How to Make Working While Camping a Blissful Experience | Ep 26

Calling all weekend warriors! Have you always wanted to try extending your road trips by working from your RV? Have you tried it in the past but it just didn't work for you? Well, fear not because we've got you covered.

The RV Canucks have been working on our vacations for over a decade, and we know - especially for Canadians - it sometimes seems impossible when you need to call someone but the beautiful wilderness means you have no bars on your phone.

We'll show you:

• Our top 3 strategies for staying connected
• How to handle the unique challenges of the expensive Canadian mobile phone system
• How to stay connected across the border
• How to get work done on Travel Days; and
• How to get the work-life harmony you need to be successful - both on the job and in life!

Thanks for being here!

As always check us out on instagram and facebook @rvcanucks  

Transcript

1 (5s):
Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 26 of the RV Canucks podcast. Today, we are talking about successfully working from your trailer, whether you want to tack a few workdays onto your vacation in order to make your road trip a little bit longer, or you're just taking advantage of the fact that maybe your work policies have changed post-COVID to allow you to work from home or the trailer or the road or wherever you may be. We're going to be talking about our best strategies for working from the trailer when you are weekend warriors like we are. So we spend a lot of time working from the trailer. We're going to nail down our top resources for ya. Give some of the tips about working from the trailer with kids and some best practices on how to make a great separation between your work life and your family life.

1 (51s):
So let's get into it. Okay. So we all know that COVID has changed the RV landscape. We've seen that play out in a multitude of ways, from a lack of new RVs, to buy a ton of new people, getting into RV, being maybe not the availability you would expect at your favourite parks, lots of starting podcasts, people starting podcasts. And I think a lot of that really boils down to the fact that a lot of people are now working from home, whether permanently or temporarily. And I think people have discovered that doing so well in an RV is something that allows you to see greener pastures and do it in such a way that you can still physically distance yourself from everybody else.

1 (1m 34s):
And so on this episode, we're going to talk about working from the RV and specifically how to successfully do that and manage some of the challenges in terms of finding coverage, finding good data, how to make it work with a family, or if you're on a road, Dan and I frequently work from the trailer when we're on our vacations. And that's one way that we have found that we're able to make our vacations a little bit longer is that we combine them with some work from home periods or work from the trailer periods while we're on vacation so we can continue traveling. So unfortunately in the majority of Canada, it is expensive to have a cell phone.

1 (2m 14s):
Well, actually, I'm going to go ahead and say in all of Canada, our American listeners might be shocked to find out how much we actually pay for cell phones, because we all have American TV up here. So we see the Verizon and the T-Mobile ads and the at and T ads that have outrageously low data plan. So just be glad you're not asked cause we pay a whole lot more than you do. Okay. So let's dive in maybe and start with coverage. That's probably one of the biggest challenges a Canadian RVR is going to face when trying to work from their RV, certainly in Canada. Yep.

0 (2m 48s):
Absolutely. Coverage is important. Really. I think it goes without saying that you need a phone and you need internet access to work. And if you're going to camp at a provincial park in Ontario, you're not going to have great coverage. And that's mostly because there isn't great coverage in rural parts of Ontario to begin with. And many of these parks are kind of in remote picturesque areas and that's fine because that's the kind of areas that we want to protect, but you're really going to struggle to find good coverage with just your average cell phone. So yeah, you can probably get the spots where you can make a phone call, but it might mean that you have to go down to the beach or stand by that tree and lean this way to get it. So that can be a little bit difficult.

0 (3m 28s):
So that's one thing that you need to keep in mind and you need to plan around.

1 (3m 32s):
And I would even go ahead and, and say, if you're camping at an RV park, if it's in a more rural location, high speed internet is a huge challenge in our rural communities, particularly in Ontario. And I would gather in the rest of Canada as well, whereas in, you might get wifi or they might advertise guest wifi, but it might not be that fast.

0 (3m 52s):
Well, and the other challenge is you might only actually be able to pick up the signal near the front desk or near the gate house. And a park might like Algonquin would advertise that they have wifi will unlock. Wind is a huge parks and is not practical to have wifi across the whole park. So really what this means is that if you're, if you can make your phone work and you can hotspot, you can really burn through a lot of data depending on what you're doing.

