It’s no secret that I spend a lot of time on the road. I also spend a lot of time writing. There is a real art to balancing the two and so I thought it would be a good time to do a short post on how to make this as easy as possible. Because that is what life is about really. Getting as much as possible with the smallest amount of effort.

I am a serious fan of quick wins. I accidentally typed quick wines, which I guess also applies, but I’ll save those for another post.

This itself will be short and sweet and divided into two sections: principles and tools.

There are a couple of principles that I always keep in mind when I am on the road. Most of these are based on a GTD style system. I’ve found that this is the best way to make sure that I can continue to make progress even in the toughest of circumstances.

Firstly, it helps to always know exactly what you have to do. It doesn’t matter if you capture this in a list, or a calendar, or an app that can add all the whistles and bells that make you feel good. The only definite element is that it needs to be stored somewhere other than your head. The key is to knowing, in that moment when you have thirty minutes to spare, exactly what it is that you need to do. No additional thinking required that causes you to instantly lose ten of those thirty minutes before you even begin.

Secondly, when you have those creative thoughts, you have to have somewhere to capture them. Mark my words, the biggest and best ideas will always come at the most inopportune moments. That is just the way the universe works. Again, it doesn’t matter what you use to do it.  You just have to make sure that you’re not trying to remember it over and over again until you get back to your computer and start working on it.

Thirdly, make sure your travelling setup resembles your static setup as best as possible. I do this by making sure I have devices that all sync and everything goes via dropbox. When I sit down to work in a hotel room, I want to make sure I can remove the friction as much as possible. It needs to feel natural, not a pain to even get going.

Lastly, try to stick to your routines as much as possible too. If you have a morning routine, like I do, try not to let it all go to hell just because you’re not sleeping in your own bed. If exercise is part of your routine before you write, then remember to pack your gym clothes and try to pick your hotel around its facilities. It all sounds a bit serious, but the payoff in terms of quality time getting the words down is enormous.

That’s it for the principles, so let’s move onto tools. Whilst I think the tips above can apply to everyone (and not just to writing, but to anything else that you try to maintain on the road), tools are particularly subjective. I’ll just tell you what works for me and hope that it gives you some ideas.

For tracking what I need to do with my writing, I use an app called Nozbe. This allows me to break down what I need to do into categories, projects, contexts etc, so I can instantly know what task best fits my current surroundings and time available.

For capturing ideas, to me there is nothing better than a notebook and pen. I keep a small pocket notebook with me and a fisher space pen, because that means I can write on a plane without the fear of an ink explosion rendering my journey utterly miserable. It’s nice and compact too, so it can just get shoved in my pocket if I need to be truly mobile.

It’s a shame Scrivener doesn’t make a mobile app, otherwise I could use it on my iPad in the same way I use it on my macbook. For everything else, I use an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard to remain as portable and functional as possible. As soon as there is a Scrivener iPad app, I’ll probably even buy a new iPad to go with it. Yes, I love Scrivener that much.

I know that I could probably have a multitude of other things. It’s not about being perfect, it’s about having what you need in as few items as possible. After all, you don’t want to be weighed down while travelling as that will impact on the areas outside the sphere of writing.

Of course, there is one other ‘must have’ item that I’ve failed to mention so far. On the road or curled up at home, a writer just has to have coffee…