Nate Weiner

4 Earthquakes, 1 Tsunami, My Laptop, and Me: Two weeks from Japan

When your job does not tie you to one place, there exists the romantic possibility of breaking off the concrete and setting off wandering the globe.  The idea of traveling around the world, working from my laptop is a thought that I’ve always entertained but never executed.  Simply because as time has gone on, I’ve learned that a job is not the only thing holding you to the ground, there are other reasons to stay in one place, namely friends, family, and a sense of ‘home’. Yet, travel is still my biggest interest, by far.  And if you know me personally, you know that it’s just about the only thing I spend my money on.  I don’t spend money on gadgets, big screen TVs, cars or clothes (I own about 5 shirts, half of which are probably a few years old).  So as the first-year-of-business-craziness has started to level out, I’ve had time to revisit this travel dream. This past week I returned from a 2 week trip to Japan. It was the longest trip I’ve taken since I started Idea Shower and began working for myself.  More importantly, it was the farthest away I’ve been from my primary computer, a (less insanely expensive) data connection on my iPhone, and work life that I am accustomed to.  It was a great way to peer behind the curtain of the globe-trotting, laptop-carrying worker I’ve long dreamed to be.

Data

As much as I’d like to run free, there is one cable that you can’t let go of as a web developer and that’s an internet connection.  I think without a doubt, this is the biggest hurdle I see to a mobile work life:  It’s incredibly expensive. AT&T offers 50MB of international data for $60/mo and good luck if you go over,  because at $0.005/KB viewing the homepage of Techcrunch once would cost you $2.50 alone.  50MB is hardly enough to get you through a month, and probably not even enough to get you through a day or two of solid internet use. SoftBank, the major carrier of the iPhone in Japan’s prepaid SIM cards for international visitors were comparable in price as well. In order to conserve my precious MBs, I kept my phone’s data connection disabled unless I absolutely needed it.  The result meant that during the day, while I was out and about, it was used primarily to keep tabs on things, while everything else was left for the morning and night where I could use the connection where I was staying.

Reverse Teathering

While in Japan I stayed at both a friend’s house and for a few days, a hotel.  At both locations, no wireless was provided, but instead a hard LAN connection.  This meant that I was still unable to use my iPhone without cracking open the data connection.  But with a laptop, I discovered that you can use it has a router to create your own wireless network from the hard line and use that to connect your phone!  I wrote a separate post on how to set that up here: Reverse Teathering

Offline Everything

The other way I conserved my data was by making use of the WiFi connection to download everything I’d need for the day.  For websites and train schedules I used Read It Later (shameless plug!).  However, the most important thing to have when traveling?  (Well, outside of a towel)  Maps. With an iPhone, you get very accustomed to having an always accessible GPS in your pocket.  But with the limited and expensive data, you’ll surpass the cost of your college loans within minutes of panning around the Maps application.  The answer is an excellent little app called OffMaps which allows you to download maps for just about anywhere so you can use your GPS offline later on.  I’ve written a separate post about that here: OffMaps - Offline Maps and GPS

Batching

The whole point of traveling is, well, traveling.  Moving, getting out, seeing, doing.  But it’s difficult to do this when your work is piling up in front of you.  This is why it’s incredibly important to make your time count as much as possible.  While I was abroad I didn’t answer any emails or messages on Twitter until two specific times in the morning and at night.  Generally people are happy as long as they get a reply back within a day so the delays were acceptable. By grouping everything together and tackling it all at once, it made getting through my work significantly faster.  During the time I was there, I never felt overloaded or feared things were not getting done.  By spending 1-2 hours in the morning and some time at night to clear my plate, it left the rest of the day for me to get out and play.

The Life

The self employed life offers a lot of opportunities and the chance at a mobile life is certainly one of the most intriguing.  And as much as the idea of setting sail and not looking back sounds adventurous and almost cinematic, I believe the reality of it is far less doable. Even though this trip was meant to be more vacation than work, it still gave me a sense of what that life may be like.  As romantic as it sounds, it does not provide the most stable or effective work environment.  More importantly, for a web based job, the fear of being disconnected is far to great. For example, a few friends invited me to what sounded like an epic trip: spending several days at a ‘surf island’ in Panama, where as you might guess, you can spend the entire time surfing on a remote-ish island.  But it’s impossible for me to even consider it because of the single cable wrapped around my leg.  It’s incredibly hard to be away from an internet connection for more than a day at a time.  Servers go down, opportunities arise and as a solo developer without employees, you are the only thing standing in the way of imminent issues. I think, for now, launching mini trips from a home base is far more of a reality.  I’d much prefer to make the best of my time while traveling, then spend it working.  Using batching you can effectively get work done during travel, but you still need time in between trips to handle the big tasks and jobs. The mobile work life is great but sometimes it’s nice to home docking station to come back to and recharge. How do you stay connected while traveling?