1 (4m 16s):
Do you want to tell them about all the data we burned through during hockey playoffs?

0 (4m 20s):
Well, because this is COVID times and we were just dying for something. We were really excited to follow the NHL playoffs this summer, where we were camping from the trailer and we use Molina's phone and her plan and you know, an app that she's got on there. And we were able to watch a lot of hockey, but we burn through a lot of data watching the Toronto maple Leafs.

1 (4m 42s):
We had a nice hefty bill at the end of that month. And we have like, this was just before we have an unlimited plan now, but even still, that's probably something to mention and unlimited plan. Isn't unlimited. Like we only get 10 gigs of high speed data and then the speed slows down. So even though technically we're getting unlimited, it's not unlimited, it's metered after that, but we did have overage charges that month. And it was quite a hefty bill, but Hey

0 (5m 6s):
Hockey, we're trying to get through a pandemic. Yeah. So there are a couple of coverage solutions that you can keep in mind. One is adjust your location. So you may want to check out reviews ahead of time and check out RV parks or RV resorts that have guest wifi and get a sense of how good that wifi actually is. And phone ahead and ask for a site with good wifi

1 (5m 28s):
And for any Google reviews, Expedia, any of those types of things. Roadtrippers, you can all search reviews by keyword, right? So just type in Wi-Fi and find out what comes up. You don't have to read every single review that's been ever been put on the site to figure it out.

0 (5m 42s):
Their spot is obviously your coffee shops. I think we almost somebody who works from a Starbucks and does a little bit of work from Starbucks, or they go to McDonald's or does something like that. You can I've even picked up wifi in a hotel lobby when I needed it. When I've been out and about you can that not present some challenges itself, which is it's sometimes hard to have the right formal conversation from a Starbucks, with all the background noise, that's going to be distracting to people. So that may or may not work for what you're doing, or you can kind of park in the parking lot and hope you can pick up signal and do it from inside your car. So that's one solution and that's probably a temporary solution. And that's going to work a lot at the time for quick phone calls, checking, email, downloading a presentation, something of that nature.

1 (6m 25s):
For sure. And that being said, though, I mean, not all is lost. If, if your style of camping is, is primarily provincial parks or you want to get out in the wilderness, like there are some options. So I would say you can adjust your equipment and there's several options available to you, including, like we mentioned, hotspotting off your phone, but you can also get like a cell phone signal booster that will work. Some of them, sometimes they plug into your vehicle and you can boost your signal and sit in your vehicle so that you've got the signal you need to hotspot it'll work in the trailer. So that's certainly an option installing a wifi booster in your trailer. So if the park you're staying at, or there's free wifi somewhere near where you're staying a wifi booster is certainly going to take that signal signal and amp it up for you.

1 (7m 6s):
So that hopefully if you have, you know, you're stuck doing a zoom call, you're not the one freezing every three seconds while you're trying to speak. So this is just about getting accurate speeds so that if you want to do something other than, you know, sending email, you're going to have the capacity to do it. The other option, particularly if you're going to be doing a lot of working or spending a lot of time on the road is getting some kind of like my fi service that converts data into wifi that multiple devices can tap into. So some things, something like if you've got bell, the bell has the mi-fi stick. Shark. Wifi is a Canadian company that also provides this service and they have a lot of seasonal packages, which will give you signal for several months. So you can get everything from like five gigs up to 50 gigs.

1 (7m 48s):
And they have a, you can pay by the month if you only need it by the month, or you can sign up for packages that are like three months long, five months, long, eight months long, whatever. And each comes with a different amount of data that you can tap all of your devices into, which I think is a really smart idea. If you're hitting the road for three weeks and you know, two of those three weeks, you need to work. Something like that is probably a great option because it's going to, it has the capacity to find towers and boost them. So even if you're in a dead spot where you don't have wifi available, you're still getting comparable speeds to wifi.

0 (8m 21s):
Don't think about this as just another cost. It's an investment to enjoy your time. And it's not just for work. It can be for somebody who needs to work on a school project or a school assignment, or do something like that. So it's not just all about work. There's legitimate reasons to want to get good wifi and makes it worth your while to enjoy your experience and get out there and see a little bit more.

