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Work at Home on the Road
Packing List and Tech Tips

If you're not the computer programmer type (and who is?), this list of technical and other items may help you configure your work at home environment to adapt to other work environments that will be unpredictable and diverse when you're travelling. Keep notes of what items you missed while you were gone and add those to your portable office for your next trip.

Partial Virtual Workspace Packing List

  1. Laptop computer with all your usual software loaded on, and a way to make backups.
  2. Cellular phone and battery charger. Select a carrier with large calling areas and good rates on long distance.
  3. Combo office machine that offers laser printer, fax machine, photocopier & scanner all in one, wonderful, compact machine. Select one that offers remote fax retrieval so you can retrieve faxes that are received when your machine isn't on.
  4. 800 number(s) that ring on your cellular telephone. When you work at home on the road, forward your calls to the cell phone. When you return to your regular office, un-forward the calls to ring on your regular work at home phone.
  5. Email service that can be downloaded from virtually anywhere
  6. While you're on the road, find hotels, cabins or other accommodations that offer an extra phone line and/or high speed internet access. Most hotel chains print directories you can carry along with you on your trip and thousands of hotels also accept pets if you want to travel with your pets.
  7. Local dial-in numbers from your ISP so you can use local telephone numbers to dial in with instead of dialing long distance. If you have an ISP who does not provide this service, you may be faced with paying very expensive hotel long distance rates for every single minute you're online. NOT GOOD. Find out if your ISP offers nationwide local phone numbers. Print out their list and keep it with you or save their URL. If your ISP doesn't provide this service, consider a different ISP unless paying long distance while you're online is not a problem.
  8. You will need the standard set of supplies: paper clips, mini stapler, pens, highlighter, notes, files, postage stamps and any tools related to your profession.
  9. Reference materials from your main work at home environment, such as your rolodex or PDA so you can look up passwords, phone numbers, names, account numbers or anything else you may need in your work at home job. Remember, once you're away from your normal work at home environment you don't know what may come up that you'll need to handle. The longer you can perform your work at home job on the road, the longer you can stay away if you wish.
  10. We recommend running a backup of your entire system before you leave. Run another back up when you return and then copy everything back to your main system. Leave a main backup at your main work at home environment so it can not become lost or stolen.
  11. Backups of your most needed software and drivers can be very helpful.
  12. Take everything you need to be able to cash your paychecks and/or do your banking when you're not at home.
  13. If you use snail mail in the performance of your work at home job you should already use a rented mailbox to protect your personal privacy. If you don't already have a rented mail box at a private mail center (not a P.O. box) get one. These types of services can hold your mail while you're away and forward your mail to you when you're on vacation.
  14. Phone line splitter so you can run various machines (such as your fax machine up to phone lines.
  15. Telephone extension wires and adapters so you can adapt to virtually any hotel room. Some hotel rooms locate the desk far away from the telephone jack; you may need extra wire to run across the room.
  16. Surge protector with several outlets so you can hook up your equipment to one electrical plug.
  17. Category 5 crossover wire (network wire) to connect your laptop to high speed internet access if the hotel offers it.
  18. Paper for your fax machine. Toner you can buy on the road if you need to.
  19. It may be helpful to keep one spiral notebook that is always with you to keep all notes in. Unattached notes can become lost, especially when you're travelling.  Your spiral notebook will be difficult to lose and very handy for storing all types of information.

Happy working at home, on the road.

Visit Main Work While Travelling Article

TIME SAVING ROAD TIP: If you're driving with a companion, you can save time by drafting your emails off-line in the car using the 'send later' feature of your browser. When you arrive to a phone jack and go online, just send out all your emails at once.

TIME SAVING ROAD TIP: If your calls are rarely urgent, let your cell phone's voicemail feature take messages most of the time so you can feel free to be in noisy places without fear that your boss or an important client will call at an inopportune time. That way you can return all the calls when you're in a quiet place with pen and paper if necessary. Warning: Don't overuse this strategy. It won't be good for your telecommuting career if you get a reputation for being unavailable when your company needs you!

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