If you work and travel simultaneously, are the hours you spent in transit “lost time?”

What if all those hours you spend traveling on planes, trains, and busses could be your most productive? You would be able to get more done! You can work towards your goals as a successful affiliate marketer. Yes, create that travel affiliate website that you’ve dreamed of and make the most of your time. Furthermore, do it even when traveling! In my life as an affiliate marketer, I’m often getting my work down and learning everything about affiliate marketing while waiting for a plane, riding a train, or taking a long-distance bus. I’ll be on my way somewhere and pull out my laptop and start working on a blog post or affiliate marketing for my website.

Before I know it, I’ll get into the “flow” state of working and, I will have tapped out 1,000 words or more of good quality writing, such as my affiliate marketing content. Then I snap out of my trance and look at my watch, realizing that I did an astonishing amount of work in a short time. I’ve noticed it again and again in my seven years as a digital nomad – working in transit can be so much more productive than working at home. Traveling is the time to push your affiliate marketing business and enhance your digital nomad presence. Keep reading how and why you work more productively in transit. Also, check out more traveling tips for affiliate marketers. 

Travel time is valuable for an affiliate.

Many digital nomad workers might see travel time as interruptions to their productivity. However, if you can flip that around and see travel time as valuable, productive work time, this can help you make this lifestyle work. So, what is it about planes, trains, and automobiles that can put you in a productive state? Let’s look at some of the factors that go into why working while on the road can be more productive. Here are some tips for how you can get more stuff done while working in transit. 

When there’s no internet connection.

Although most trains and buses have Wi-Fi these days, it is usually slow and difficult to connect to and not worth using. So, for most of these journeys, you are without Wi-Fi.  The internet is one of the most addictive things that humanity has ever invented. All social media channels and entertainment sites are designed to keep you clicking, scrolling, and engaging. Every feature of most social media networks takes advantage of the reward centers in your brain and makes it very difficult to stop looking. Here’s a fascinating article from Vice about how it works. It’s kind of like a slot machine. We keep “pulling the lever” by checking our devices to see if we have “won” more likes or comments. 

Of course, this is incredibly bad for productivity. If you try to get work done while Facebook notifications are popping up, you better believe that it will take you up to three times as long to do the same amount of work you could do if you blocked all distractions. Being on a Wi-Fi-free airplane, bus, or train means that you are in a bubble of calm, isolated from the constantly buzzing world of likes and retweets, and in turn, more focused on getting your work done. 

How can you make the lack of internet work for you as an affiliate?

• Download the documents and emails you need offline. You can also download the best affiliate marketing sites that you need to use for research.
• Use Trello and other project management systems with offline services so you can continue to plan, organize, and edit.
• Ensure you have everything you need to work saved on a USB before you leave. 
• Have all of your favorite playlists for concentration downloaded offline if you listen to music while you work. 
• Check that your laptop has a fully charged battery and that you have everything else you need, including cords, headphones, etc. 
• Take notes for anything you can’t access while offline. You can look it up later when you get Wi-Fi again. 

You can’t get up and do anything else.

One of the other productivity busters of working at a home office is always something else you could be doing. Do you find yourself stepping away from the computer to start laundry, browse the affiliate marketing marketplaces, make yourself a snack, wash the dishes, make another cup of coffee, etc.? It’s effortless to step away from the computer. That way, you can catch up with another task. 

Procrastination is powerful, and I’m sure many people can relate. However, when you are on a train, plane, or bus, you can’t do this – because there isn’t anywhere else to go. If you get up, all you can do is walk up and down the aisle, go to the bathroom, and sit down again. There are not many other situations in our lives where we are bound to one location for such a long period without the internet or people’s distraction. 

There’s also no one to talk to – you’re not in an office with chatty co-workers or at home with your family. You’re alone in a sea of strangers, stuck in a seat for the next several hours with nothing but your laptop and the items on your to-do list.  Without anything else on your mind – you might find that it is much easier to focus without getting pulled away from your work when you are in transit. It forces you to sit down and get started. If you find yourself often distracted by doing other things when you are trying to work, try using transit time as a chance to sit down and stay focused. 

You want to finish before you arrive.

Have you ever heard of Parkinson’s Law? That’s the concept that the work you have to do expands to fill the time available for its completion. Another great thing about working in transit is that it will force you into a deadline. Does your day involve a journey? Maybe you have a certain number of tasks you want to accomplish. These things will put more pressure on you. You can motivate yourself to focus. That is, if you only have a short flight or train ride. Do you have just four hours to complete all of your work? If you have that block of time while traveling, you should be able to finish. 

There’s nothing worse during a work/travel day to arrive at your destination, go through the hassle of checking into your hotel and getting settled, then having to get back to work and finish the rest of your tasks. If you get all of the work done while in transit, then you’ll know that you can relax and take the rest of the day off when you get to your destination. There’s a reward waiting for you at the end of the line. 

You can get into a Deep Work mode.

As an affiliate marketer, you should read up-to-date books that will help you succeed in the industry. One of the best recent books I have read on productivity is Deep Work by Cal Newport. He argues that ridding yourself of all distractions in your environment allows you to completely immerse yourself in a cognitively demanding task and produce better results in less time. Working in transit does precisely that. Remove all distractions. That includes browsing the internet, checking your email, or just chatting with friends. You can “go deep” and get work done. As mentioned earlier, working in transit isolates you because you don’t have an internet connection. Working in transit creates the ideal environment for “deep work.”

There was an additional exciting anecdote that Cal shared in the book. He wrote about Peter Shankman, the founder of HARO. He landed a book deal, but he struggled to sit down and concentrate and write the book. So, he booked a round-trip flight to Tokyo, Japan. Yup, he didn’t plan on spending any time in Japan. He was sitting on the airplane for the sole purpose of creating a distraction-free environment for writing in. When he got to Tokyo, he turned right around and headed back home. After the 30 hour flight, he had completed the entire manuscript. It’s a little bit crazy and wasteful, but it shows how productive working in transit can be.

Powerful productivity lessens from Deep Work. 

If you don’t have time to read the book, here are some takeaways:

• The ability to focus on one thing in-depth for a significant amount of time is a skill that many people lack in our modern world as technology fragments our attention. 
• Humans are terrible at multitasking. 
• Cultivating this skill will allow you to cut out distractions and produce higher quality work in less time, giving you an advantage over your peers. 
• It is also essential for learning complex skills and improving yourself. That way, you can conquer new challenges. You must be able to focus without distraction. If you try to learn a new skill with your Facebook feed open, your brain will be firing too many circuits at once. Furthermore, you won’t be able to isolate the neurons within the brain you are trying to strengthen. 
• You’ll always need to constantly practice your concentration skills. Also, learn where to put your attention so that it is most productive. Your ability to concentrate profoundly is only as strong as your commitment to training it. 
• The difference between the average performer and the expert performer is a constant and deliberate effort to improve performance. 
• When you are working, work hard. After you finish, rest and recharge. 

The power of working from planes, trains, and busses as an affiliate.

When you have a long journey ahead of you, don’t see that as unproductive, wasted time. Instead, look forward to it because it’s a chance to get work done and even get ahead of the game. 

Do you find that working in transit helps you to be productive? Please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments and let us know what you think.

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