office and at home.

Recently, I decided to actively seek out a solution to the paper as I’m going to be moving into an RV in a few weeks and will have very limited space in which to live and work - space I’d rather dedicate to dishes and food and the one pair of black boots I can’t quite bring myself to get rid of.

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