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Welcome back to another edition of The Remote Creatives newsletter!
Is it just us, or does it feel like 2025 is flying by! One of the most common challenges I hear from our community is maintaining productivity whilst constantly on the move. So in this edition, we're sharing some of our strategies for staying focussed and productive as a remote creative, no matter where in the world you find yourself:
- Ritual Over Routine: Traditional 9-5 routines don't always work on the road, but rituals - or to quote The Artist's Way 'non-negotiables' - absolutely can. Rather than scheduling the day by the hour, create portable morning and evening rituals that signal to your brain when it's time to create. Ours usually consists of a 15 meditation on YouTube, a few minutes to enjoy my first coffee of the morning and reviewing the top weekly and daily tasks before getting into the day. Especially during the first day/week in a new destination, it's important to be gentler with ourselves as our bodies also adjust to the new settings.
- Focus Techniques: Our brains naturally cycle through periods of higher and lower alertness. We've found that working in focussed blocks, followed by a 10-20 minute break (not necessarily scrolling on social media), dramatically improves both output quality and creative thinking. We generally add these session blocks in our calendars and stick to those breaks when the alert goes off. Plus some of the best ideas come from those moments of rest!
- Location-Based Task Batching: Each environment has its own energy. Busy cafés might be brilliant for initial brainstorming but terrible for deep editing work. Map your tasks to your environments: use transit time to consume information (podcasts, research), vibrant spaces for ideation, and quiet corners for execution. When arriving in a new destination, we try to find places that are useful for both deep work and lighter work.
- The Connection/Creation Balance: Remote work can be isolating, but too much socialising leaves no time for business action. Depending on the location, we'll leave space in our calendars for this time. Where we can make time for a coffee with friends, or an after work dinner or an industry event for networking. We've also discovered it can be helpful to change locations depending on our business and personal needs. Whether that's heading to a tranquil place like Ericeira or staying in Berlin for a week around a conference.
- Digital Minimalism on the Move: The fewer apps and notifications competing for your attention, the better. Some creatives like to have a 'work phone' and 'personal phone' setup, especially if managing multiple accounts. For us, we like to keep things simple with minimal lockscreen notifications.
At The Remote Creatives, we're passionate about helping each other find sustainable ways to create whilst embracing the freedom of location independence. Being productive doesn't mean working more hours: it means making your working hours truly count so you can fully enjoy the incredible experiences that remote life offers.
Your Turn: What's your most effective productivity strategy whilst travelling? Which of these approaches might you try next? Share your thoughts in the comments, and let's build our collective remote productivity toolkit together.
We're currently keeping our calendars open, but here's a look back on some of the events we've attended in the last couple of weeks:
- Creative Coworking Pre-ITB: We had the best time getting to (re)connect with fellow-ITB participants in Berlin last week! Where would you like to see the next one? Maybe in Tirana?
- ITB Berlin: We had some amazing conversations during both the travel industry conference as well as the evening events hosted by
Travel Massive
as well as
BudgetTraveller.org
and
Travel Dudes
. Will we see you there in 2026?
- TEDxMarvila: Just before ITB week, we spent the day meeting and listening to inspiring speakers in the local Marvila community. An up and coming neighbourhood in Lisbon, we were excited to meet local companies in the community and hear from different leaders about their stories - including the Mayor of Lisbon. Definitely a neighbourhood and community to keep an eye out for as a creative!
We're still working hard on several resources and offerings behind the scenes but we hope to share them with you soon! In the mean time, you can check out some of our favourites in the links below.
Otherwise, let us know, how do you stay productive when you're on the move?