1 (8m 41s):
Absolutely. And it's something like this, that where you've got a package where you have it for a finite period of time means that you're not roped into something you're paying for every month when you're not on the road. Like this is something you could purchase once a season and you don't need, you're not roped into any sort of like data contract on that changes the terms of your current cell phone plan.

0 (8m 58s):
Right? Maybe that's a good time to talk about traveling state side and cell phone plans and, and how we kind of handle that challenge.

1 (9m 6s):
Yeah. So obviously you've heard we traveled to the States a whole lot. You do have the option now of going to the States and buying a SIM card, like a prepaid SIM card, which before 2017, you could not do that because all of the cell phone service companies in Canada, they all had the phones locked to their specific company. However, that was ruled in 2017. That's not allowed you all of the phones have to be unlocked now, which is great for us as consumers. So you can go down and you can purchase a prepaid card when you get to the States, you know, there's T-Mobile booths and stores and Verizon. And I mean, they have so many options down there and you just pick up a prepaid plan for however much data you have. Now, the cons of that is that you are usually paying a premium for a prepaid data plan.

1 (9m 49s):
However, it's still probably going to be a little bit cheaper than your con using your Canadian cell phone plan. So it's definitely something to look into the amount of data you get might not be what you want to use or how you would use your phone normally. So you might have to change your habits a little bit if you go that option so that you're not going over on that data. And some carriers have prepaid plans, don't allow you to top that up. So really have a think about how you want to use that data before you go this end card route. And you also need to consider when you take your current SIM card out and put the other one in, you're going to get a new phone number. So if you go that route, make sure somebody at home has your new number. You communicate that for emergencies and whatnot. So you're able to be located by family at home if need be.

1 (10m 32s):
What we do when we travel is we do use the travel plan from our Canadian carrier. So almost all of them in Canada now, I believe are $7 a day, but keep in mind that's per phone. So if you're going to the States for two weeks are viewing for a family of four that's $392 on top of the insane amount that you're already spending on your phone bill. So if the four of us went down and had our phones on all day long, plus our normal cell phone plan, that's almost $700 and that's a whole lot of money that could go to some cool stuff on your vacations. So what we do with our girls is we leave it up to them to decide how many days of data they would like to use.

1 (11m 16s):
And because the data is charged per day, it's $7 per day. They can decide when they want to use it because they have to pay for it. So, Fiona, for instance, the last time we went down, she wanted to do a video chat with her friends and she had coordinated it, that there was like four or six friends who wanted to get on a video chat at a certain time. So she decided, okay, well, that's the day I'm going to turn on my data because I already have this pre-planned call with my friends and I don't want to miss it. So she paid for that day. And then as soon as she was done her call, that was kind of getting towards the end of the day. She would turn the data off. And then I don't think she turned it on again for, you know, four or five more days. She wanted to turn it on. When we had reached California, I cause she wanted to send some pictures of Disneyland to her friends and, and do that kind of immediately or put them on her social media.

1 (11m 59s):
So it's a great budgeting exercise. I think for the kids, if your kids are old enough for that type of thing, where they really see like, yeah, there are consequences to all this great technology that we're using and that is the cost. So if, if you only want to spend $21 and that's how much you're willing to put forth from your own budgeting, then you only get to turn on your phone three days. So,

0 (12m 19s):
And somehow in the excitement of the trip, it doesn't seem to wind them up that they can't have constant access. And they learn quickly that if you pull into a truck stop, chances are they can get free wifi. And they're going to hop out, use the washroom, get free wifi, pick up a couple of messages and you get back on the road somehow. I don't know how it happened, but it just does not seem to be an issue to say, Hey, you're going to budget your time. They seem to do it. And it gets along just fine.

1 (12m 43s):
Yeah, for sure. So I should say as well, we, we leave one phone on all the time. So that, that pays the whole amount of travel for the entire time we're away. So we don't need to worry about using Google maps or hopping on defined, you know, the phone number of an RV park that we want to stop at, or somebody needs to call us in an emergency. So we do keep one of our four phones on all the time, but the other ones kind of cycle on and off, depending on what we're up to and how much we feel like paying, I guess we can transition maybe into working successfully while on the road. Cause I think that's a whole other issue. Like you can get set up, you can find the right technology, you can find the right equipment to help you. Certainly when you have a family in such a small space, it can get interesting to say the least to make sure that you're doing a good job and you're doing a professional job while you're away.

