Freelancing comes with its fair share of challenges, but one of the biggest perks is working from anywhere. With the support and flexibilty of my phenomenal clients, I was able to spend all of October in France and worked while traveling. Here are a few things I tell people when they ask me how I made it happen.

When I travel and work, my goal is to sink into the vibe of another city long enough for it to feel like home. I want to leisurely explore lesser-known museums, buy daily groceries at markets and boulangeries, take long walks in parks, find a favorite bar—all without feeling constrained by the time limit of a short visit. If you’re only traveling for one week, don’t work. Just be on vacation.

On this most recent trip, I divided my time between Marseille, Lyon, and Paris. While it was totally worth it to spend time in all three cites, it would have been less stressful to have a home base like I did last time and take short trips to those cities rather than relocating all my crap every Monday morning. And lots of hosts give a healthy price break for 28-day stays.

If you’re staying somewhere for a month, the accommodation expense is bigger than the flight and has a higher impact on your enjoyment of the experience. Look for a spot in the photos where you can imagine yourself actually getting work done. Somewhere tiny with quirky furniture can become frustrating when on a deadline. I asked a couple of hosts about wifi strength specifically because I knew I was going to have to upload large video files.

I can get by without a lot for a week, but it gets harder over a month. I packed a tiny laptop stand, keyboard, and mouse to set up a consistent space at each location. While I kept paper to a minimum because paper gets heavy, I had a little pouch for a few office supplies: sticky notes, notepad, pens, tiny scissors, and chargers. Having a dependable cloud-based storage and backup system helped me worry less about losing all my work if my laptop got damaged or stolen. 

Side note: I highly recommend a checklist for essentials. My very first stop in Marseille was the Apple store at a mall because my laptop charger was at home on the couch. 

I aim to keep my workdays between four and six hours when traveling with one weekday when I work all day and one weekday that I take off each week. Europe was great for making the time change work in my favor. I could work from 8-11am Central European Time and clients in the Eastern Time zone wouldn't even be out of bed yet. Then when I'm back at my apartment around 6pm, it would be noon ET and I could check in again before dinner. I kept my meetings to the same day each week so I wasn’t running back to my apartment every evening by a specific time.

I let my active clients know of my plans in advance so we could prioritize projects. I stayed in touch on a weekly basis so they knew if I had a day trip planned and would be totally unreachable. Checking my email on my phone a few times a day allowed me to respond to requests quickly and still get the work done on my preferred timeline.  

The whole reason I travel is to experience new things and be inspired. I did try to do more work this trip than I would have liked. Luckily there were only a couple of days when I felt tied to my desk when I wanted to be out exploring. The trade off was coming home with my head full of history and art that you just can't get without travel.