Reading Time: 3 minutes

I have spent a lot of time on planes, and it’s really bugging me that most flights still don’t offer wifi while flying – not even if you would be willing to pay for it.

I got so excited when I was flying with Norwegian in 2015 and found free wifi while flying from Amsterdam to Faro in Portugal. To prevent me from being bored as f.. I’m nowadays trying to use my time wisely. So here are some suggestions I wanted to share with you and I’d love to hear what you are doing while flying short or long-haul.

1. Website Content Creation

I like to prepare blog posts for one of my websites. I usually use Evernote for this. In the end, I only have to copy paste it into the backend of my website. (Hint: this blog post was written high up in the sky while flying from Vienna to London).

At the moment that I’m writing this, I was creating this website. So, in that case, I also prepared a lot of the content for the different pages and boom I can relax later a bit more because I spent my time preparing.

2. Social Media Content Creation

As an online marketer and social media agency owner I’m not only promoting myself and my business but also other companies.

This is why I like to use Google Drive or a simple excel sheet to prepare some content in advance.

You can’t download any photos obviously, but at least you have the written content ready or even some Instagram hashtags that you combined from older posts and you can supplement later on when you do your final research.

I love Google Drive for this as you can activate an offline version which you can use when you don’t have wifi and it will automatically save your notes for later.

3. Read a book or one of the freebies you’ve downloaded

As a frequent traveler, I don’t carry books around anymore but I love my kindle. It’s light and I can download as many books in advance and read them when I have time for it.

I don’t know about you but I love to read a couple of books at the same time, so this is the perfect solution for me.

4. Clean your laptop

As much as I have my organized side – I’m Austrian after all – it always comes with a tiny bit of chaos which usually reflects on my desktop and my download folder.

If you have a look at it on a regular day you’ll probably find around 100 files – mostly screenshots – on my desktop and between 800 and 1000 files in my download history.

When I’m on a plane and don’t have anything to read anymore, or I just simply don’t feel like it, then I take the time to do some cleaning. This is not only a time well spent but also makes my Mac Air run faster.

5. Create & edit graphics or videos

If you know how to use programs like Photoshop, Indesign or video tools then you might want to prepare some work for later. It’s the best time to watch all your taken videos or photo and edit them with your software.

6. Sleep

via GIPHY

Alright, this is also something I love to do during flights, especially during longer ones.

It’s not only making time fly faster but also saves me from jet lag when I travel through different time zones.

By setting the alarm right in the morning to make my body adjust to the time zone I’m going to spend time in, then sleeping just as much so I’m going to be tired when it’s late evening there, helps me most of the time to get up in the morning and feel ready to conquer the world or at least a new place.

7. Writing to-do lists

If you really can’t do ANYTHING of these things because your work just doesn’t involve any of those tasks then you might be helped with preparing your to-do list for the following days, reflect on your achievements in the past, or you can set your goals for the rest of the year or the upcoming one.

That’s a great way to leave the plane with a huge pack of motivation.

8. Sending messages to business partners or friends in advance

Unfortunately, Facebook Messenger might delete your message accidentally when you don’t have wifi while sending it, but that usually doesn’t happen with a program like Whatsapp for examples. I use Rambox to aggregate all my messages in one tool from my computer. That just makes it easier to reply to people than when you access them from your phone.

So sometimes I write the messages, click send and the program automatically sends them through once I got my wifi connection back.

What is it that you like to do while you are on the plane?

About Bettina Wittmann

Bettina Wittmann is the founder and meetup host of WE WORK LOCATION INDEPENDENT - AUSTRIA - the first community for (aspiring) location independents & entrepreneurs in Austria.
She is the founder of the social media & growth agency weBOUND marketing operating in a remote team for international clients in the eCommerce space.
When she is not running her business she is also a speaker at digital nomad, marketing and entrepreneur conferences worldwide.
Bettina became location independent in January 2016.

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