0 (13m 28s):
I think we understand now that with kids learning from home and doing their schoolwork from home in the COVID environment and it's, it's been probably at least 12 months that we've all been in some kind of work from home environment that employers are starting to understand that things have changed and yeah, things need to be professional, but a good employer recognizes that you're going to have some challenges when you're trying to connect from a remote location, whether that home is in your RV or that home is in your home

1 (13m 54s):
Or when your five-year-old no, she must've been eight says goodbye.

0 (13m 58s):
Oh, well. So there is a bit of a funny story. And it was certainly before COVID times, I think Kyla was maybe eight years old and she and I had traveled ahead up to Tomago me ahead of Molina and Fiona. And, and I had to jump on for one conference call. It was only going to be about an hour and she was antsy. And of course there was nobody to entertain her and she had her coloring and she had a few activities in the back of the trailer and there's probably 20 people on this phone call on a Friday. And we get to the end of the phone call and the person who led it said great work. Everybody have a great weekend. And from the back of the trailer at the top of her lungs, I heard you have a good weekend too. Now I didn't admit to it. There was 20 people on the call and hung up and, and there was no outcomes that came out of it, but that prevent presents.

0 (14m 43s):
One of the challenges that you're going to find is what do you do with your kids during this time, especially during the summer when they're maybe not logged on for school and think it's

1 (14m 52s):
Important to set expectations or explain to them because we get a lot like, Oh, you have another call. Like, but we're on vacation and we hear it a lot and we've heard it a lot for years. And that's one of the dangers of working on the road is that you can get, you know, kind of caught up in the loop or your kids kind of expect because you're in the trailer, you shouldn't be working. And if they see you working, they feel like they're being gypped or they're B or their time is being stolen from them. Right. So I think laying that out ahead of them and, and really explaining it to them because I kind of, when we went to California, we kind of didn't explain to them until like halfway through the trip, like the reason we're able to hit the road for three weeks, or it was longer than for three and a half weeks is because we have to do some days of work.

1 (15m 35s):
Right? Like if we were at home, we would be in our office going to work and it didn't kind of even occur to me. Like we knew that Dan and I knew that, but it didn't occur to me to explain that to the kids, but so that they, when they were all put out of joint, I was like, well, what do you mean? You know, like we have to work and they're like, no, we're on vacation. Right. So they're on vacation certainly, but laying out those expectations or explaining to them, you know, what your plan is going to be for work. So they don't get their nose out of joint or feel like, you know, they're losing time with you. And I think on the flip side of that, making sure that you're not getting caught up in that constant loop of like, Oh, well, if I just send this email right now really, really quickly, it's going to make it easier for me. Then on three days when I was planning on logging in or, you know, I just, if I, if I take, if I take this phone call, I can just get it out of the way and then I don't have to worry about it.

1 (16m 21s):
Well, the problem with that is that you're constantly going to be doing that and you're not going to have any downtime and you're going to miss those memories and you're going to blur the line between work in place so much that it's not going to be enjoyable. So I think setting those boundaries is super important because everyday can not be a work day. You have to draw that line in the sand.

0 (16m 39s):
And everybody knows that a five minute phone calls really a 30 minute phone. Yeah.

1 (16m 43s):
Yeah. So one of the things that I do to help me with that is that ID activate all of my work notifications when I'm not at work. So I'm not tempted to go on and check. So I have, we have several kind of instant message types. We use Slack, we use Trello, we use all of these great technologies at my work, but that means my phone is pinging all the time. If I let it. So when I've set work hours, I turn off or I deactivate the notifications on my phone and it took me a long time to actually do this. And I don't know why it took so long because constantly I was getting caught in this trap. But turning off, all of those notifications just takes it off your phone. It's kind of like, I take a Facebook break every year and I remove Facebook off my phone. So I'm not even tempted to open it up.

