Eight Tips for Working Remote While Traveling

Welcome to the weekend!

Today we’re answering a question that we get a lot — how do you manage to visit so many places, eat so many great meals, and work a full-time job? Yes, in addition to producing this newsletter every week, we both have full-time jobs and plenty of other commitments. But like many folks these days, we work remotely — even if Amy’s day job keeps our home base firmly in Chicago. While we occasionally miss having an office, the situation is certainly helpful for making the most of our time. So whether you’re looking to better take advantage of your personal time on a business trip, or want to tack on a few remote work days to extend a vacation, we have some advice to help you maximize your time and eat great meals. These eight tips have helped us over the years — because time spent traveling is time well-spent.

Before we get to that, be sure to snag our new Field Guide to Knoxville. It’s a weekend food and drink itinerary, with picks for breakfast, coffee, lunch, dinner, and drinks. It’s included in a paid subscription (find the discount code in this month’s Weekend Getaway newsletter). You can also download our Knoxville Field Guide for $10 on our website.

And we’ve also put together a Weekend Reading list that includes the perfect order at a Chicago hot spot, a story about a local flour miller in Columbus, and a list of the best new restaurants in Texas.

Thanks for reading!

— Amy Cavanaugh & Kenney Marlatt
Editors, American Weekender

How to Eat Well While Working from the Road

Aside from running American Weekender, we both have full-time jobs in journalism. And like many of you, our office jobs suddenly became remote jobs during the pandemic. You can’t write a travel newsletter without traveling, so when we can, we do our best to combine work and pleasure — heading out of town for a few days while also keeping up with our full slate of deadlines, meetings, and calls. If you’ve been itching to travel more but don’t have the vacation days to spare, or your work means you’re always on the road, we have some advice for maximizing your productivity while exploring the country.

Tip No. 1

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF YOUR TIME ZONE

Our home base is on Central Time, so our workday can shift earlier or later depending on our destination. If we’re heading to the Eastern Time Zone, we know that we will be able to start our work days later, giving us more time in the morning to explore. The downside: It’s impossible to make it to happy hour. On the flip side, when we’re in the Pacific Time Zone, we have to start the workday extremely early, but we’re usually wrapped up by late afternoon and ready to grab a Mai Tai when the bar opens. So when picking a remote work destination, make the time shift work for you and plan your itinerary accordingly. If shifting your days feels like too much to manage, stay within your own time zone so that your 10 a.m. meeting is always right when you think it is.

Tip No. 2

FIND A PRODUCTIVE PLACE TO STAY

Yes, we love a boutique hotel or a cute rental home as much as the next traveler, and we seek them out when we are truly on vacation. But when you need to get work done, you need somewhere to do it. Some of our most frustrating remote work experiences have been at beautiful hotels with spotty WiFi and guest rooms where every surface is covered with something so there’s nowhere for one of us — let alone both of us — to set up shop for the workday. And you’d be surprised how few AirBnB hosts bother to provide any workspaces at all.

Enter: The boring chain hotel. You’ll frequently find us racking up Marriott points at Courtyard hotels or spreading out at a Residence Inn. Not only do these hotels work within our travel budget, but there’s always plenty of room to work. At business-oriented hotels like these, the guest room desks are reliably large and the lobbies always have plenty or room to work. We also like a decent Residence Inn for extended stays as their guest rooms usually offer both a desk and a kitchen table — perfect for setting up two workspaces.

Also: Be mindful of your hotel’s location. Sometimes staying at a downtown hotel means plenty of walkable lunch options, but when you want quick-access to your car to pick up lunch at that classic burger joint or out-of-the-way taco spot, nothing beats a hotel with a surface parking lot.

Tip No. 3

PICK YOUR PRIORITIES

If you’re planning your trip around your work schedule, you won’t be able to do as much as you could if you were purely on vacation. When you have limited time, it’s helpful to truly prioritize the places you can’t miss. It might be going to your favorite Philadelphia cocktail bar, hitting that new Filipino place you’ve been hearing about, or returning to your favorite restaurant. Pick one or two places and make them your priority — you’ll end the trip with fond memories of the places you got to go, rather than regretting what you missed.

Tip No. 4

MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR MORNINGS …

Mornings offer a great chance to do some things before you have to sign into Slack for the day. We usually grab coffee at a local coffee shop and find a quick spot for breakfast each morning before work. Having a delicious breakfast before you need to respond to emails starts the day on a pleasant note. If you have a meeting-free morning, you could also set up shop at a great cafe and have a fresh cup of coffee while you dig out your inbox.