1 (17m 24s):
It's that type of thing. Like if out of sight, out of mind. So making those hard divisions is so important for your mindset as well,

0 (17m 31s):
Right? And there's a couple other ideas that you can use to help you out. One is to pick a site that's close to a playground or a sports field, and that might not give you the best site, but it gives a spot for the kids to go burn off energy. Will you need to do some work? And it keeps them entertained and it keeps them out of your hair. That's another great idea. You can keep an eye out of them out the window they're going to be, and you can get some work done in some peace and quiet. The other thing I would say is probably a lot of us know what our work schedule is going to be like on a given month or a given time of the year. So if you can plan your travel and chances are, you're going to plan a bigger trip months in advance because you're going to make reservations. Then you can probably have a pretty good idea of where you need to be at a certain time to have the right access to data or wifi or cell signals.

0 (18m 16s):
So plan your trip accordingly. So if you know that the first Friday of every quarter or the first Monday of every month, that you need to do a big phone call, then kind of plug that into the calendar and then plan your trip around that and make your trip.

1 (18m 29s):
So, and that might mean you work for a week. You travel for a week, you work for a day, you traveled for two days. Like the way you do that is, is, I mean, it's entirely up to you and your organization and your boss. And however you want to work it, but it might not mean that you're working for a full week, then taking two weeks off, or it might be a bit of a half week situation. And that's okay too, to be a little more fluid with it.

0 (18m 50s):
And, and it kind of actually found from experience. It makes you available so that things don't stop. You know, I work at a place that expects you to take your vacation and it's a use it or lose it kind of place and they're supportive of taking vacation. But I think what I would say is that if you want to take vacation two days a week in the summer, that's okay. There's no reason you can't work from your trailer the other three days or vice versa. So don't be afraid to split up your work weeks like that. And you'll maybe find that you don't get yourself inundated, but make sure like Molina said set some boundaries. If Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are your work days, then make sure that you take Thursday and Friday is your vacation days.

1 (19m 28s):
Something that I find helpful too, when I'm working. And just in terms of keeping myself on track for that individual day is that I use some technology to help me stay on track so that I don't run over. And I know that if I plan on stopping at five, I can stop at five and walk outside and help make dinner. And something like that is when I make a list, a to-do list. Sometimes I do it on paper. Sometimes I use Trello and I'll have my list of things to do. But if I know that I need to update a blog post, or I need to call somebody back, I will not only schedule what I have to do on that to do list, but I will also give myself a time limit to do that in brackets. Like if it's two hours for the blog post, I know between nine and 11, that blog post has to be done.

1 (20m 9s):
And that keeps me focused because I know that at the end of the day, I want to be done and I don't want to have to run over and make dinner, wait, because I'm still working. So it's something I just use for my own personal, I guess, accountability to keep me on track so that I'm making myself stick to those limits of work and play that I've set for myself. The next tip I would say is probably one of the big ones, and it's one of the better ones to gain your time back. And we do it all the time is to use your travel days wisely. If you're sitting in the passenger seat and you're just soaking up the miles anyway, that is the perfect time to go check some emails to them. Even if, even if you don't have cell service, just send some offline emails so that when you connect, they can whip out into the stratosphere and get delivered.

1 (20m 57s):
Give yourself some voice memos, listen to an industry podcast for professional development, make that phone call. I mean, our girls they've listened to so many conference calls quietly in the backseat that I bet you, they know every piece of corporate jargon there is to know like, let's take this offline. Or how about we circle back on that has somehow found its way into their vocabulary because that's how many times they've had to endure a conference calls, but sometimes they find them interesting. They ask a lot of questions about what we do,

0 (21m 28s):
You know, and that's doing those kinds of phone calls from the passenger seat sometimes actually makes you a little bit more engaged in what's actually being talked about on the phone call or in the email, because I think we would all agree that it's really easy to multitask behind your laptop on a conference call and read the newspaper and see what's going on Facebook and wait for your name to pop up and say something. But when you're driving in the seat or pardon me, riding in the passenger seat, you're actually more present to what's going on. So it may be not a bad idea. Think about it. Another great way is to use it, to catch up with colleagues. If you're going to make that phone call anyways, it's another way to stay more present in the conversation by doing it from the passenger seat.

0 (22m 7s):
And I, I lead a large remote team. And so we're encouraged to see those team members, those employees, and we're encouraged to see those customers that we have out there. And I, I make an effort to try and do that when I'm in their area. And it might mean taking a couple hours out of the day or a half a day, or even just going out with them for the whole day and getting to see them face to face and to make that connection because that's really important. It doesn't cost the company any more money. I'm doing it on my own dime. I'm in that area. I'm just giving up, you know, I'm making that a work day to go engage with those people. And it's not a bad idea. And I would say, Hey, if you don't have a customer, you don't have an employee in that area. It's a great way to just get out and network with colleagues as well in your industry, perhaps

1 (22m 51s):
For sure, like you can even plan trips around association events and conferences and things like that. And, and work that in. If you're in the area, why not?

0 (22m 59s):
Absolutely. And you know what? I think we all know that people value that face-to-face connection. They value the fact that you took time to see them when you were in their neck of the woods. And they're often very proud to talk about where they live and what they see. And it pays huge dividends.

1 (23m 14s):
<inaudible>, especially when they can give you great recommendations for places to go and places to eat and things like that. That's always,

0 (23m 20s):
I think one of the other tips I want to leave people to think about as we get to the end of this podcast is think about the business cycle that you work in. Lots of businesses are go, go, go. And we always say that we're so busy, but when I reflect after a little bit of experience and wisdom, I know that our business goes through cycles and it goes through beginning of year planning and we set objectives. And eventually you reach a point in the year where things to slow down. And for me, it starts to slow down when vacation season hits, when school gets out. And so people start to take more vacation. And in the summer months, July, June, and August. And what I have found is the pace of work slows down. And I often use that time to catch up on projects that I need to do because there's fewer conference calls, there's fewer meetings.

0 (24m 6s):
So there's more me time there. So one of the things that I like to do is work for a week and then travel for a week and then work for a week. The whole time you're on the road, you're in your RV. You're enjoying that experience. So be strategic about when you pick those weeks, you might want to work the week before the candidate, a long weekend or the independence day long weekend. So July 1st or July 4th, and then you have that short week, maybe that's the week that you want to either travel or vacation. It doesn't really matter which order that you do it, but be strategic about the way that you do it. Because I think if you think about this, you'll realize your business has ups and downs and it's pace capitalize on.

1 (24m 43s):
And speaking of working with family, I have no idea if you can hear what I'm hearing in my headphones right now, but my teenage daughter is directly below us blow, drying her hair right now. And I'm not confident that my editing skills are going to be able to fully take that out. So these are the hazards of working from home. So I hope the audio is okay for you guys right now. And I would like to leave you with probably the most important tip we can give you on this podcast. And that is to create some kind of ritual, maybe for the start of your Workday, maybe for the end of your Workday, maybe for both, but basically what you want to do is you want to manufacture some kind of commute, even if you're not taking a commute.

1 (25m 25s):
So go for a walk around around the campground loop, go for a little jog, go for a swim. If you're near a beach, just hop in the vehicle and go get a coffee. If you have the ability to do that, do something that kind of gives you that time to decompress. Even if it's only 10 minutes, it might be a half an hour, whatever works for you. You're going to know the amount of time you need to just kind of take a breath, let everything soak in that you did that day at work. Maybe make some mental notes or some physical notes for the next day and then be able to set it down. Right? I think probably one of the biggest challenges is when you go directly from the bedroom to the kitchen, with not even 30 seconds to decompress after work and you might've had a stressful day and you're expected to just kind of turn it off and reintegrate into family life.

1 (26m 6s):
That's very difficult to do. So I think for everybody, it's a great idea just to create that little bit of a ritual, you can tack onto the beginning or the end of a Workday to make sure that your Headspace is in the right frame of mind to kind of be fully present either with your family or fully present at work.

0 (26m 23s):
Yeah, I think that's a great idea. That's going to make you better at work and with family.

1 (26m 28s):
So that being said, we're super interested to know what you think. We know. We have listeners that are full-time RV years that do a whole lot more work from the RV than we do. What are some favorite tips that you use specifically with kids? Maybe if you have even younger kids, cause it's been a little while for ours. So we're trying to give our best tips on all the years, but our kids are a little bit older now. So if you have young ones, definitely reach out to us on social media, let us know what some of your favorite tips are. And we'll incorporate that into our social media. So everyone else can see your great tips. Absolutely safe travels.

2 (27m 2s):
<inaudible>.