Tip No. 5

… AND YOUR EVENINGS

When quitting time comes, shut your laptop and hit the town. This is likely your biggest chunk of free time, so make the most of it. Grab a drink before dinner, then make time for a leisurely meal. If it’s summertime, you may have a whole evening of sunlight; stroll around the city as much as you can. (This is also a good time to look into museums — many offer one late-night a week, so you can sneak in some culture, too.)

Tip No. 6

DON’T DISCOUNT LUNCH

Can you plan out your schedule so you have a nice midday break? Congrats, let’s go get lunch. You probably can’t swing a long, fancy lunch, but you can still pop into your new favorite sandwich spot or taco joint. If you can’t leave your computer, well, that’s where your hotel kitchenette comes in handy — we’ve had delicious lunches in our hotel room made from dinner leftovers or takeout sandwiches we’ve picked up earlier in the day.

Tip No. 7

PACK A TRAVEL POWER STRIP

One of our hotel pet peeves is a lack of available wall plugs. It’s especially troublesome when we’re trying to power multiple laptops and other devices that we need to do our jobs. Pack a travel power strip and you’ll be golden no matter what the setup. (We like this one from Anker.)

Tip No. 8

REFRAME YOUR MINDSET

Having a productive workday while also setting aside time for yourself isn’t easy, but take a deep breath. You won’t be able to visit every place on your list. That’s okay. When we’re working on the road, we don’t think about what we’re missing when we’re in Zoom meetings the whole afternoon. We think about what we’re gaining — a chance to visit new places that we wouldn’t get to enjoy had we stayed home.

And besides — it’s always nice to have a reason to return.

What’s your best travel advice? Share it with readers in the comments!

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All Our Favorite Spots in Knoxville: A New Downloadable Field Guide for Paid Subscribers

All our Knoxville favorites are available as a two-day Field Guide that you can download on our website. As always, it’s free for paid subscribers — just use this month’s discount code, which you’ll find in our latest Weekend Getaway newsletter. Here’s what you get:

• Two-day recommended dining itinerary

• Picks for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and drinks

• Downloadable for quick reference

• Designed for your mobile phone

Reminder: As a paid subscriber, you can use this month’s code to download any other Field Guide you’d like for free! We recommend saving your Field Guides to Apple Books or Dropbox for the best experience on an iPhone. Google Drive works great too on other smartphones.

Members-Only Google Map

Paid subscribers also get access to the American Weekender Google Map. This map includes every place we’ve ever mentioned in our newsletters plus every place we’ve ever recommended in our Field Guides. Whether you’re looking for roadside barbecue in Tennessee, afternoon cocktails in New Orleans, or a farm-to-table dinner in Western Michigan, our map — which has more than 1,200 locations! — will point the way. We update it with new spots each week, so keep it bookmarked for your next trip. Paid subscribers can find the map linked in our latest Weekend Getaway newsletter.

ILLINOIS

Red Sauce Zone: For Chicago mag, I went to Dimmi Dimmi Corner Italian, a hot new red sauce spot in Lincoln Park, then outlined the perfect order. In short: Ruby Manhattan, “Italian beef” carpaccio, vodka pizza, tiramisù. (Chicago)

TEXAS

The 10 Best New Restaurants in Texas: Texas Monthly restaurant critic Paula Forbes had the difficult task of naming the best new restaurants across the state. Among her picks is Houston’s Agnes and Sherman, which I can’t wait to try myself. She writes: “Alongside Chinese-inflected dishes, such as waffles that are imbued with the flavor of scallion pancakes, Agnes and Sherman offers a French dip sandwich stuffed with rich shaved beef and pickled mustard greens to dunk into a warmly spiced Taiwanese beef broth, a Mexican-style shrimp cocktail served with Thai-style sauce, and a dainty breakfast sandwich built on an ethereally fluffy square of soufflé.” (Texas Monthly, gift link)

OHIO

Local Millers is Bringing Ohio-Grown Grain to Columbus Tables: Writing for the Columbus Foodletter, chats with one of the owners of Local Millers, a new-ish business that works with regenerative farmers to provide locally milled flour and cornmeal to chefs and consumers. She writes: “Local Millers focuses on heirloom or ancient varieties that are richer in flavor and nutrition than most modern grains. It also uses traditional stone mills and a small-batch milling process to maintain the freshness and flavor of its whole wheat flours, cornmeal and grits.” Their products are on plenty of local menus around Columbus, including at Mezcla, Yawning Bear Bread Co., and Sonflour Bakery. (Columbus Foodletter)

— Compiled by Amy Cavanaugh

Want more? Chat with us on Substack, download our Field Guides, check out our archives, or follow us on Instagram @americanweekender. We’ll be back next week.